How’s it going? I was just going about my day when I had a mini-revelation: While it’s been made explicitly clear that Killer Instinct Classic & KI2 Classic are exclusive to the Xbox One KI bundle owners, I don’t think it’s ever been explained WHY KI/KI2 Classic weren’t ported for Windows Store and Steam players.
I absolutely LOVE my Surface Laptop (It has the highest specs of any of the models available, too!), but I know it’s not intended for graphics-intensive titles like the modern KI, but I have a good feeling that my Graphite Gold beast could easily run the classics. It’d be fun to pop over to KI Classic (via the Windows Store) and bite someone’s face off as Riptor between emails, but just out of curiosity, I’d like to know once and for all why the expertly-done ports never made it to PC. Thoughts?
Because it wasnt ported by the company that ported it for XBone. They would have to hire another team to port it to PC and that cost money and its not worth the money for a free bonus.
I think it’s worth it to port to PC, especially since the 25th anniversary is coming up. More features like attack info and hitbox display should be included.
The KIC community is slowly but surely growing thanks to the online play update. As long as players don’t use Wi-Fi, the number of total successful online matches will grow, and if it has cross-play that’s even better.
You get all my respect, @FallofSeraphs76, but that’s simply conjecture on your part. The rockstars at Code Mystics were responsible for the brilliant ports of KI & KI2 Classic to the Xbox One, and it wasn’t too long before the core KI Krew made Killer Instinct one of Microsoft’s first “Play Anywhere” games. (That’s a game purchased via the Xbox/Windows ecosystem, allowing it to be played on both PC and Xbox One.)
Code Mystics has done Xbox One to Windows ports before, and even then, Code Mystics offered to add characters that weren’t in KI2 into the game, such as Thunder, Mira, and/or Aganos, but for some reason, the KI Krew decided to give a heaping helping of KI Gold as the bonus for Season 3 instead.
I’d just really like to know why the KI Classics didn’t get the Play Anywhere treatment alongside the main game straight from the KI Team. I’m 400% sure that Code Mystics could port KI Classic to the Windows store, and I can’t help but to wonder if that could be on the table in the future if we wished hard enough…
See, now that’s some enthusiasm, @Coolsword123! I’d have LOVED to have seen Code Mystic’s take on adding modern and cut fighters into KI2 Classic, and that alone would’ve seriously boosted online play for the classic games. Just imagining a KI2.5 with Riptor, Cinder, Sadira, and Kan-Ra would be bonkers fun! As a matter of fact, if CM’s additions resulted in any weird bugs or combos, they could claim that they were just emulating the feel of the 1995 classic! KI Classic getting Play Anywhere functionality would certainly revitalize the game, and it’d be a killer bonus for us longtime fans.
I agree it would be great for PC players, but Im guessing its a financial descion and I could have sworn this question was asked and somewhat answered before by one of the Devs. It financially just didnt make sense.
Well, I don’t know if I would call it brilliant. There’s an awful bug were both characters get stcuked in the corner without being able to get out =(
Now while I don’t know why the classic KI games weren’t ported in kind with the PC release, I do know however that KI 1 and 2 arcade edition have never been available via the fightcade platform and supposedly there was some sort of difficulty with getting them to work there. I’ll have a Google and edit this later with the exact reasoning.
EDIT:- Apparently it has something to do with GGPO which is middleware for emulated arcade and fighting games, designed to create a lagless experience. The only other version of KI for PC is available for MAME (offline only.)
I’m guessing at this late stage in the game, it’s unlikely Microsoft would get the team responsible for the Xbone ports back to implement the roms to work online for PC. In my opinion, it was pretty clear from the get go that the Windows 10 and Steam versions of KI were after thoughts conceived long after the Xbox one version, so porting the classic games I daresay was certainly not top of the priority list at the time and KI2013 shipped to PC without them.
It’s also never been available as a classic rom on steam either, but I guess that must be a licensing thing?
It’s a shame but I’m pretty sure trying to look at it logically, that seems to be the reason that makes the most sense.
There was already a thread about this awhile back. Personally, I have the MAME roms, I’d rather just use those. I never played KI 1&2 any way other than locally, and to be honest it bothers me to know they censored out all the Nintendo & Midway branding. I mean Orchid’s stage just isn’t the same without the Ultra 64 gif on the big screen in the background.
“Apparently it has something to do with GGPO which is middleware for emulated arcade and fighting games, designed to create a lagless experience.”
I know this is old but I wanted to say this def has nothing to do with it. If you look at the GitHub page for GGPO, the only source code they provide is code to compile a Windows version of it. So it already exist on Windows.
I know there is basically zero chance of KI 1 and 2 getting ported to Windows 10 at this point. But it’s a bummer that it’s not even streamable on Xcloud game streaming. I just checked the library on my PC (currently streaming on PC is done in a browser until the native app releases), and you can stream the new Killer Instinct… which has had a Windows release for years. But not KI 1 or 2. Bummer.
Guess I’ll have to go through the trouble of downloading/setting up MAME and getting my hands on a KI 1 and KI 2 ROM and HDD image. ugh.
