"A bit less personality, but not a bad game, overall."

Further into unknown world.

The future is a cold, harsh, decadent place, filled with tons of stuff that flies around and shoots crap at you...

And that's about all the story you need for a game like this; the 90% brainless sequel to the original Time Pilot. This time, the game decided to basically ditch the entire time travelling theme behind the original Time Pilot, going for a no-holds-barred, balls-to-the-wall futuristic bloodbath, packed with the all the things that 2d shooter fans know and love. Besides a graphical facelift, there are also some interesting gameplay touches that add a surprising amount to the 2 year old (At the time) war-horse.

First off, there have been some drastic graphical changes made. Your perspective of the game world is no longer from the side, with a pseudo-3d perspective. Instead, the perspective is basically that of looking straight-down on the futuristic landscape below, with you and your enemies' craft sporting very little in the form of perspective. Your craft does have the same ludicrous amount of animation while rotating, however, almost to the point where it looks like scaling hardware is being used. Stock enemies are all from the generic 'green-dudes-with-attitude' library of bad guys, although there are land, armored, and large enemies, which look pretty good (more on that later). Another drastic graphical change made is that of the lack of any sort of change in the landscape between levels. You're basically just travelling around in the future in this game, and while each succeeding level has a slightly different color scheme and some slightly different enemies, there's overall not much to differentiate the different levels. This is probably the games biggest downfall, as, while there was relatively huge graphical variety in the original Time Pilot, there's very little to speak of in TP84. The game almost makes up for this lack of level variety by presenting you with a large and diverse futuristic world to fly around in. Cities blend into bay areas which blend into moon-like pock-marked areas, which blend back into the city. Finally, there's a dead cool warp effect when you finish a stage, where your ship basically splits into about 20 other ships and blasts across the screen at an incredibly fast speed.

So, what has Konami changed gameplay-wise between Time Pilot and Time Pilot '84? Quite a bit, actually. First off, there's no way to tell how many enemies you need to scratch in order to get a visit from the boss. The game basically throws the boss at you when you've killed a decent amount of enemies, and I never really found the sudden boss appearance to be that annoying. Another feature is your crafts ability to fire missiles, along with its normal vulcan attack. Of course, there's a catch. Your missiles are of the homing persuasion, and you cannot fire missiles until you've come upon an appropriate target, moved within range, and gotten a lock (represented by a white box). Only with a lock will the missiles do any damage. Otherwise, they'll simply flail about without a target and eventually fly off screen. You can only have 2 missiles onscreen at a time, so firing missiles willy-nilly is not a good idea, as you'll find yourself missing that extra missile when you most desperately need it.

Enemies in Time Pilot '84 come in 5 flavors. There are the green stock enemies, which come in absurdly high numbers and die in equally high amounts. Secondly, there are tough air units. These guys are easily distinguished by their silver paint job and odd behavioral AI programming. They're also invulnerable to your normal attack, and can only be taken down if smacked with a missile. Thirdly, there are ground enemies. There are several classes of these, and they're mostly harmless. However, occasionally you'll find these ground dwellers in huge packs of about 8, and in this case, you're best bet is to get your craft as far away from the vicinity as possible, before you get caught in huge crossfires of 5+ bullets, which are very difficult to dodge consistently with the Time Pilot control scheme. Fourthly, there are the big enemies. These dudes come in several varieties, and perform several actions that will prove hazardous to your health, such as firing huge storms of homing missiles at you. These enemies can only be taken down by homing missiles, and give you a big 1000 points for doing so. Lastly, there is the boss, which tends to rumble in from off screen, fire a few missiles, and then die. One missile will down the boss, ushering in a huge, screen-shaking explosion. After taking care of the boss, you warp to the next level, just like in the first Time Pilot. There's also the formation of enemies from the original time pilot. A frequently appearing formation of 5 stock enemies will occaisionally appear, and killing every one will give you a cumulative bonus of 1000. This acts kind of like a mix between the formations and parachuters of the original Time Pilot. Killing just one formation will give you 1000 points. Killing 2 will grant you 2000 points. And killing 3 will give you 3000. Unfortunately, the cumulative scoring tops out at 3000, for gameplay balancing reasons. It's absurdly easy to just idle around the gameworld for a while, killing only formations and high scoring enemies, so this scoring cap is one of the more thought out features in the game.

Did I mention the secret enemies?
There are 3 types of secret enemies that I've encountered so far. First, there's the bi-plane from the original Time Pilot. This guy isn't too fast, doesn't fire at you, and dies with one missile attack. Downing it will grant you a super-snazzy extra-life. On the downside, the bi-planes appearance is rare. Another secret enemy is a formation of 5 planes, all of which look like the enemy from the 1980 era in Time Pilot. They can only be downed by missiles, and are able to equal you in speed, but killing every ship in the formation will net you 8000 points, which is a big boost as far as highscoring games go. Lastly, there are randomly scattered secret ground enemies, which materialize out of the ground when approached and give off 5000 points when killed (you can't see them until you get into their range, so it's a good idea to scour every level for these guys). However, if you're not quick about it, these secret ground enemies will dissappear again if you aren't quick about destroying them. On a side note, if you manage to lock onto the enemy, and fire a missile, the secret ground enemy will stick around onscreen until the missile strikes it.

So, what more is there to say about TP84? Well, let's see here. TP84 has a fun, easily abused scoring system, so you can easily hold a scoring competition with your friends and have a good, tense struggle for supremacy. Even if no one's good at the game before you start the contest, you'll still see some heated competition and good times unfold. As for other platforms, this game was only released in the arcades, as far as I can tell, so good luck finding it outside of the local arcade. If you do find it, prepare for a pretty good time; Time Pilot '84 is a pretty damn good game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/02, Updated 07/07/02