After announcing back in March of this year that funding had been pulled for his Killer Instinct and Killer Instinct 2 arcade emulator BigInstinct, Rich Whitehouse has now revealed that the project has gathered enough support to allow him to continue working on it and that it will be released in beta this week to his Patreon supporters.
While it is already possible to emulate the Killer Instinct arcade games in MAME (as we noted back when we first covered the project earlier this year), Whitehouse's emulator is interesting as it hopes to offer players a faster, more accurate, and more feature-rich alternative to those that are already available online.
Speaking about the project back in March, for instance, Whitehouse announced that he had already "implemented what might be the fastest MIPS III interpreter in existence, which achieves a better frame time than MAME running KI with dynarec" and teased a bunch of additional options players would be able to take advantage of. This includes the introduction of "silky smooth multiplayer with up to 16-frame rollback", as well as a new stereo sound script that will give players the option to switch from the original's monophonic sound.
Ahead of its release this week, Whitehouse has posted a video on YouTube going over some of these features, stating that the multiplayer "performed beautifully" when he tested it with a friend with access to an early build and that "there was not a single hitch." He added, "It's pretty hard to come by emulating netplay that runs this good" and this was not just him "tooting [his] own horn, it's actually exceptionally good".
If you're interested in checking it out, you can be among the first to give the emulator a try by backing his work on Patreon.