 Anyone who lived through the 90s remembers the one-on-one fighting game craze. It started with Street Fighter 2, and it went to another level with Mortal Kombat, and before you know it, we were neck-deep swimming in fighting games. Some of them are good, like most of the SNK games like King of Fighters, or like Rare's Killer Instinct. Some of them were a fun novelty for a short while, like Clay Fighter, but many, many games were just plain bad, especially when it came to the Super Nintendo, which featured god-awful games like Street Combat, Rise of the Robots, and Pit Fighter. Then there were some fighting games that were just forgotten, games like Power Instinct. I mean, for one thing, that title isn't doing the game any favors, it's as generic as it gets. And this cover is just bizarre, what's wrong with that guy's face? But this is yet another case where the cover does this game a huge disservice. Neither of those characters look anything like what's actually in the game, and hey what do you know? The game itself is actually pretty decent. It's not going to touch Street Fighter 2 Turbo, or even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters, but it's a perfectly solid game. Power Instinct was developed for the arcades by Atlas, and it's actually the first game of a series that spanned six games, except the first game, Power Instinct, is the only game that left Japan. This one was ported to the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, with each including a boat load of new features that the original arcade version did not have, stuff like a practice mode, a timed attack, and a gauntlet mode that the game refers to as a life attack. The Mega Drive version has two additional features, one being a battle royal mode, which is really just a two on two fight where characters tag in and out, and there's a, uh, karaoke mode? Yes, that's right. There's two songs you can sing along to, sure, okay. The story here in Power Instinct features a family that fights each other every ten years to decide who should be the head of the family, so yes, all these wacky characters you see here are all related, well, some are through marriage, but still, this is a pretty frickin' weird family. There's eight characters you can play as, everyone from a green-haired Amazon woman, to a ninja that looks like Shadow from Final Fantasy VI, to this dude named Thin Nen, to an elderly woman who attacks you by climbing on you and, uh, can't tell if she's kissing your opponent or sucking out their soul. She also has a flying denture attack, you gotta love that, and she can transform into a younger version of herself. That's kinda cool. Other characters here are pretty standard, the Ryu clone, a rip-off of Axel from Streets of Rage, the big strong slow dude, the quicker smaller character, you get the idea. The movesets here are also very familiar, if you've played Street Fighter II, you can get the Hang of Power Instinct very quickly. There's two big differences here, though. One is that you can double jump, flying way up off of the screen, which is kinda cool, and two is that each area has a boundary you can destroy, usually a crate or a statue or something, you can break through it and expand the stage for even more space to fight, so that's kinda neat. Really, the gameplay here is pretty dang good. The controls respond really well, and it's easy to pull off special moves. It's just that, well, you've seen all this stuff before. From a combat standpoint, there's not much here that makes this game unique. Just roll the d-pad and hit a button, hold back for a couple seconds, and then hit forward and hit an attack button, it's all the same old stuff. It doesn't help that the final boss here is just a pallet swap of the old lady. I should also point out that there is a bit of slowdown here and there, but it's nothing I would call game breaking or anything. The one thing that is memorable about Power Instinct is the music, which I found to be really interesting. Holy crap, are those pinch harmonics? What, did they get Dimebag Daryl to play this? I mean, there's even a dive bomb, it's crazy. But yeah, outside of the music, there's not much to a game like Power Instinct, or at least the Super Nintendo or Sega Mega Drive ports. They're standard, ordinary, regular old one-on-one fighting games for better or for worse. They execute the fundamentals well, and if you're a huge hardcore fighting game fan, you might get a kick out of it. But like I said, it's not gonna touch something like, say, Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters, or even Power Rangers Fighting Edition, let alone any Street Fighter II game. But hey, it's a heck of a lot better than crap like Rise of the Robots. As an arcade port, this game gets the job done, and I can see how it would have been pretty good for 1993 when it was released. But playing it today is just okay at best, and good for a laugh, if nothing else than to attack another fighter with your dentures. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.