Killer Instinct Gold

The Good
When Killer Instinct was released for the SNES, I wasn't impressed by it. I saw people talking about it, but I said to myself, Mortal Kombat will always be the best(while I was holding the MK box in my arms). Then I went to my friends house, where he had SNES with Killer Instinct and Rise of the Robots. He persuaded me to play one round of Killer Instinct with him. I eventually gave in, but still clutching my MK. I took the gamepad, and picked a weird looking dinosaur named Riptor. After one round I explained to my friend that I had to go home to do something. I went home, went to my game cabinet, and threw Mortal Kombat out the window, along with my MK3. I smashed my little money bank and went off to get my copy of Killer Instinct.

A few years later, KI Gold was introduced to the N64, and buy was it good!

The graphics were what truly amazed me. The texture and backdrops were amazing and fully interactive. Another great thing was the zooming effect. There wasn't a limit to where a player could go. If a player walked off the screen, it ould just zoom out to capture it. It was great.

Sound is as great as ever. Killer Instinct will always own the territory of music in games. The music is perfectly presented and is very good.

The combo system and playability was also excellent, and there were many more great thing about KI Gold.

The Bad
There were no flaws at all.

The Bottom Line
This game is another prize from Rare.

My Rating < 5 / 5 >

The Good
Includes practice and challenge modes

The Bad
Not a great deal to do in the game

The Bottom Line
As I mentioned in the Mortal Kombat Trilogy review, fighting games aren’t my kind of thing, so this will be opinions from someone who has no idea about balance or techniques. That said, Killer Instinct Gold feel much more like a home console game than the Mortal Kombat Trilogy, due to a few extra features.

The game has a nice look about it, with detailed sprites (based on really well made 3D models, like Donkey Kong Country) mixed with 3D arenas. It definitely feels like an N64 game and the sprites somehow don’t look too out of place in the maps. I found the gameplay to be fun, even though I’m absolutely useless at it, this feels slightly friendlier to newcomers.

One welcome feature is the practice mode, which lets you browse through all the special moves and select one to pin to the screen. The bottom of the screen shows all your inputs to help remind you which button “FK” is. There are also training modes to go through specific abilities, including a “focused training” mode which adds a timer. It’s something that will likely be good for people who have the capabilities of having skill with these games.

Killer Instinct Gold still have a few oddities. There’s no mode in singleplayer where you can select a specific opponent, and map selection is done via cheat codes. Still, this seems to offer a lot more than Mortal Kombat Trilogy.