The N64 was not great at intensive 2D rendering and the CG scrolling backgrounds of KI2 made 60fps simply not possible.so they opted for 3D which the system was obviously much better at but the end result was.not great. There was an almost finished KI2 build for SNES that was canned in favor of KI Gold on N64. The SNES port of KI1 happened because the Ultra 64 was delayed a year and the demand for the game was insane at the time.even a gutted version of it. So it used the same hardware save a bigger hard disk and I believe an upclocked CPU. KI2 was quickly green lit on the massive success of KI1, way before performance claims of N64 could be verified by final hardware. AFAIK an Ultra 64 version of KI1 was never even started. KI1 arcade was a proprietary hardware built by Rare with zero correlation to Nintendo’s ‘Project Reality’.in the early days Rare honestly believed the game could be 100% replicated on the ‘Ultra 64’ due to highly inflated performance numbers and data compression claims from Nintendo that never materialized. So yeah, anybody have any good scoops on what happened way back when? Seeing/hearing about those versions on Ultra64, to me, is right up there with the mythological Saturn version of Virtua Fighter 3 supposedly in a bunker at Sega. The FMVs were even gone, but Capcom got them in Resident Evil 2 adequately enough. I know I read somewhere that either Nintendo or Rare wanted to play with 3D, so that’s a little of what happened, but yikes. It all was just so bad compared to the arcade game of KI2. A picture of that game should be beside the phrase “what were we thinking?” I mean, wouldn't a faithful yet downgraded port of KI2 been better than this? The frames of animation missing, the blurry/muddy textures, sounds being off, the characters and backgrounds taking a huge hit - it was all amplified by how broken the game felt with the move to quasi-3D. The last bit I have with all this is Killer Instinct Gold. Dismissing Killer Instinct Gold, was there a proper port of KI2 planned/started development for the Ultra64? Or heck, the SNES? By the time KI2 came out in arcades the limitations of the Ultra64 should have been even clearer to developers especially Rare. The other thing I’m super curious about is Killer Instinct 2. I also would love to know what the dev team thought when they realized it wasn’t able to be a 1 to 1 port and it was going to have to get stuck on the SNES. That tells me that somewhere along the way Nintendo had to let that be known to Rare, and they had to adjust the game accordingly. Was there an actual Ultra 64 home version somewhat developed? I say somewhat developed because the N64 wasn’t able to pull off what the arcade was doing. When KI was ported home - as we know - it came to SNES. Were they just going to transfer the rom to a cartridge and be done? The intent was for this game to show off the Nintendo Ultra 64, so at some point was it going to be like a NeoGeo arcade/console thing? The same with KI2 as well. I’ve always wondered how that was going to work. I was so hyped for it to come home to the Ultra 64. The arcade version of KI1 was so new and fresh. So, Killer Instinct is one of my favorite franchises.
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