At first glance, the game seems pretty tame, it asks you to “please” insert a quarter to play. Well! Since you were so polite, I suppose I just might! After I inserted said immaterial quarter though, is where the polite nice guy front ended. Soon I was bombarded by enemy bi-planes from 1918 all trying to gun me down. I tried to out fly them in my futuristic fighter jet, but my 22,000 horse power jet engine was apparently no match against 97 year old propeller engines and they got behind me, I couldn’t turn around, they had me at every turn, until I was shot out of the sky by a bi plane coming in to my left that I didn’t even see. I had lasted ten seconds.
In Time Pilot, you play as some futuristic fighter jet. Your job is to travel through time to rescue pilots from 1918 bi-planes and zeppelins, 1948 mono-planes and B-25 bombers, 1970 heat seeking missile launching helicopters and Boing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knights, 1982 Jets who fire even more homing missiles that travel faster than you do and Boeing B-52 Stratofortress’s, and then finally all the way into 2001 where you fight the UFO’s from Asteroids who fire homing laser orbs that travel twice as fast as you and are near impossible to hit. Did I mention this game doesn’t allow continues?
The controls are simple, but are what threw me off at first. The game is obviously inspired by Asteroids and it definitely shows in the last level with the UFO’s. After playing Asteroids and Gravitar, I was expecting my plane to behave in a similar manner, i.e. the left and right arrows rotate your ship while pressing up thrusts you forward. I was wrong. Instead, the game actually behaves like modern games where pressing a directional arrow takes you in that direction. No Resident Evil controls here folks! After figuring that out, the game was an incredible amount of fun, constant threats coming at you from all sides, intelligent enemies keeping right behind you, it almost feels like a real dog fight. The gimmick of traveling through time is a very fun idea, I really love the idea of going through these different time periods trying to kill planes from that era, and I would love for a game to do that today, kind of makes you appreciate how aerial combat has advanced. The Graphics are nice and crisp with surprisingly smooth animation, overall, the game is a joy to play and one of the most entertaining of ’82 so far.
I do have one or two issues with it but I assure you they’re minimal, like Xevious, I wish this game had a better soundtrack. I don’t actually remember background music at all. I think that would really add to the fun, especially if the music changed with the era. Also, 16 directions is just not enough for a game as crazy as this. I often tried to shoot down planes who were just 15 degrees off from where I was directioned, meaning I had to do some weird maneuvering to make sure I could hit it accurately.
Overall, while the game is stupid hard, it’s at least fair, and a lot of fun to play. Unless you’re a big fan of classic multi-directional shooters, chances are you haven’t heard of this game, but it’s one I suggest. Give it a shot, I think you might be surprised.
Up next: Utopia (ooo an Intelivision game! A multiplayer only intelivision game, not sure how I'm gonna pull this one off.)
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