"This new technology, like, totally depersonalized a mega-cool game. Dude, you dig?"

Time Pilot '84 seems like a sure winner. The background is more sophisticated, and there seems to be more than one type of ship going around and trying to kill you. Although the basic idea remains constant(you're in a ship at the center and rotate around and fire at everything, and then a boss comes along) there's an enhancement in that you can use missiles separate from the usual firepower. These missiles, of which a maximum of two are on the screen at any time, will misfire and in fact go through ''non-missile'' enemies(you can either shoot or bomb any specific enemy but not both) unless you have locked onto a target--that is when white brackets surround its center, and when you shoot for the kill, the missile will spiral around a bit before it hits the target, so you need to stay on-screen. You in fact need them at the end of the level to dispose of the boss. The regular monsters are similar, although of course they are technologically augmented--you still have a short warning tune that warns you of formations approaching which you can annihilate for extra points.

The only problem is that your main time travel seems to be to just before the start of your battle. The only major variety in levels seems to be that the background color schemes change from a dark blue/green/grey/purple/brown to another. Even the scrolling maps of the background are the same, although you are dropped in a random spot to start each level. A few extra bad guys are added, and they mostly are pretty nasty, as they may track you or veer off at right angles, but that they are grey(i.e. the programmers' attempt at silver) clinches that they don't add much flavor to the game. However, one neat formation shows up on level two; five planes that seem almost interlocked and glide across the screen at your speed. If you can lock and destroy all five, you get eight thousand points and an extra life. But the main things, like the bosses and basic drones and, yes, the bosses, are all the same. This is a far cry from the original, where each level had its own distinctive date(no, ''level 3'' is not appreciably different from ''level 5,'') backgrounds, enemies, bosses, and even clouds.

I can't say that the graphics are bad; the background gives a good first impression. You have one section that is full of craters, and a river divides it from what looks to be a combination of a silicon chip and a town. The ordinary monsters also make a good first impression, and on the ones prone to missiles actually rotate about several axes(Time Pilot only showed overhead views) but seeing them a few levels in a row gets a bit tedious. Although the LCD score that pops up after a missile hits the target now seems outdated, the graphics seem like an excellent start as long as there is some variety in the future. But Time Pilot '84 used it all up at once, with a disappointing result, and there was even an important regression; no gauge to tell you how close you were to the boss appearing, just a red light when it was on the playing field, and even the screen shaking and your ship getting duplicated when you win don't make up for that. I also find that the sounds are limited. There's a sight too much pinging noises, and things like boss music are always the same. While helicopters, jets, fighters and saucers made different noises in the original, there is uniformity across levels in the sequel.

Although the concept could easily have become a bad joke(even if it were introduced humorously in the first place,) a ''Time Pilot'' in the past would have been something better than the continuous mush of Time Pilot '84. Okay, it wouldn't be much of a match to have a spaceship with lasers whoop up on people who find longbows to be high-tech, or even brave patriots on horseback with muskets(''Uh-oh. How many lanterns if by air? Any more of this and I'll go crazier than George III!'') but there could be some mechanism for moving between eras. The idea for the game isn't too bad, but overall not even the ''Thank you for playing''(an innovation on ''Please insert coin and try this game'' from the original) after your game is over can't make up for a game that squanders its originality in the first level.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/05/01, Updated 08/05/01