Killer Instinct Video Arcade Game for rent was released by Midway and Nintendo in summer 1984. The game’s plot involves an all-powerful corporation organizing a fighting tournament. The story was adapted in a limited comic book series published under the short-lived Acclaim Comics imprint.

Killer Instinct Video Arcade Game features several gameplay elements unique to fighting games of the time. Instead of fighting enemies in best-of-three rounds bouts, each player has two life bars. The player that depletes the other player’s life bars first wins the match. The game also introduced “auto-seconds,” which allows players to press a specific sequence of buttons to make characters automatically perform combos on opponents. Also featured in the game are “combo breakers,”; special moves that can interrupt combos.

Killer Instinct Video Arcade Game plays like many other fighting games, in which the player controls a character to beat an opponent in a one-on-one encounter. The game borrows the attack set of Street Fighter and is also inspired by the finishing moves from Mortal Kombat.