Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
To avert speculation that Killer Instinct would not be as violent as the title suggests, Nintendo's director of marketing George Harrison stated that "Williams would not have entered into this deal if they thought their hands would be tied.
The game's attract mode advertises plans to be "available for your home in 1995 only on Nintendo Ultra 64".
An early 1995 article on the fighting game industry in Electronic Gaming Monthly stated that "for now, the undisputed king at the arcades is Killer Instinct".
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly were divided, with Andrew Baran commenting that "while it's a nice attempt on the Super NES, it wasn't the same" as the arcade version, whereas the other three declared it "a superb translation" which has lower quality graphics and sound than the arcade version but retains its content, playability, and overall feel.
Computer and Video Games gave the game a review score of 93%, adding: "Rare weren't lying when they said the home version would play better than the coin-op: no-one realised they were talking about the SNES!
Next Generation reviewed the Super NES version of the game: "Nintendo and Rare have managed one very impressive trick: getting the 16-bit Super NES to display 512 colors at once, twice the usual number, which gives the graphics an extra gloss".
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly panned the Game Boy version, unanimously concluding it to be "an arcade translation that should never have been attempted on the Game Boy".
GamePro, in contrast, declared it to be second only to the Game Boy version of Street Fighter II among portable fighting games, arguing that the two-button control is "a little awkward but still masterable" and that the graphics are less than outstanding only when unfairly compared to the SNES version.
In 2004, GamesTM called it possibly "the best combo-heavy fighter ever".
In 2009, Virgin Media ranked it as the eighth top fighting game of all time, stating that it was "most famous for having the longest combos in the business".
IGN listed the game at #82nd on their "Top 100 SNES Games of All Time".
Killer Instinct was announced as the first of these games.
The game's attract mode advertises plans to be "available for your home in 1995 only on Nintendo Ultra 64".
Killer Cuts, an arranged soundtrack CD featuring original music from Killer Instinct, was released as a pack-in for the SNES release of the game, included with the first 100,000 copies sold in the US and the first 20,000 copies sold in Canada.
GamePro, in contrast, declared it to be second only to the Game Boy version of Street Fighter II among portable fighting games, arguing that the two-button control is "a little awkward but still masterable" and that the graphics are less than outstanding only when unfairly compared to the SNES version.
Like the first game, it was ported to a home console, this time to the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct Gold.
According to Peter Main, Nintendo's vice president of marketing at the time, the game had a marketing budget of $20 million.
Killer Cuts, an arranged soundtrack CD featuring original music from Killer Instinct, was released as a pack-in for the SNES release of the game, included with the first 100,000 copies sold in the US and the first 20,000 copies sold in Canada.
The SNES version of the game was also met with positive reviews upon its release and was commercially successful, selling 3.2 million units, with more than 150,000 copies sold in the US on its release day alone and more than one million copies sold by November 23, 1995.
Computer and Video Games gave the game a review score of 93%, adding: "Rare weren't lying when they said the home version would play better than the coin-op: no-one realised they were talking about the SNES!
Entertainment Weekly gave the SNES version of the game an A and praised the quality of the port.
Also, the game was also praised for its combo system, soundtrack and controls.
GamePro criticized that the SNES version suffers from a lower frame rate than the arcade version and is also missing some of its best sounds and graphical effects, and complained that the combo system makes it too easy for experienced players to defeat newcomers with a single chain of hits.
The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly panned the Game Boy version, unanimously concluding it to be "an arcade translation that should never have been attempted on the Game Boy".
It was originally released for arcades by publisher Midway in October 1994, and ported to both the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy the following year.
In early 1994, Nintendo signed a licensing agreement with WMS Industries, Midway's parent company, which enabled Midway to develop and market games using the early arcade-based version of the Ultra 64 platform (later to become a home console and then be renamed to Nintendo 64) and formed a joint venture company called Williams/Nintendo to market Nintendo-exclusive home conversions of these games.
Initially released in 1994, Killer Instincts arcade-based Ultra 64 hardware is different than the home console version which would be renamed to Nintendo 64 in 1996.
The passages quoted on this page are taken verbatim from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) — reusable under those terms. They are the work of the people who wrote them.