Time Crisis is a light gun shooter arcade game released by Namco in 1996. It was later ported for the PlayStation in 1997, bundled with the Guncon light gun controller. GAMEPLAY: Time Crisis is a three-dimensional first person rail shooter similar to Virtua Cop and The House of the Dead installments, in which the player holds a light gun and goes through the motions of firing at on-screen enemies. Time Crisis is best known for its cover system, in which players can duck behind cover to avoid enemy fire and reload his weapon. There are three stages, each consisting of three areas and a boss battle. Unique features are described here in: A foot pedal which performs multiple functions: when the pedal is released, the player takes cover to conserve hit points while reloading the gun. While the pedal is released, the player cannot attack. In console conversions, a button command replicates the foot pedal's functions. The player loses a life if he/she is hit by a direct bullet or obstacle whilst not taking cover, with the game ending if he/she loses all lives. A light gun (introduced in Point Blank) which utilized a special memory chip to synchronize areas of the screen's image as the player rotates the gun around. The light gun also features a blowback function which simulates real-life gun recoil. A countdown timer, recharged by clearing an area of enemies. As running down the clock causes an instant game over, the player must take risks, shooting enemies rapidly and hiding only when necessary. A time extension is rewarded when an area is passed and there are also time bonuses awarded for shooting certain enemies quickly. The PlayStation port features an exclusive side-story mode, in which the player's performance, such as how quickly he can clear an area, affects the path he takes through the game, resulting in multiple possibilities.
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The Special Mode added for PS1 is the single best TC campaign in the series. The way it changes your path depending on quality of play adds a ton of replay value and the different locales, from shopping malls to ammo warehouses, keep it visually fresh.
I really think something gets lost in the later games with the increased visual fidelity and bolted on extra mechanics. The simplicity of the visuals here means enemy placements are always immediately visible—you can't miss these simple polygonal models with their bright primary colors—where enemies in later games can get lost in the environment. And TC is at its best when it's just about pistols—no extra weapons and ammo counts to juggle. Just pure precision and speed. That's what it's about.
Since i played this on an emulator i'm so glad there's an option to turn off the gun flash because holy shit i feel like i'm about to have a seizure from all the flashing since i play it so fast and playing it at night in the dark and combined with the keyboard controls it's tough.
Other than that yeah it's Time Crisis. One of the most iconic light-gun series known for its combination of innovative gameplay mechanics, immersive gunplay, and cinematic presentation (by this i mean the cheesy voice acting and over the top action set pieces) that helped establish it as a groundbreaking title in the arcade gaming landscape
One of the standout features of Time Crisis 1 if not the entire Time Crisis series was the cover system with players having to take cover behind objects by pressing the cover button on the controller or more famously pressing down on the pedal if you're playing on arcade to not only avoid enemy gun fire but to reload their gun and i'm sure everyone has heard the iconic "ACTION!" and "RELOAD" sound effect i mean really that never gets old it just gets you hyped up to immediately start raining down bullets on your color-coded enemies.
While the game made quite a significant impact on the arcade gaming scene, it also brought some downgrades visually particularly in the PS1 version and i think this dip in graphical fidelity wasn't due to any lack of effort or care from the developers but more so due to the technical limitations of the PS1 Hardware because it's very apparent once you compare both versions. The arcade version had a lot more smoother texture and animations and overall just looked a lot better whilst the PS1 version tended to look more pixelated, less detailed and sometimes suffered from very noticeable blurriness and this is very evident in close-up shots or during super intense action moments where the hardware couldn't keep up with everything that's going on.
Though despite the graphical limitations in the PS1 version, it still manages to capture the essence of the arcade experience, albeit with some sacrifices in visual fidelity.
It was around about 8 years ago I’d say and me and a friend were in a random arcade. We were sort of browsing around, looking through all the different games they had to show. And that’s when…we saw it. Time crisis. For those that don’t know, time crisis is essentially a first person on rails shooter which were pretty popular in the arcades during the late-ish 90’s. The thing is here is that you have a small pedal which if pressed: will allow the player to duck down and reload their weapon. So when me and my friend saw this game, we decided to give it a go. How hard could it possibly be? We said to ourselves.
I’m sure this is the point where in your mind you’ll probably hear thinking ‘oh this is the part where he reveals how hard it actually is and then there is some funny moral to the story later’. Unfortunately, I’m gonna have to crush those expectations.
So my friend inserted 50p of British currency into the machine and started playing. We’d both agreed that he’d have the first go and later I’d have a go after he died. But after 10 minutes or so, we realised that he was better at time crisis than we thought. He was brilliant at it in fact. I just sat there watching him. He decimated every single enemy in his path. The villain laughed: thinking that he was some sort of joke. But, he was so, so wrong. My friend kept pushing the pedal like there was no tomorrow and landing every hit. After a while, I began to wonder if the machine was rigged. But those thoughts were soon put to sleep as finally: he beat the game.
So what is the moral to the story then? Just because you think a game is gonna be really hard doesn’t mean it always will.
Great gameplay, story happened, pedal was harmed, ACTION! RELOAD!
