When this game came out, I was both very pleased with it, while at the same time being a bit disappointed in it. On the plus side of things, Rare managed to port an (for its time) EXTREMELY advanced arcade fighter, onto home hardware. It wasn't arcade perfect, they had to take out the animated endings and victory screens, had to cut frames of animation from the characters, etc. But it was much closer to the real deal than the (still impressive for the hardware) KI1 port on SNES was. It retained most of what made the arcade KI2 great, and it was still very fun to try to play and master it at home. It's worth noting that the game has some of the highest quality sound/music on the system.
On the negative side of things, in the lead up to this game's release, it was directly implied, practically even stated by Rare, that this game would feature AT LEAST one new character, or perhaps one (or more) returning character from KI1. They had removed Cinder, Riptor, Chief Thunder, and Eyedol from the first game for its sequel, and I know I wasn't alone in being excited by the prospect of the home version including some of those characters again. Unfortunately, upon release, there was ZERO no characters, or really any new content whatsoever, even though it has definitely been talked about by Rare themselves. The only "new", were the 3D polygonal backgrounds, which they tried to play off as somehow being an "improvement" over the arcade, but not only was that BS, the truth was that they HAD to make 3D backgrounds, because the N64 (nor any of its contemporaries at the time) simply couldn't handle the high-level graphics of the arcade backgrounds. They were basically rendered FMV, which is why they looked so amazing. Rare's choices were either to do what they did with KI1 on SNES, and have mostly static renditions of the stages, or do what they did, which was go with ultimately fugly looking polygon stages instead. Personally, I think I would have preferred the SNES approach. It still could have looked good, they could have done DKC style multi-plane effects and things. It's also worth mentioning that this was a VERY early N64 effort by Rare, and I think if they had perhaps put in a bit more time on it, it likely could have turned out even better than it did.
Overall, this IS a pretty good port of KI2, and should be recognized as such. I'd argue its the best fighter on the console, and it's still a ton of fun to play. It's a bit of a mixed bag, but I think ultimately there's more good than bad.
As a personal aside, speaking of Rare letting me down, I was very much hoping they'd make a Killer Instinct 3 in the same style as the first two arcade hits. What they could have accomplished with that same advanced pre-rendered style, just looking even better? It could have been amazing. And, let's say, a Gamecube port probably could have handled it all much better. Alas.
On the negative side of things, in the lead up to this game's release, it was directly implied, practically even stated by Rare, that this game would feature AT LEAST one new character, or perhaps one (or more) returning character from KI1. They had removed Cinder, Riptor, Chief Thunder, and Eyedol from the first game for its sequel, and I know I wasn't alone in being excited by the prospect of the home version including some of those characters again. Unfortunately, upon release, there was ZERO no characters, or really any new content whatsoever, even though it has definitely been talked about by Rare themselves. The only "new", were the 3D polygonal backgrounds, which they tried to play off as somehow being an "improvement" over the arcade, but not only was that BS, the truth was that they HAD to make 3D backgrounds, because the N64 (nor any of its contemporaries at the time) simply couldn't handle the high-level graphics of the arcade backgrounds. They were basically rendered FMV, which is why they looked so amazing. Rare's choices were either to do what they did with KI1 on SNES, and have mostly static renditions of the stages, or do what they did, which was go with ultimately fugly looking polygon stages instead. Personally, I think I would have preferred the SNES approach. It still could have looked good, they could have done DKC style multi-plane effects and things. It's also worth mentioning that this was a VERY early N64 effort by Rare, and I think if they had perhaps put in a bit more time on it, it likely could have turned out even better than it did.
Overall, this IS a pretty good port of KI2, and should be recognized as such. I'd argue its the best fighter on the console, and it's still a ton of fun to play. It's a bit of a mixed bag, but I think ultimately there's more good than bad.
As a personal aside, speaking of Rare letting me down, I was very much hoping they'd make a Killer Instinct 3 in the same style as the first two arcade hits. What they could have accomplished with that same advanced pre-rendered style, just looking even better? It could have been amazing. And, let's say, a Gamecube port probably could have handled it all much better. Alas.