Dark Rift

Players choose from eight playable characters to start; there are also two hidden characters which are unlocked by completing the game in single-player mode. Fights go for a default three-out-of-five rounds, as opposed to the more conventional two-out-of-three.

Dark Rift takes place far in the future, sometime after the events of Criticom. Gameplay spans three dimensions: the Neutral Dimension (where Earth is located), the Dark Dimension (home to demons), and the Light Dimension (home to energy beings). Although the creatures of the Dark Dimension are demonic, there is no indication that the inhabitants of the Light Dimension have any angelic qualities.

The crystal (the acquisition of which is the main motivation of the characters of Criticom) turns out to be the Core Prime Element of a Master Key, one which holds the power to all the secrets in the universe. The Master Key was found eons ago lodged in a spatial tear. When it was retrieved it burst into three pieces, sending two pieces into alternate dimensions, and widening the tear into the game's namesake Dark Rift.

It was originally announced under the title "Criticom II", and is the second of three fighting games developed by Kronos Digital, falling between Criticom and Cardinal Syn. Stan Liu (head and founder of Kronos) said "we got stuck doing fighting games for a while simply because we were one of the very few U.S. game developers that actually made a fighting game. Hence, Dark Rift and Cardinal Syn."

Unlike its predecessor Criticom, motion capture was used to create all the fighter animations in Dark Rift. The animation work was directed by Ted Warnock, whose background was in traditional animation.

Dark Rift received generally mixed reviews. A number of critics deemed it a dramatic improvement over Kronos's previous fighting game, Criticom. Doug Perry of IGN, for example, concluded that "Kronos has overcome its Criticom syndrome: the level of character detail is there, the many chained combos, the feel of the game, the variety of fighters and fighting styles are all good. Dark Rift shines through its weaknesses, and, for the time being, can be called the best fighter on Nintendo 64."

The most widely praised aspects were the graphics and animation; Shawn Smith of Electronic Gaming Monthly went so far as to compare it to Virtua Fighter 3 (a game which ran on cutting edge arcade hardware) in this respect. However, he and his three co-reviewers further commented that the game is weak in every other respect, and Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot said that it "feels like a Virtua Fighter-inspired mishmash of monsters, demons, and guys with guns. The graphic effects are the only things that save Dark Rift from falling below average." By contradiction, Perry and a Next Generation critic both highly praised the character designs, particularly Demonica and Morphix.