Killer Instinct

As tempted as I was to trash this arcade translation for not being what Nintendo had originally promised — the pack-in game for its next-generation Ultra 64, once slated to appear this fall but now delayed until spring — I have to admit that it's one heck of an effort, probably the best (and last) fighting game ever to appear on a 16-bit platform. For this small miracle you can thank Rare, the programming house that also developed Donkey Kong Country. I don't know how these folks do it, but the 3-D-modeled combatants in Killer Instinct (including a skeleton, a dinosaur, and a wolf) look almost as good as their video-parlor counterparts. A