I came across this video posted at neogaf earlier today. Its a nintendo promo laser disc with a bunch of games and what not. What struck me was the version of Killer Instinct snes shown has smoother and better animation than the released version. Check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi_jJ0Y5B38#t=457 At first I wasnt positive but then I checked it again the released version and it definitively is smoother and more fluid. Compare Riptor's tail on the character select screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSc3q20Gl2w#t=20 Id love to play that build! EDIT**** the second video posted isnt the best for comparison because they are using an emu and did the speed up code-but the fact remains that animations are missing from the released version.
There is no mention of a special SNES version, except for one with a Soundtrack CD added (and that they needed to remove 80% of the animations for SNES) http://www.killerinstinctcentral.com/exclusive-the-history-of-killer-instinct/ Together with that it mentions the williams arcade machine, that had the HDD version, allowing way more animations...but I guess you knew that. Did you try all of the Killer Instinct (SNES) ROMS ? (beta/bootleg/rev a)
Yeah-i know that there arent any special versions of KI. ;-) My suspicion is that it is an earlier build with more animation that was left out of the release due to cart limitations. The charcters sprites look exactly like in the release build. I would assume that if there was a rom version of this out in the wild, it would be the 8MB one but no one seems to be able to get it to work. My other thought is that maybe that version also used special hardware, maybe the SDD1, to help with the extra sprite data. There is a youtube video if the KI 8MB version but all the sprite data is corrupt. It looks exactly like the problems i had when trying to play star ocean and sf alpha 2 on a busted snes that didnt like sdd1 games. Anyway, just a theory. Love for anyone with more knowledge to chime in.
This is interesting, I've seen a video from E3 95 that had that very fluid version of KI. I'm gonna dig around and see what I can find.
The "8MB" beta version of KI is 8 megabits, even less than the other dumped beta and retail. The glitched graphics are either because it was an underdump (missing data) or the build just wasn't complete. Update: The 8MB version is an under dump. If you add the graphical data the code that exists uses it. Meaning you'll have your sprites appear if you put the missing data in. I'm glad you noticed, the version in the LaserDisc definitely has a lot more animation. No dumped version has all that animation available. I'm guessing they had to cut it down to fit it in a 32mbit cartridge. But it seems like quite a big cut in animation quality. I agree with you that I'd really like to see the version in the LaserDisc dumped.
Looking at the footage, it seems your claims does sounds true, it seems like about half of animation frames has been cut, and most of it is standing animations. It would be very interesting to see this version of the game.
I have been trying to find Chris Tilston's twitter ,since I know he worked on KI snes, but I haven't had much luck. If you remember, he with a few others gave an interview and spoke about KI and KI2 for the snes. I ended up sending a msg via the Starfire Studios messaging system and fingesr crossed, he receives it.... and responds.
That video on this nintendo promo laser disc looks similar to the Arcade version. I am sure this video was not made with a stock SNES. There where some debug outputs if i am right so i guess this was video made with some sort of devkit. This was propably a hybrid between arcade and SNES WIP.
Maybe the same SG workstation models scaled down to match the 16-bit requirements of the SNES before considering ROM size?
It looks like the arcade, until you realize that its clearly using the SNES backgrounds and SNES fighter sprite sizes (characters were WAY bigger in the arcade version). Also, you can see that it doesnt zoom in and out when players reach the border of the screen. I think this IS running on SNES hardware, but probably only had a handful of fighters. They probably hit their memory limit after a couple of fighters were implemented, and realized that they had to cut frames like crazy to fit everything onto the cart.
I totally forgot that there is a similar thread that I replied to here: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?43787-Killer-Instinct-BETA-and-pirate-carts It sorta deals with the same thing. One thing Ive been thinking about is the date on the LD in the video. I'm assuming it was released to Toys R Us between May and August of '95. Killer Instinct for SNES wasn't even announced until E3 that year, which I think took place in May. KI was released on the SNES in August of the same year. [FONT=arial, sans-serif] Given the time frame, I cant help but feel as though a superior version of KI was intended to be released but downgraded pretty close to release. Personally i think Nintendo/Rare had intended it for a larger cart and maybe even the SDD1 chip, which they developed by Nintendo but never used themselves. It would have been ideal to skirt the ram limitations of the SNES. They probably realized the game was going to sell anyway, therefore save some money on the carts. Lastly, I havent heard anything from Chris Tilston/Starfire Studios. Ill continue to hunt some other means of reaching him though. [/FONT]
Maybe during development they used more ROM and did have better animation. They could have been hoping to use some kind of compression chip like the SDD-1 or to be able to use more ROM in the final version than they were allowed to in the end. Either way, it does look like there was a version with better animation that ran on the SNES, or atleast was using the SNES graphics. It would be sweet to have an image dumped. The animation does look so much better.
