Killer Instinct Discussion Thread

The 8Bit Beatdown 12/4/15

The tournament is about to start. http://www.twitch.tv/omgwtfzombiebbq

Cinder Stream is on now!! http://www.twitch.tv/irongalaxy

Aganos "Retro" Costume.

https://vine.co/v/eWuOt7uWLiF

Cinder's real name is Ben? Oh that's too good.

He looks sicks though. His cocky monologing is entertaining to say the least.

Killer Instinct Tournament Fund



Ken Lobb (creator of KI) and Adam Isgreen discuss their plans on how they'll support the tournament scene.

ARIA Concept Art

The picture is huge so I'll just leave the link here --> http://www.ultra-combo.com/__temp2/images/photos/ARIA_cncpt.jpg

Story snippet:

ARIA began life as a simulation of… life. Utilizing radically new processing technologies and other technological insight gleaned from a government incident in 1947, the Ultrafine Atomic Technologies Company (founded in 1948) performed research into the simulation of life and human frailty within a computational matrix. The core program ARIA was born of the desire to uplift the human race; to end disease, famine, poverty and push humanity out of what was seen as the primordial muck and mire it wallowed in. This work took on greater and greater meaning for its founder, industrialist Ryat Adams, as his wife was dying of a degenerative disease and he desperately sought a cure for her condition.

Over time, Ryat and the UATC continued to refine and enhance its ARIA humanity simulation program, assigning it more and more complex simulations of the human condition as its capabilities continued to grow and more tech from the government source was understood and exploited. Years passed, and when Ryat finally died, his will included instructions to continually allow ARIA to run her programming as she searched for the solutions to human frailties.




How she plays:

"When fighting ARIA you are not fighting one character – you’re fighting three.

Being an AI, ARIA isn’t corporeal, but she can take form in order to interact with the world around her. She does that through some of Ultratech’s most powerful tech, assembling herself from nanite cores. The three combat drones you see above have nanite cores (see the embedded hex lens in each?), meaning ARIA uploads her personality into a drone, and the drone physically assembles a body for ARIA from its core.

All three drones don’t assemble ARIA in exactly the same way. While she retains a similar (and excellent) normal attack set and two kick-based special attacks across all of them, her punch specials and many unique properties are directly tied into the drone she’s currently been assembled from.

Here’s a taste of the powers she gains when assembled from the different drones:

• Booster Drone builds a body capable of incredible air maneuverability and has an air / ground rush attack move. You can see Booster Body in the teaser, as this Drone looks like wings and uses prototype sonic technology to help ARIA hover.

• Blade Drone builds a body with a sword arm that uses prototype sonic vibration tech. It is capable of rushing slashes, an invulnerable uppercut, a grounded overhead, chip damage normals, and increased poke range.

• Bass Drone builds a body with a prototype sonic cannon in the chest and can deliver high, low, and anti-air multi-hit projectiles that travel at sonic speeds.

The other two “free” drones float directly behind the one ARIA is uploaded into, one drone in a high position, one low.

ARIA can upload herself into a different drone with 3P (high position switch) and 3K (low position switch) when in idle on the ground or via special Upload Enders (her combo trait). She can even Upload to a different drone before the fight starts or between downs if you want.

The free drones can also be called in for assists – B+HP for the high position drone, B+HK for the low position drone – each with a unique behavior based on what that Drone’s Body-form can do. They can be called in almost simultaneously, too, allowing you to have two assists at the same time, but be careful to cover them as they can be hit and take permanent damage just like the Body form can!

• Booster Drone assist does a long range rushing attack to knock opponents away. You can punish Booster anytime, if you can catch it!

• Blade Drone assist delivers a strike-invulnerable rising slash at close range, with a long, punishable recovery.

• Bass Drone assist fires the sonic cannon. Bass is easy to punish on startup or recovery, but because he fires a projectile, ARIA is less likely to call Bass from up close.

But wait, it’s not all gravy:

• ARIA’s total health is divided equally amongst the three drones, meaning each drone has less health than a normal player’s health bar (actually about a third shorter than normal on-screen).

• It takes a lot of energy for the Drone’s nanite core to form an ARIA body, and as such, the drone she is assembled from cannot recover any of its potential damage (PD). The only way to heal PD on a drone is to upload to a different drone and let the old one recover.

• As noted above, when a drone is called to assist, it’s vulnerable to attack, and can take permanent damage or even be destroyed by opponent attacks. ARIA players will have to call these wisely and protect them.

• When a drone is destroyed, it’s destroyed for the remainder of that match. This means your combat options diminish as you lose drones!

• To be clear: Beating any other character in the game requires you to “down” them twice, as KI doesn’t really have rounds. To beat ARIA, you must down all three Drones, whether she is currently uploaded into them or not!

• To be even more clear; No, you don’t have a “round 2” after destroying all three drones, and then have to do it again. Destroy them all once and ARIA’s game is over.

That’s plenty to speculate on for her already, so we’ll end it here. Essentially, you have a tag-team of similar-but-different characters, all in one. Let the theorycrafting begin!

PS – She doesn’t have a recapture, and yes, she can be thrown."

I think that generic design is kind of needed for such a complex metagame that she seems to have. Sounds like a "Marvel Mode" in KI of sorts to me. Pretty hard to visualize how that works, will have to wait to the next Iron Galaxy stream to see it.

FT10 Money Match



TJ Combo vs Sabrewulf starts at 13:00

Mick Gordon "ARIA Theme" Teases.

https://twitter.com/Mick_Gordon/status/596836699705110528

https://twitter.com/Mick_Gordon/status/599069949596999680

https://twitter.com/Mick_Gordon/status/599168022901858305

You know you're backing a dodgy horse when even a $10,000 pot gets you less players than Skullgirls :pac:

Real talk though, Combo Breaker is looking pretty great. Really neat sounding event. 24 hour access and dedicated casuals stations for every main game throughout. Fairly beast setup.

ARIA Reveal and Gameplay





She is the final character of Season 2 and is the boss of the game.

The ARIA Patch

The latest patch was one of the bigger ones in terms of new content added.

Classic Cinder Alt



Alt Costume for Hisako



New character ARIA



"Shadow mode" was also added. For more info watch the video below.

So, PC release turns out to be true.

Good to see I suppose. I'll probably buy it to support it and then not really play this version either :pac:

I'll definitely pick it up for PC but the 2016 release is going to see it suffer with SFV coming too.

Season Two Season Finale Trailer

Scavenger XIII wrote: »

Great to hear it'll finally come to PC but I fear it's much too late with SFV on the scene by then.

With KI just coming back after 17 years I don't see it growing to the size of the SF scene anytime soon, however I don't see SFV completely destroying KI's potential in growing now that it's on PC with cross play.

With KI's solid game play (yet different from SF), solid netcode and it's cheap "free to play" model there's no real reason not to at least try it.

Also people can easily play more than 1 game at a time. It's a real shame that there's this "us vs them" mentality in the FGC. Now that there's crazy pot bonuses for both games why not compete in both (that is if you enjoy KI)?

I'll buy it, have a nostalgia trip, play around and learn the basics - but I don't expect it to escalate beyond poverty game status.

I've time to do maybe a tenth of the things I want to be doing, can't be spending it trying to get good at games nobody else plays unfortunately.

Official TJ Combo Theme and The Latest 8BB



Mick Gordon released the official version of TJ's theme. He plans on releasing the Season 2 soundtrack in full soon.




The latest edition of the online tournament "The 8Bit Beatdown" with some awesome Aganos action.

Robert ninja wrote: »

So this is pretty much garaunteed to be a Windows 10 exclusive, isn't it?

Windows 10 is free if you have Win7/8/8.1

Killer Instinct Top 8 at CEO 2015



Some excellent matches from some of the best KI players atm.

*Warning: Max on commentary

Killer Instinct on UltraChenTV


Ultra David and James Chen go over all the characters in KI with Sajam (aka FRQ_Steve). Sajam does an excellent job describing each character's abilities while at the same time keeping things light-hearted.

Once this stream archive is uploaded on to Youtube, I'll update this post for convenience.

http://www.twitch.tv/ultrachentv/v/7304637

Start/Introduction - 11:05
Game Mechanics/Changes from S1-S2 - 13:00

Jago and Sabrewulf - 36:40
Thunder and Sadira - 51:07
Glacius and Orchid - 1:02:50
Fulgore and Spinal - 1:12:10
TJ Combo and Maya - 1:35:06
Riptor and Omen - 1:50:33
Hisako and Aganos - 2:09:09
Kan Ra and Cinder - 2:33:28
ARIA - 3:01:52

Some character accessories - 3:29:17

Killer Instinct at Evo 2015

KI pools have started. To watch just click the link http://www.twitch.tv/srkevo7

KI finals will be on later today on the main channel.

Warning: Max on commentary

Evo 2015 Top 8 Replay



This years top 8 was pretty entertaining with plenty of hype moments! Also don't let Maximilian scare you off if you're not a fan! He doesn't go into "dood bro" mode and does a good job explaining what's going on. Enjoy!