By 1994, the fighting game had become one of the defining genres of the arcade. Capcom’s Street Fighter II had transformed one-on-one competition into a phenomenon, while Midway’s Mortal Kombat series pushed the genre toward digitized actors, elaborate finishing moves, and an increasingly theatrical style of violence. SNK filled the Neo Geo with its own challengers, and Sega had begun showing how polygonal graphics could change the appearance of the arcade with Virtua Fighter.
Nintendo was not the company most players expected to enter that particular fight.
Yet in the summer of 1994, Nintendo began publicly presenting Killer Instinct as one of the games that would demonstrate the future of its hardware. Developed in Britain by Rare and distributed to arcades through WMS Industries and Midway, Killer Instinct combined pre-rendered computer graphics, enormous combinations of attacks, booming digital audio, unusual characters, and the promise of Nintendo’s coming 64-bit generation.
The official paper trail makes the relationship unusually clear. Midway’s November 1994 operations manual identifies Killer Instinct as a Nintendo and Rare property, calls it a “Game by Rare,” recognizes Killer Instinct as a Nintendo trademark, and states that Midway manufactured and sold the arcade machine under license. The surviving contemporary documents in the research record similarly show Nintendo, Rare, and Midway occupying distinct but connected roles in bringing the game to arcades.
What emerged from that partnership was more than another Mortal Kombat competitor. Killer Instinct became an advertisement for a future Nintendo had not yet finished building.
Rare, Nintendo, and the Road to Killer Instinct
Rare had already spent years developing games for Nintendo systems before Killer Instinct, but the company’s technological ambitions were rapidly growing during the early 1990s. Its investment in Silicon Graphics workstations allowed artists to construct three-dimensional models and then render those models into images that could be used on hardware incapable of producing the same level of real-time 3D graphics.
That technique became famous through Donkey Kong Country, but Rare was experimenting with the same broad visual philosophy on a very different kind of project.
Later recollections from Killer Instinct designer Ken Lobb describe his fascination with fighting games on SNK’s Neo Geo hardware. Games such as World Heroes and Fatal Fury helped shape ideas about unusually long combinations and attacks that could flow together in ways that made the player feel as though a spectacular sequence was being constructed rather than simply performed one move at a time. Lobb eventually brought those ideas into discussions with Rare.
Rare already had a fighting-game concept under development. At one stage it carried the working title, Brute Force. Preserved Rare material shows just how fluid the project remained. Character names and designs changed repeatedly. The fighter that became Riptor was once called Toxin, Spinal was called Argo, Sabrewulf went through the name Newton, and T.J. Combo had the considerably less intimidating working name Mr. Fist. An early female fighter called Roxy Rave or Wanda helped provide the foundation for what eventually became Orchid.
According to Lobb’s later account, Rare had already constructed a cast of computer-rendered fighters when he was shown Brute Force, but the combat system had not yet become the game that would eventually reach arcades. He proposed ideas including auto-doubles and combo breakers. Rare founders Tim and Chris Stamper approved the direction, and Lobb worked with developers including Chris Tilston and Mark Betteridge as the project evolved into Killer Instinct.
The result was a game that borrowed recognizable elements from the fighting games surrounding it without simply copying any one of them.
Project Reality and Nintendo’s Arcade Strategy
Killer Instinct became historically important partly because Nintendo attached it to something much larger than a single arcade release.
Nintendo was then working with Silicon Graphics on the technology that would become the Nintendo 64. The project had previously been associated with the name Project Reality and was later promoted as the Ultra 64. Nintendo wanted software that could communicate the power of its coming machine before consumers could actually buy one.
The arrangement was being discussed publicly months before Killer Instinct reached arcades. In May 1994, the arcade trade publication Play Meter reported that WMS would distribute Killer Instinct, describing it as a futuristic fighting game developed for Nintendo by Rare. The article went further and described Killer Instinct as the first game intended to demonstrate Project Reality technology.
Nintendo made the connection even more explicit on June 23, 1994. In a press release issued during the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, Nintendo announced that Killer Instinct and Cruis’n USA would be previewed in connection with the Nintendo Ultra 64. The company identified Rare as Killer Instinct’s developer and announced that WMS Industries would manufacture and distribute the arcade versions of the two games. Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln promoted the arcade titles as a look toward what players would eventually experience at home.
For arcade players, the message was difficult to misunderstand. Killer Instinct was not merely a new fighter. It was being presented as a preview of Nintendo’s next generation.
That claim would later require some important clarification.
The Arcade Machine Was Not Simply a Nintendo 64
One of the most persistent stories surrounding Killer Instinct is that the arcade cabinet essentially contained Nintendo 64 hardware. Contemporary advertising helped create that belief, but the actual machine was more complicated.
Programmer Martin Hollis later explained that Rare wanted to construct a machine that represented the sort of performance Nintendo expected from its coming console without waiting for the final Nintendo 64 hardware to exist. The design centered on an R4600 MIPS processor, a CPU related to the architectural direction being pursued for Nintendo’s console, but Rare designed a largely bespoke arcade system rather than placing a finished Nintendo 64 inside a Midway cabinet.
Modern preservation work reinforces that distinction. MAME’s technical documentation identifies a 100 MHz IDT R4600 processor, Midway DCS audio hardware, a hard disk, ROMs, RAM, and a custom board associated specifically with Killer Instinct. The hard drive stored substantial portions of the game’s graphics and code, and Midway’s original operations manual contains warnings about handling and shipping the drive because it was an essential component of the machine.
The distinction matters because it reveals something more interesting than the old myth. Killer Instinct did not need to be running on a Nintendo 64 to serve Nintendo’s purpose. It needed to look like the future.
Rare accomplished that through specialized arcade hardware, Silicon Graphics production tools, pre-rendered characters, carefully constructed backgrounds, and a presentation far beyond what most home players could reproduce in 1994.
Building a World That Looked Three-Dimensional
Killer Instinct remained fundamentally a two-dimensional fighting game. The combatants moved toward and away from one another across a traditional fighting plane, but visually the game tried to disguise those limitations.
Characters were created from three-dimensional computer models and converted into rendered frames of animation. The stages created an even stronger illusion of depth. What appeared to be dynamic three-dimensional backgrounds were often sequences of rendered imagery that could be played forward or backward as the fighters moved across the stage. This allowed the camera and scenery to appear to shift dramatically without the arcade board calculating an entire polygonal environment in real time.
Kev Bayliss played a central role in establishing the game’s visual identity. His character designs deliberately moved across genres. Killer Instinct did not restrict itself to martial artists or military fighters. Its roster included the monk-like Jago, secret agent Orchid, heavyweight boxer T.J. Combo, the mechanical Fulgore, the alien Glacius, the werewolf Sabrewulf, the skeletal warrior Spinal, the dinosaur-like Riptor, the living flame Cinder, and Native American warrior Chief Thunder.
The result looked less like a conventional martial arts tournament and more like a collision between science fiction, monster movies, fantasy, professional wrestling, comic books, and arcade fighting games.
Bayliss also contributed to the physicality of the animation. Later accounts note that some fighting movements were modeled using members of Rare’s own staff, including Bayliss himself. The process helped give the computer-generated characters movements that could be broken into the large number of frames needed for the game’s attacks and combinations.
It was technology serving spectacle, but the spectacle would have meant little without a fighting system that players wanted to learn.
The Combo Became the Game
Combos existed long before Killer Instinct. Street Fighter II had already taught players that attacks could be chained together before an opponent had time to recover. What Killer Instinct did was build much of its identity around making those combinations larger, louder, and more visible.
Auto-doubles helped extend combinations once players had opened an opponent’s defenses. Linkers, finishing attacks, and other techniques allowed knowledgeable players to build increasingly elaborate sequences. At the extreme end were Ultra Combos, huge strings of attacks designed as much to impress the people standing behind the arcade cabinet as to defeat the person standing at the second joystick.
Killer Instinct also created a response to its own excess. The Combo Breaker gave a defending player a way to interrupt certain combinations rather than remaining helpless until the entire sequence ended. The relationship between constructing combinations and recognizing when and how to break them became one of the series’ most recognizable ideas.
The structure of a match also distinguished Killer Instinct from many competitors. Instead of repeatedly stopping for separate rounds, each fighter effectively carried two life bars through the battle. Draining the first did not completely reset the contest. The fight continued into the second portion, helping matches maintain momentum and giving the game a different rhythm from the familiar best-of-three-round structure.
By January 1995, Play Meter was emphasizing how quickly dedicated players were mastering the system. Writer Greg Reeves described encountering a player who had already completed the game several times even though the machine had reportedly been on location for only two days. His article focused heavily on the game’s combinations and hidden techniques, evidence of how rapidly Killer Instinct’s complexity became part of its appeal.
The famous announcer reinforced everything happening on screen. Combinations were not supposed to be quiet accomplishments. They were announced to the room.
Sound Designed for the Arcade
Robin Beanland and Graeme Norgate helped make Killer Instinct recognizable even when someone could not see its cabinet.
Both joined Rare on April 5, 1994, and Killer Instinct became an early major assignment. Beanland later remembered working with the Williams DCS sound system and having roughly four megabytes available for the audio. Vocals were recorded under decidedly less glamorous circumstances than the game’s futuristic presentation suggested, with Beanland constructing a makeshift vocal space from blankets and washing line.
The soundtrack mixed rock, electronic music, industrial sounds, percussion, voices, and character-specific themes. Norgate later recalled that he wrote around seventy pieces while working on the first Killer Instinct, even though only a small portion of his material ultimately appeared in the game.
The DCS audio system gave the arcade cabinet a physical presence. Killer Instinct was built for noisy locations filled with competing machines. Music, impacts, character noises, and the announcer needed enough personality to identify the game in that environment.
Its sound became almost as important to the brand as its graphics. Even people who never mastered the game’s combinations could remember the exaggerated call of a Combo Breaker.
Killer Instinct Reaches the Arcade
Killer Instinct entered American arcades in late October 1994 and immediately arrived in the middle of one of the most competitive periods the genre had ever seen.
It was surrounded by established franchises, yet the technology gave operators an obvious attraction. Midway’s advertising presented the game as a leap forward in fighting-game technology. Its commercial flyer emphasized ten warriors, computer animation, detailed settings, multi-hit combinations, the DCS Sound System, and what the advertisement described as 64-bit technology. The physical cabinet itself displayed the Nintendo, Rare, and Midway relationship directly to arcade customers. ManualsLib
Trade coverage suggests that players responded. In January 1995, Play Meter described Killer Instinct as an exceptionally striking fighting game and focused on the complexity of its combinations. RePlay operator polling also placed it among the popular games then in operation. By March, Electronic Gaming Monthly referred to Killer Instinct as the leading fighter in arcades at that particular moment, while already acknowledging that Mortal Kombat 3 was approaching.
That success was particularly valuable to Nintendo because every successful cabinet doubled as advertising for a machine that was still not available.
During its attract sequence, Killer Instinct promised players that the experience was coming home in 1995 on the Nintendo Ultra 64.
Then Nintendo’s schedule changed.
When the Ultra 64 Did Not Arrive
Nintendo’s new console did not reach homes in 1995 as originally expected. The system eventually emerged as the Nintendo 64, but the delay left Nintendo with a problem. Killer Instinct was already a recognizable arcade property, and waiting for the next console risked allowing the game’s momentum to disappear.
Rare instead attempted something that members of the company itself reportedly doubted could be done convincingly. It converted Killer Instinct to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
The difference between the machines was enormous. The arcade version had been designed around powerful custom hardware, a MIPS processor, a hard disk, large quantities of animation, and sophisticated audio equipment. The Super Nintendo was a 16-bit console released years earlier.
Chris Tilston later remembered removing an enormous portion of the arcade animation to make the conversion possible. The home game could not reproduce the arcade cabinet frame for frame, but the important objective became preserving its identity.
Characters became smaller and less detailed. Animation was reduced. Background effects were simplified. Audio had to be compressed and reworked. The arcade game’s illusion of sweeping depth could not be reproduced in precisely the same manner.
Yet the combination system, recognizable fighters, special moves, voices, music, and overall flow survived well enough for the SNES game to become a major Nintendo release.
Nintendo Turns Killer Instinct Into an Event
By 1995, Nintendo was facing a rapidly changing console market. Sega was moving forward with the Saturn, Sony was launching the PlayStation, and Nintendo’s own next-generation system had slipped behind them.
That made Killer Instinct more important.
At the first Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 1995, Nintendo showcased the Super NES conversion alongside other major products. A Nintendo press release described Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country 2 as software capable of pushing the company’s 16-bit system to new levels even as the industry prepared for newer hardware.
Nintendo backed that message with an enormous marketing campaign. Billboard reported in May 1995 that Nintendo marketing executive Peter Main expected Killer Instinct to sell four million Super NES copies between its August launch and the following March. The company planned approximately $20 million in marketing support and, for the first time in Nintendo’s history, intended to package a separate music CD with one of its games.
The SNES version launched in North America on August 30, 1995.
Its physical appearance reinforced the sense that this was not a routine cartridge. In North America, Killer Instinct famously came on a black cartridge instead of the system’s standard gray shell. Early copies included Killer Cuts, a music CD containing extended arrangements inspired by the game’s soundtrack.
The decision transformed music that had once existed partly to attract players across a crowded arcade into something people could play in a stereo.
Killer Cuts and the Music Beyond the Game
Killer Cuts became one of the most memorable parts of the Super Nintendo release.
Freed from the severe memory restrictions of game hardware, Beanland and Norgate could expand the soundtrack into longer pieces. Beanland later recalled that the team was given considerable freedom to develop the tracks and that the final mix was completed at AIR Studios.
The album also demonstrated how aggressively Nintendo was promoting Killer Instinct as a multimedia property rather than merely a cartridge. A soundtrack in the box provided something tangible that screenshots and television commercials could not. Players could take part of the game’s identity away from the console.
Nintendo’s investment appears to have paid off commercially. Contemporary trade reporting stated that approximately 150,000 Super Nintendo copies were sold in the United States on the game’s first day, which Nintendo described as its largest software launch to that point. Later figures place worldwide SNES sales at roughly 3.2 million copies.
The company did not achieve every prediction it had made before launch, but Killer Instinct had successfully transformed from an arcade showcase for future hardware into one of the prominent releases of Nintendo’s existing 16-bit machine.
Killer Instinct on the Game Boy
Rare and Nintendo pushed the concept even further by bringing Killer Instinct to the Game Boy in 1995.
The handheld version presented an even greater technical contradiction than the SNES conversion. A game promoted through colorful computer-rendered characters, booming sound, and spectacular arcade animation now had to function on a small monochrome display with a far simpler control arrangement.
Compromises were unavoidable. Visuals, sound, roster presentation, and controls were heavily reduced, but the conversion preserved enough of the recognizable characters and fighting mechanics to make Killer Instinct portable. Nintendo’s Game Boy documentation continued to identify the property as a Nintendo and Rare production, showing how firmly the franchise had become integrated into Nintendo’s software lineup by the end of 1995.
More importantly, the Game Boy version completed a remarkable progression. Within little more than a year, Killer Instinct had moved from specialized arcade hardware marketed as a glimpse of Nintendo’s 64-bit future to both Nintendo’s 16-bit home console and its far less powerful handheld.
Few games better demonstrated how aggressively developers of the period learned to reinterpret the same concept for radically different hardware.
What Killer Instinct Actually Demonstrated
The most interesting part of Killer Instinct’s technological history is that some of its marketing was simultaneously misleading and historically meaningful.
The arcade game was not a Nintendo 64 running inside a cabinet. Modern technical documentation and the recollections of the people who designed the hardware make that clear. Its R4600-based system, Midway audio technology, dedicated motherboard, and hard disk formed a specialized arcade platform.
Yet Nintendo was not wrong that Killer Instinct represented a direction the industry was taking.
Its production relied heavily on expensive computer graphics technology. It used storage and processing resources far beyond normal home consoles. It presented elaborate sound, rendered characters, cinematic backgrounds, and an aesthetic intended to convince players that traditional sprite graphics were approaching their limits.
Killer Instinct therefore occupies a strange position in video game history. It was a two-dimensional fighting game marketed as part of the coming three-dimensional revolution. It was an arcade showcase for a console that did not yet exist in its final form. When that console failed to arrive on schedule, Rare converted the showcase to the aging machine it had supposedly been preparing to replace.
Rather than diminishing the achievement, those contradictions make the game more historically important.
From Killer Instinct to a Franchise
The first game’s success quickly produced a continuation.
Killer Instinct 2 appeared in arcades in 1996, again using related dedicated hardware while changing the roster and expanding the original concept. When Nintendo’s new console finally reached the market, a modified home version arrived as Killer Instinct Gold on the Nintendo 64. This time players finally received a Killer Instinct designed specifically for the platform family that the original arcade game had helped promote years earlier.
The series then disappeared from active development for many years. Rare eventually became part of Microsoft, taking the Killer Instinct intellectual property with it.
In 2013, Microsoft revived Killer Instinct for the Xbox One with Double Helix Games and later Iron Galaxy handling development while Ken Lobb remained involved. The new game rebuilt the series around modern hardware and competitive fighting-game design, but it retained the ideas that made the original immediately recognizable: enormous combinations, Combo Breakers, distinctive characters, aggressive music, and an announcer who treated every successful sequence as an event.
The technological promises changed. The identity did not.
Why Killer Instinct Matters
Killer Instinct deserves to be remembered for more than its combos or its place among the famous fighting games of the 1990s.
It captures an unusually specific moment when arcades, home consoles, computer-generated imagery, corporate partnerships, and the emerging 3D generation were colliding. Nintendo needed a game that could make players believe its next console would be extraordinary. Rare wanted to show what its artists and engineers could create with Silicon Graphics technology. Midway and WMS understood how to manufacture, distribute, and promote a major fighting game in the arcade market.
Their interests met inside one black cabinet.
The surviving Midway manuals show the practical machine beneath the advertising: circuit boards, hard drives, wiring diagrams, service instructions, and licensing language. Nintendo’s 1994 press release shows the corporate strategy. Play Meter documents what the arcade trade was being told. Later interviews with Lobb, Hollis, Bayliss, Beanland, Norgate, and other Rare veterans reveal how developers turned those plans into characters, combinations, graphics, and sound. Taken together, they show that Killer Instinct was not simply a response to Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. It was part of Nintendo’s attempt to sell players on the next era of video games before that era was ready to arrive.
The Ultra 64 promise attached to the original cabinet never came true in the form players were originally shown. Killer Instinct nevertheless accomplished something arguably more important. It made the future seem close enough to put a quarter into.
Sources & Further Reading
Nintendo of America. “Nintendo to Preview First Two Nintendo Ultra 64 Games at Summer CES.” June 23, 1994. Preserved in rec.games.video.nintendo. https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video.nintendo/c/TvsHHHZ_iJQ
“ Nintendo and Williams.” Play Meter 20, no. 6 (May 1994): 14. International Arcade Museum eLibrary. https://elibrary.arcade-museum.com/Play-Meter/1994-May/14
Midway Manufacturing Company. Killer Instinct Operations Manual. Part no. 16-40047-101. Chicago: Midway Manufacturing Company, November 1994. https://www.manualslib.com/manual/4081871/Midway-Killer-Instinct.html
Midway Manufacturing Company. Killer Instinct Kit Manual. Part no. 16-44047-101. Chicago: Midway Manufacturing Company, January 1995. https://www.manualslib.com/manual/4125201/Midway-Killer-Instinct.html
Midway Manufacturing Company. Killer Instinct arcade sales flyer. 1994. International Arcade Museum, Arcade Flyer Archive. https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/videogames/show/238
Reeves, Greg. “Masterful Moves Key to New Game Success.” Play Meter, January 1995, 100. International Arcade Museum eLibrary. https://elibrary.arcade-museum.com/Play-Meter/1995-January/100
“Finals: Killer Instinct.” Next Generation, no. 1 (January 1995): 105. Imagine Media. https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/next-generation/next-generation-issue-1/
“Future Fights: A Looking Glass into Tomorrow’s Fighting Games.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, no. 68 (March 1995): 91. Ziff Davis. https://www.scribd.com/document/740606270/Electronic-Gaming-Monthly-Issue-068-March-1995
GamePro, no. 68. “Nintendo Follows Its Instinct” and Killer Instinct Pro Strategy Guide. March 1995. IDG Communications. https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/gamepro/gamepro-issue-68/
Andy, Atko, and Josse. “Killer Instinct.” Total!, no. 40 (April 1995): 26–29. Future Publishing. https://archive.org/details/total-40-april-1995/page/n25/mode/2up
“E3: Early Sega Rollout, Sony Price Stunner.” Billboard, May 27, 1995. World Radio History. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/90s/1995/BB-1995-05-27.pdf
Nintendo of America. Nintendo Power, no. 73. June 1995. Nintendo of America.
“Coin Machine: AMOA JB and Games Awards Nominees Announced.” Cash Box, July 22, 1995, 30. World Radio History. https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Cash-Box/90s/1995/CB-1995-07-22.pdf#page=30
Skid, Nick Rox, and K. Lee. “Viewpoint.” GameFan 3, no. 8 (August 1995): 14–15. https://archive.org/details/GamefanVolume3Issue08/page/n13/mode/2up
“Nintendo Unleashes a Killer Gaming Combo.” Electronic Gaming Monthly, no. 74 (September 1995): 28. Ziff Davis. https://www.scribd.com/document/740608021/Electronic-Gaming-Monthly-Issue-074-September-1995
Nintendo of America. Nintendo Power, no. 76. September 1995. Nintendo of America. https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/nintendo-power/nintendo-power-issue-76/
Curtiss, Aaron. “Killer Instinct Offers Fast and Furious Fight.” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 1995. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-09-21-ca-48513-story.html
“Killer Instinct.” Computer and Video Games, no. 168 (November 1995): 50–51. EMAP Publishing. https://www.outofprintarchive.com/catalogue/CVG/CVG168.html
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Andy and Shaun. “Killer Instinct.” Nintendo Magazine System, no. 39 (December 1995): 68–71. https://archive.org/details/nms39/page/n67/mode/2up
Horowitz, Ken. Beyond Donkey Kong: A History of Nintendo Arcade Games. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2020. https://books.google.com/books?id=UXD0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA199
McFerran, Damien. “The Making of Killer Instinct, Nintendo’s Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat Killer.” Time Extension, November 6, 2022. https://www.timeextension.com/features/the-making-of-killer-instinct-nintendos-street-fighter-and-mortal-kombat-killer
Retro Gamer. “The History of Killer Instinct.” No. 123 (2013). Interviews with Chris Tilston, Kevin Bayliss, and Mike Willette. Preserved by Rare Gamer. https://www.raregamer.co.uk/games/the-history-of-killer-instinct-retro-gamer-interviews-chris-tilston-kevin-bayliss-mike-willette/
Rare. “Killer Instinct Arcade Rare Retrospective.” Preserved by Rare Gamer. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://www.raregamer.co.uk/games/killer-instinct-arcade-rare-retrospective/
Rare. “Killer Instinct Rare Retrospective.” Preserved by Rare Gamer. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://www.raregamer.co.uk/games/killer-instinct-rare-retrospective/
Rare. “Rare Revealed: The Making of Killer Instinct.” In Rare Replay. 2015. Preserved video upload. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYOSruFjwEY
Lobb, Ken, and Adam Isgreen. “The Killer Instinct Team Teaches You How to Master Spinal.” Interview by Xbox Wire. January 30, 2014. https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2014/01/30/games-killer-instinct-spinal-interview/
Norgate, Graeme. “Rare Gamer Interviews Rare Musician, Graeme Norgate.” Interview by Rare Gamer. November 7, 2018. https://www.raregamer.co.uk/rare-gamer-interviews-rare-musician-graeme-norgate/
Tilston, Chris. “New IP Creators in Smilegate Barcelona: Chris Tilston.” Interview. Smilegate Newsroom. 2020. https://newsroom.smilegate.com/eng/Smilegate_Barcelona_Employee_Interview_Chris_Tilston_EN
Bayliss, Kev, and David Wise. “Working on Donkey Kong Country and Dinosaur Planet with Kev Bayliss & David Wise.” Video Game History Foundation Podcast, episode 23, March 17, 2021. https://gamehistory.org/ep-23-working-on-donkey-kong-country-and-dinosaur-planet-with-kev-bayliss-david-wise/
MAME Development Team. “Killer Instinct Hardware.” MAME Source Code, kinst.cpp. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/rare/kinst.cpp
ArcadeRTFM. “Killer Instinct.” Technical specifications and preserved Midway manuals. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://arcadertfm.com/m/kinst
Rare Gamer. “Killer Instinct.” Original development credits and game archive. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://www.raregamer.co.uk/games/killer-instinct/