Killer Instinct/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Awesome Ego: While he was already pretty cocky to begin with, Cinder's ego came to a head in 2013, where he's pretty much acting like he's the hottest thing since sliced bread, and most people seem to love it.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The opening theme of the game.
    • Riptor's theme.
    • Tusk's Conan like theme song.
    • Orchid's theme in the second game, "Play Hard," complete with vocals.
    • Also Cinder's theme, "Trailblazer," which could double as the boss music for Eyedol depending on what stage he was fought on.
    • Fulgore's Killer Instinct 2 Theme.
      • His KI1 theme, too.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Omen, the January 2015 character, has caused a lot of controversy among the fans. Some consider him to be a cheap, unoriginal clone fighter who uses other characters' moves and looks very bland, created by Iron Galaxy as a filler, while the others think that he is a very interesting character with an cool design and interesting backstory.
  • Broken Base:
    • Guest characters tend to be controversial with different opinions on them. With Rash, there's just as many people who are excited as there are people who think he doesn't fit the tone of Killer Instinct at all, as well as claiming his inclusion will lead to Killer Instinct getting flooded with guests and turn it into Microsoft's equivalent of Super Smash Bros.. Later, Arbiter caused more controversy regard. Some think it's awesome he's a character and are hopeful that having a character from a massively popular franchise will bring more attention to the game, while others think he fits even less than Rash, who is at least a character from another Rare franchise.
    • Eyedol's updated design. Some people love it, saying that it fixed many of his original design quirks, while also saying that the split-head is genius, while others think that the new design doesn't fit at all, and that they preferred the old 2-headed demon over the new ogre-like design.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: You will see Jago often in ranked matches. Very often. Ditto with Orchid and, to a lesser extent, Hisako.
  • Demonic Spiders: Enemies with the Armoured Trait in Shadow Lords, which gives them the ability to become Immune to Flinching. The cooldown feels very short, especially on higher difficulties, and often turns would-be punishes into VERY painful opportunities for the enemy to tear into you.
  • Ear Worm: T.J.Combo's theme song:

Feel the power baby!!!

    • The Humiliation theme. A short, looping disco-esque theme that WILL get trapped in your skull.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Fulgure.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Shadow Jago somehow manages to appear even more ripped than regular Jago.
    • On the same note, Sadira has quite her share of fans.
    • Cinder's voice does this for some fans, but the rest of him... not so much.
    • After her reveal, Mira has gained quite a following. Vampires Are Sex Gods, indeed.
  • Follow the Leader: This game was shamelessly designed with the intent to benefit from the success of Mortal Kombat; course, unlike other MK clones (like Tattoo Assassins and Way of the Warrior) this one is actually good.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Cinder could do an infinite hit combo, and it was easier for some.
    • Eyedol's infinite hit combo.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • Killer Instinct 2013 has a rare and amusing bug, where when a character is knocked out of their first lifebar, they will stay down and never get up. Since the timer doesn't run, there's no way to continue the fight, forcing either player to quit in an online battle, or to exit to the main menu in an offline versus battle.
    • Many of the exploits in the original Killer Instinct are so instilled in gamers' memories, such as Cinder's infinite combo, that the digital re-release actually allows players to choose between playing the revised arcade build that fixed them or the original build with all the glitches intact.
    • A bug early on with the PC version for Season 3 caused the game to run extremely fast if your monitor wasn't locked to 60hz, since it's designed to run at a consistent 60 FPS and no more. Distressing if you wanted to actually play the game, since performing combos and breakers became all but impossible, but watching the characters scramble around at hyperspeed was admittedly hilarious.
    • Kilgore originally had a bug with his Ultra Combo that caused the combo to "blow out" at various points, sending his opponent flying away early if the Knockdown Meter was filled too high before the Ultra was triggered. The Ultra Combo would, however, continue as though the opponent was still there, which lead to hilarious sights such as Kilgore unleashing a Macross Missile Massacre and uppercutting thin air. Sadly, this was patched out a few weeks later.
    • Shadow Lords allows players to attack for a short period after the fight is over to let players open the mode's treasure chests. This, however, comes to an abrupt end and plays the character's victory animation as soon as all of the loot is collected, allowing certain attacks to remain on screen for a few seconds, allowing for moments that weren't originally intended, especially if the victory pose requires the character model to be moved to a different part of the map. For instance, Cinder's Pyrobombs can cause a screen-filling explosion, Kilgore can be caught in a salvo of his own missiles, and Omen's Shadow Rashakuken can cause his various fireballs to fly past him as he poses.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Admit it, finally getting a Halo vs. Gears of War fight with Arbiter and General RAAM is amazing.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Thunder is fairly popular among Native Americans in spite of his stereotypical nature and is more fondly regarded than T. Hawk or Nightwolf, who tend to get Ethnic Scrappy reactions.
    • Thankfully, his rebooted appearance is much more politically correct, rather than the "red-skinned Indian" stereotype from before. Apparently, some of the Double Helix devs even approached some of the people of the Nez Perce tribe to help them make it as accurate as possible, so it has the approval of at least one actual Native tribe.
    • Additionally, the Double Helix devs refused to make Thunder's retro outfit fully resemble his original appearance. They gave him a jacket and got rid of his war paint and mohawk headdress, so he looks more like a regular tough Native dude than just a walking stereotype.
  • Narm Charm: Riptor's Ultimate has fans for being somewhat cute or even enjoyable because of the silliness.
  • Nightmare Retardant:
    • Fulgore's elephant-like hit noises in the first two games, which are a rather jarring contrast to the image of a killer robot he presents.
    • Some find Eyedol's name too silly to take him seriously.
    • On the flipside, most players who found Eyedol intimidating weren't impressed with Gargos, whose design is much simpler in comparison.
  • Older Than They Think: Many older players never learned that Killer Instinct 2's combo engine allowed 80+ hits without glitching and absent the 2013 game's ability to chain two ultra combos together.
  • Polished Port:
    • Thanks to Nintendo having the programming team for the arcade version handle the Super Nintendo and Game Boy ports, instead of outsourcing it to a third-party developer. The result is that the SNES version was well-received and the GB version was surprisingly faithful, and more importantly, playable.
    • Other than certain aspects that're common to other PC games on the Windows 10 Store (like the lack of more advanced graphical options to ability to disable V-Sync, to note one of the more minor ones), the PC version of Killer Instinct 2013 is surprisingly well-optimized, to the point where at least one review noted that it could pass the performance benchmark on a tablet, making it effectively a mobile game. While it only accepts Xinput (XBOX 360 layout controllers, third party that known to support this includes Logitech though) devices natively, there are workarounds (like various X-Input emulators, and binding the buttons to keys using joy to key).
  • Rated "M" for Money: Fairly blatant at that. It was actually rated T, but the intent was still there. Played straight and literally with the Xbox One release of Killer Instinct Classic, which has a M rating.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Killer Instinct 2's newcomers Maya, Tusk and Kim Wu aren't too popular with the fans, being replacements of fan favorites Cinder, Thunder and Riptor. It also doesn't help Thunder is given no explanation for his disappearance and the other two are simply written as being dead, making for a rather cheap way to get rid of them. Maya was retooled for Season 2 and became more popular, and the pre-release reception for Kim and Tusk has them on the road to being Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
    • Gargos gets some heat as well from fans for being more of a stock character than Eyedol in addition to sharing his role and similar moves. However, there are some who like him for the fact that he contributed more in the story than Eyedol did. Like the other two, he's in the way from being Rescued due to his impact throughout all three seasons of Killer Instinct, thus building him up for years.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Maya got more love in Season 2 thanks to getting a new design and appearing alongside Riptor, Cinder and Thunder, allowing her to become distanced from the other three and avoid getting accusations of replacing them like she did in her debut game. Kim Wu, Tusk and Gargos also got the same treatment in Season 3 for many of the same reasons as Maya.
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: Tusk's theme music in Killer Instinct 2 sounds an awful lot like the Conan theme.
  • They Copied It, So It Sucks: One of the criticisms towards the game was that it was a Mortal Kombat clone. Some even mistake it for an Mortal Kombat game due its similar premise and aesthetics.
  • Uncanny Valley:
    • While the original game seems to hold up well enough, the character models for Killer Instinct 2 are very... off, especially by today's standards. Everybody (especially the women) looks like big-eyed mannequins with Frozen Face syndrome.
    • In the SNES port of Killer Instinct, all of the announcer's callouts play at slightly higher than normal speed (presumably saving some precious space on the cartridge by making the sound files smaller), and the combo callouts are done with Mad Libs Dialogue. The difference was hard to notice back in the days before MAME and Killer Instinct 2013 made it easy for a player to compare the two, but if you go into the SNES port with a fresh memory of what the arcade version's announcer sounded like, it sounds really off, way more so than the rest of the SNES version's sounds, which are just lower in fidelity.
    • Done intentionally in the 2013 game with Kan-Ra's Nightmare Face.
    • Another intentional example is Hisako, with her blank eyes, neutral expression and just visible anglerfish-like teeth. The glitching doesn't help, and it gets even worse when she moves or uses her Nightmare Face.
  • The Unexpected:
    • Nobody expected that Killer Instinct would have a guest fighter Rash, let alone from the Battletoads franchise.
    • Who would've predicted that Arbiter from Halo would've gotten into Killer Instinct? At least Rash was another Rare character!
  • Vindicated by History: The new game's callbacks to Killer Instinct 2 have been received better than Killer Instinct 2 itself was at its release.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The 2013 game really loves particle effects. Hitting someone with Jago's Endokuken or Orchid's Firecat causes them to shatter into a bunch of energy particles. Most of Glacius' special moves leave the map covered in lovingly detailed ice shards. Cinder not only has fire constantly swirling around, but he also is a light source, which is why a Cinder Mirror Match is used for the Windows 10 Edition's Hardware test. Also General RAAM's Instinct Mode literally covers the screen with moving objects while still maintaining the 60fps gameplay, it's quite a sight.
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