Time Gal

"What's Luda smirking at? If Time Gal doesn't succeed, Luda will be laughing hysterically. That would be tragic. No smorking."

Ah yes, one of the most nonsensical lines ever to grace a video game manual. What we got here is a game in the Dragon's Lair vein, except in most ways its better. For one thing, it's about a long-haired anime babe in a bikini, so there's one thing right there.

The maniacal Luda steals a time machine and like all maniacs with time machines wants to alter history to make himself ruler of the world. Exactly how he could do that is not gone into, nor does it matter since it's Time Gal to the rescue.

Our otherwise nameless heroine pursues Luda through various time periods, like World War II, the Gulf War, a battle in ancient Rome and against pirates, the Ice Age, as well as far into the future where she battles aliens and a 50-foot Tekkaman Blade wannabe.

As in Dragon's Lair the player doesn't really control Time Gal, they just tell her how to react to certain things at certain times, like moving out of the way of a charging dinosaur or blasting the Grim Reaper with her laser gun. In most eras there's also a time when she'll yell "Time stop!" a press of the fire button will stop time for a few seconds, and you'll have to decide what the correct course of action would be to keep Time Gal alive. Unfortunately a lot of those are trial and error things.

In most difficulty settings jewels to the four sides of the distplay indicate the correct way to move Time Gal (or when to fight as indicated by all of them flashing). These are somewhat supplemented by onscreen flashes (like a ledge in the direction Time Gal must jump will turn yellow for a second). Time Gal also has a number of lives that varies with the difficulty setting, and points are awarded for how many lives Time Gal has at the end of a level as well as for reacting in time--the faster, the higher the score. If the player fails to react in time, Time Gal will turn super deformed and lose a life.

The graphics look like an obscure anime movie, though they're hindered a bit by the grainy resolution games of this sort on the Sega CD tend to have. Just a little, as the game is a treat for the eyes.

The sound, as usual for me, is not quite so great. The sound effects are okay, though I didn't really care for Time Gal's dubbed dialogue. It sounded flat and lifeless and like the actress was reading her lines for the first time as they were recorded. The only music there really is in Time Gal is the upbeat theme song at the beginning, which for some reason I could listen to for hours. That saves the rest of the game's audio.

I don't often discuss extras om a review, but I think I should mention that for each level cleared the player gets a password that lets them watch the level played out without mistakes and lets them view each of that level's death scenes if they feel like it. Maybe it isn't much of an extra, but I only played one other laserdisc game that did that.

Time Gal is a pretty good pseudo-interactive game. Yeah you never really have direct control, but at least you're required to do something, unlike a couple really bad games I could name. Make some time for Time Gal, and you'll be glad you did.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/04