Those words are what happened to Killer Instinct. lol Just about everybody I knew, knew Ultra combos including myself. It essentially became: Know a combo or get your ass handed to you. Everybody knew them, so it became: Know the combo breakers or get your ass handed to you. Two players armed with combos turned out to be...
"Combo breaker!"
"Combo breaker!"
"Combo breaker!"
"Combo breaker."
Someone wins. Attrition combat of the turd kind. Whereas on the Street Fighter II's, you had plenty of options that didn't require memorising a single combo and a couple of combo breakers. It actually relied on skill, and different players used the same character different ways. Street Fighter Ex Plus Alpha, was Killer Instinct plus the combos and breakers, plus Surprise Blows, Guard Break, but generally the only time you could pull off a huge combo was after you'd opened up your opponent with a couple of Cancels.
In other words, you had to work for your win by knowing the moves, that disable your opponent allowing you to really hurt him with something epic - and the something epic was way harder to pull off than an Ultra - using the characters in your own unexpected way (players of KI played every character the same way because they were so freakin' rigid and the game orbited around pulling off an Ultra), SF's didn't rely on crappy KI attrition combat with two guys doing the exact same thing until whoever got the first hit in won the match. S'like playing with those old kids toys, what was that one with the lights flashing on it? Red, blue, red, green. "Red, blue, red, green." Win.
Boooooring. KI had good single player in arcades just to continuously whup the pants AI, though, and try to convince yourself somebody was watching going, "That guy is cool." Maybe the cleaning lady in the arcade, or something. In my local arcade there were about eight Street Fighter machines, and one KI. lol The Street Fighter machines were always occupied.
It invented the Combo chain. Happy now? There were no extensive Combo chains with air juggling before Killer Instinct for the SNES. That alone sets it apart from every fighter game during it's time. Sure, it's not different to today's standard, but that's because it CREATED today's standards.
It made a game out of counting hits and offering huge combos, but combos could be pulled off on the Street Fighter II's and Mortal Kombats. I wouldn't say it invented them. On Street Fighter II SNES if you jump Ken forward from a certain spot, and do a spinning kick just before he hits the ground, and slightly behind the other guy, you can follow it up with an uppercut, which sends the other guy up, another spinning kick, sends the other guy back, uppercut, spinning kick... it was unbeatable. Only character that could stop it was Zangief if you managed to time a powerbomb just as he hit the ground, but it rarely worked.