The beginning of a surprisingly long series of 2D fighters, Power Instinct begins the story of family members struggling for control of their bloodline in a tournament held every ten years. It is a port of an arcade game starring maybe the most diverse family in all of games, featuring characters of all races, ages, and even the odd other species. You must defeat the members of your clan in order to be their ruler.
Power Instinct plays out as a typical 2D fighter of the early '90s, with Street Fighter-inspired controls and special move inputs, character selection, and game options and structure. You have arcade (story), VS, practice, and survival modes, difficulty settings, and the ability to configure your keys. It uses a Neo Geo-like 4 button layout, with light and hard punches and kicks, and everything is very responsive. One thing a tad ahead of its time is the ability to double jump, whichis nice given the absence of air blocking, and makes it more playable retroactively to players used to more modern fighters.
As far as just how bizarre the cast is, the series mascots are Otane and Oume, two elderly twin women who notoriously attack with their dentures as a projectile and kiss opponents to suck out their life force and become temporarily young again. There's a female wrestler/dominatrix, a native american, a ninja, a monk... all from the same family. It's kind of a deadpan comedy in a lot of ways, where the game is loaded with jokes like Otane and Oume's granny attacks, judges straight out of Samurai Shodown crying and hopping around in the background, stereotypes, and more, but presents itself as a straight-laced fighter. As the series went on, things got even more absurd, but it never went so far as to be openly a comedy series.
The graphics in Power Instinct are solid for the time, and the music is decent if forgettable. It maintains a pretty good speed, somewhere around the lower turbo speeds in Street Fighter II Turbo. Everything works as it should, and it's in my opinion one of the better SNES fighters, but is most notable as the start of a franchise that would go on to have several more sequels like Power Instinct II and Legends, Groove on Fight (my favorite), Matrimelee, and even a shooter spinoff, Purikura Daisakusen. There's also a Mega Drive version of the first game, but I haven't played that one.
Played this one? Anybody have any input on the Genesis version?