AKA: ”KI“ (Informal)
Summary: A rip-roaring beat ’em up from the Rareware boys.
Review
Killer Instinct introduced the world to the concept of “combos” — successfully stringing together a cavalclade of special movies on your hapless opponent. In the hands of a skilled player, a round could climax in an “ultra combo”, a flurry of the character’s most impressive animations designed to end the match with a satisfying bang. I remember seeing an episode of GamesMaster where two guys convened to see who could pull off the bigger ultra. One guy got 46 hits with Orchid.
Ah, Orchid. The first of what was to become a staple of the fighting genre (taken to its logical extreme in the ridiculous mammary-fest that was Dead or Alive), Orchid was a girl with a pointy set who knew how to use them. Memorably, if you changed her costume’s colours before the match to the ‘tan’ variant, her clothes seemed to disappear altogether. “She’s naked!” as my friends and I used to be fond of exclaming.
Rumours persisted at the time that Rare had a batch of “special” renders of Orchid tucked away on some animator’s cubicle wall at their HQ. It’s just a pity that this particular rumour culminated in this one guy writing in to Rare’s webmaster to ask for a copy that he could “print out and moisten.” Erk!
“T.j. don’t consider himself no pimp…”
—Ross, 2004-10-27