Back in the 90’s fighting games were all the rage. Everybody had a favorite whether it be Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter, or any of the other versions that flooded the market. Personally, I like Killer Instinct. I was in love with the combo system that Rare created. I liked that you could break the combos. I like that the combos looked neat and didn’t require inhuman timing and 32 fingers to pull off. And yes, I thought B. Orchid was well rendered. I had KI Gold for my N64. I spent untold hundreds of quarters on the arcade machines. I always used the trick of holding right and all three punch buttons on both controllers at the VS screen on the arcade machines to get the hyper speed. I was addicted.
One of the saddest days of my gaming life was when I found my N64 cartridge had decided to give up this life and never again let me enjoy the world of Orchid and Jago and Kim Wu. I have never managed to get my hands on a replacement. That game and Goldeneye are the only reasons I still have my N64. I mourned the loss and actually still do. That may change before too much longer, however.
Rumors have been around for years that Rare was secretly assembling a third KI game somewhere in the bowels of the company. They have repeatedly denied doing so…with very careful wording. Here’s a denial from about a year ago:
“purely out of contractual obligation, no, we’re not working on KI3“
Purely out of contractual obligation? So if it wasn’t for that, you would be? See what I mean about the statement. It’s fairly ambiguous. As a matter of fact,EGM’s rumormonger Quartermann is now saying that Rare is now working on the third installment and it will be an Xbox360 exclusive. There are a lot of people our there that I am sure are wondering why this matters at all since there are so many better fighting games already out there. The simple answer is that KI has a reasonably largefanbase that has been ignored for years. I am part of that group. I am happy that we may finally get a new game with our favorite characters because really, are any fighting games unique anymore? Not really. It all boils down to opinion and mine is that KI3 could be a good thing.
Of course, so would KI and KI2 on Live Arcade or KI Gold on the Wii’s Virtual Console. I’m not holding my breath for any of these to happen but I can always dream. I can dream of a world where we get all of the originals to tide us over until Street Fighter IV comes out and that KI3 hits the market just as we get bored with SFIV. That would be totally awesome dude.