When Microsoft and company decided to re-launch the Killer Instinct brand, they did so knowing that there was a lot riding on it. In the mid-90's, the game was a direct competitor against the fighters of the day, going toe to toe and holding its own against the likes of heavies like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. A port of Killer Instinct 2 made it's way to the Nintendo 64 as Killer Instinct Gold, and shortly thereafter, the franchise vanished, just like that. That was 17 years ago, and fans have been waiting ever since for another Killer Instinct. Microsoft wants to ensure to fans that the upcoming free to play title is the complete opposite of any kind of cash grab.
That's what Phil Spencer, Corporate VP of Microsoft Studios, told OXM: "We wanted to pick a game that we had the passion to build," Spencer said. "We had the internal team with Rare creative people - there were certain people that I wanted to make sure were close to this experience to make sure it's tried and true. People ask me about Rare and I always go back to, like, Battletoads, but there aren't many people from those games that are still around.
"We had a core of people that still understood what Killer Instinct was about. We thought some of the features of Xbox One, like asynchronous matchmaking where while I'm actually fighting it's setting up my next game, made a great mechanic for a fighting game. I won't say the things on Twitter had no impact on it, I wanted to bring back something and Killer Instinct just seemed like the right thing."
While it seems to be fairly similar to the original Killer Instinct, Spencer insists that it isn't "some hacked-off remake. We're working with Mad Catz on control, we've got Rare people looking at it. We've got people focusing on how it's going to play because we want to build a great fighting game built for a live ecosystem. This isn't going to cash in on the name; it's going to be a real frontline game that people fall in love with."
When Double Helix's Killer Instinct hits Xbox One, it will launch with only one playable character - Jago. Gamers will have to pay if they want more options. Producer Torin Rettig tried to justify this decision saying, "Most fighting games that come out are disc based games where you get a huge cast of awesome characters, but it is a massive cast. Some games have anywhere between 30, 40, even 50 characters...You just only have so much time to get good at so many characters. So we wanted to take that into consideration and release the game in a way that took that into consideration and allowed players to get in and play the game at the level that they want to play it."
Other characters announced include Glacius, Sabrewulf, Fulgore, Spinal, Cinder, and Chief Thunder was recently teased. You can check out our hands on with Killer Instinct from E3 here.
