Killer Instinct Gold

Killer Instinct Gold is a port of the arcade fighting game Killer Instinct 2. Like other entries in the Killer Instinct series, two characters controlled by humans or artificial intelligence fight in one-on-one matches to deplete their opponent's health meter. While the characters move and attack on a 2D plane, the background is depicted in pre-rendered 3D and gives the appearance of depth. Players fight with a six-button setup: three punch buttons and three kick buttons, similar to the controls in Street Fighter II.

Players can chain together a series of hits into "combos" for increased damage, with some special combos requiring specific, memorized sequences of button presses. Characters on the receiving end of a combo can interrupt the sequence with a "combo breaker" move. An announcer (Chris Sutherland) narrates major game moments with phrases like, "Awesome combo!" At the end of the opponent's depleted health bar, stylistic finisher moves, or "Fatalities" can be executed.

Killer Instinct Gold was developed by Rare during a time when the British company was becoming a prominent second-party developer and ally for Nintendo, the game's publisher. Rare modeled its Killer Instinct series on the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. As a departure from fighting game staples such as Street Fighter, both Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat championed an aggressively fast pace of gameplay and placed less emphasis on patience and mastery. The Killer Instinct series began as an arcade game (1994) and became known as "Nintendo's version of Mortal Kombat" upon its release on the company's Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1995) and Game Boy (1995).

The video game industry expected a sequel after the Super NES version's wide success, with over three million copies sold. Following market demand, Rare began development on a sequel for the arcade. They had a Super NES version in development, but transitioned to the newer Nintendo 64 after the console's announcement. The Killer Instinct development team split itself between the arcade version and the Nintendo 64 release that would become Killer Instinct Gold.

In 1996, reviewers compared Gold favorably to Killer Instinct 2, but thought that its graphics were not sufficiently upgraded. In particular, IGN felt that the Killer Instinct 2 graphics appeared dated in Gold and gave it a "cheesy 80s feel". Compared with the arcade release, IGN and CVG noticed fewer animation frames. IGN preferred Gold's crisp music but would have liked more characters and distinctions from the arcade version.

GameSpot named Gold the best entry in the series at the time, but other reviewers only recommended Gold for fans of the series and genre and those most desperate for a Nintendo 64 fighting game. AllGame described Killer Instinct Gold as best for players who want "Mortal Kombat on speed" with a "hyperactive Barry White" announcer.

After the 1996 Killer Instinct Gold did not sell as well as the Super NES version of the original, the series went dormant. IGN reported in 2010 that Killer Instinct Gold had upset series fans by changing the combo move sets and omitting "fan favorite" characters from the original. The website added that Rare knew that between all its franchises, Killer Instinct had the most fan interest in a new series entry. Microsoft purchased Rare in 2002, ending the acquisition's prominent alliance with Nintendo.

Microsoft and Rare revived the series for the Xbox One platform in 2013. In 2014, GamesRadar retrospectively ranked Gold the 35th best game on the Nintendo 64 console.