http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-13-ex-rare-devs-talk-killer-instinct-perfect-dark-interview

Phil Dunne: I remember meeting the Bungie guys over at SIGGRAPH, and a couple of them were like, oh no way! Killer Instinct! That's so awesome! You worked on that!

Chris Tilston: I bet that made you feel really old.

Phil Dunne: Yeah.

Chris Tilston: You'd have to update it and reinvent it. You couldn't do what they've done with Street Fighter. Killer Instinct wasn't designed for the home. It was designed to go into the arcades and be loud and be brash and be in your face for the arcade market. It was never a home game. It did well when we ported it to SNES.

Eurogamer: How well did it do?

Chris Tilston: 3.2 million it sold. That was something they said we could never do. Some guys at Rare said you'll never be able to chop the detail down. Tim said, yeah we can! I ended up taking 80 per cent of the animation out. It was a bastardisation of the arcade thing. But if you hadn't been to the arcade, it gave you a taster.

We actually had Killer Instinct 2 in development for SNES. That was quite far along. There were more frames and it was looking decent. Obviously the Nintendo 64 then came along and we released Gold for the N64.

Eurogamer: Street Fighter does well. Mortal Kombat did well. New Tekken, new SoulCalibur, Street Fighter x Tekken, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom - it's like the nineties again.

Chris Tilston: We've definitely got ideas of where it should go. It's almost like you need to do a World of Warcraft to it. You can't just have the traditional thing. It's like, how can you make it more accessible in a way.

Eurogamer: That's a dirty word.

Chris Tilston: Yeah I know. You're on the tightrope between the hardcore Killer Instinct fans and new audiences. Maybe we'll leave that one to somebody else.

Eurogamer: If Microsoft asked you to make it would you do it?

Chris Tilston: Yeah. We'd consider it, yeah definitely. But they've got a team of guys at Rare. There's nobody from the original team left. That's the thing. But yeah, I'd love to revisit it. But you'll probably all chase me down and string me up based off what we'd do. It was designed for the arcade and that's it.

This was hands down my favorite fighting gaming during the SNES era. The way Sabrewulf looked into the camera after every fight scared the shit out of me back when i was like 8 or 9. UUUUUUULLLLLLTRA COOOOMBOOOOOOO!

Glacius, Cinder, Orchid, Sabrewulf, etc. Killer Instinct was a top fighting game back in 1995.

It baffles me that MS doesn't bring this franchise back.

Or atleast re-release on XBLA.    

Jago. it was the only one for me when it came out. i'm sure you and i both did some amazing things in that game.

i haven't played a fighting game that diverse since art of fighting. my favorite character from that franchise or arcade game can be found in the SNK king of fighters. Robert Garcia was so F'n awesume!

if MS made and released that game i would get wht ever bundle they made for it.