After 20 years of absence, Riptor returns in Killer Instinct

Why there aren’t more dinosaurs in fighting games is a mystery. In a genre where people can shoot fireballs out of their hands and homicidal robots can launch rockets from their chests, dinosaurs seem a natural fit.

 

To rectify one of the fighting genre’s most glaring oversights, 1994’s “Killer Instinct” included Riptor, a genetically engineered creature combining dinosaur and human DNA. Appearing very much like a velociraptor, but with muscles, Riptor’s primal instincts and unsurpassed agility made it one of the most fearsome combatants in the arena.

 

But "Killer Instinct 2" came along, and Riptor was gone from the character roster. Killer Instinct" in 2013 reintroduced classic favorites such as Jago and Glacius to fans both new and old, but Riptor was once again nowhere in sight.

 

"Killer Instinct" is presently being handled by new development team Iron Galaxy Studios, however, and one of their first moves was to resurrect another classic character, TJ Combo, for the second season of the game. With the former heavyweight boxing champion already back in, the team then set their sights on their next character.

 

 

According to story canon, Riptor was defeated by TJ Combo prior to “Killer Instinct 2”. For the second season of the new game, Riptor has been slightly altered from its original incarnation, featuring cybernetic implants and a segmented tail. This Riptor also happens to be female.

 

Microsoft Game Studios’ Torin Rettig and Adam Isgreen have been eager to bring back Riptor:

 

“From the moment we wrapped our season one characters, we knew that Riptor was going to be in season 2. We’ve been talking about putting her in for quite a while. We always planned for KI to be seasonal, to approach it that way, as opposed to the way most fighting games approach their releases, so rather that just put every awesome character in season one, thinking long term, we want to save some of the more popular characters for season two, season three, and onward, and Riptor fell into that category. We wanted her to be one of the anchors for season 2.”

 

Story-wise, the Riptor project is mega-corporation UltraTech’s alternative to the much more expensive Fulgor line of cyborg killing machines. Riptor is also designed to make up for Fulgor’s deficiencies.

 

“What UltraTech was lacking was something that could infiltrate and use the environments,” Isgreen and Rettig explained. “So to do this, they (UltraTech) went back to the past to see what could satisfy this urban combat and infiltration unit, and they came back with recreating genetic material to recreate raptors into combat units. So, augmented with fiber technologies, and other technologies that UltraTech had at its disposal, the Riptor units were born into the UltraTech staple of technologies.”

 

Despite her modified appearance, Riptor retains much of her classic counterpart’s moves set.

 

“Almost every single one of her moves has come back intact with the exact same inputs that she had before,” they continued. “… all of her moves are back, her charges, her headbutts, her tail flips, her fire breathing options.”

 

They also remarked that this time around, Riptor is easier to play. So performing those ridiculously long and devastating combos should be a cinch.

 

“That was a big goal of ours, to make sure that she’s intuitive, that you can get into it and get a lot done without needing a lot of technical skills, which is why we limit the kinds of inputs you can do in the game… We want to make sure that in each season that there’s one, if not two characters, that are approachable and really easy to get into and manipulate, and Riptor sort of fits the bill for this season.”

 

Riptor will be playable come December 17 with the release of “Killer Instinct Season 2 Ultra Edition”. —NB, GMA News