#489 Time Killers Boss: Death gameplay.

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AdmiralMcFish - Bosses and Hidden Characters

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Published on October 8, 2016 1:52:22 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc9TMEi9ROU

Game:

Time Killers (1992)

Duration: 10:56

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Gameplay of the boss Death in Incredible Technologies' Time Killers.

(Death doesn't appear to have any usable special moves.)

Well, I've put it off for long enough. The next couple of weeks will cover the godawful fighting games of Incredible Technologies, specifically this game, BloodStorm and Street Fighter: The Movie. Riveting.

Time Killers was Incredible Technologies' attempt to cash in on the fighting game craze ushered in by Street Fighter II. It was one of the first weapons-based fighting games in the style of SFII (the other being Blandia, a game so broken and glitchy I refuse to cover it), and while it is certainly more competent than Blandia ever was, it's still not a particularly good game. Time Killers sees a bunch of different warriors from different eras in history fight one another, in order to win a chance at achieving immortality, though only after having defeated death himself. Sega was rather clearly "inspired" by this concept for their series Eternal Champion, though admittedly they did it a bit better there.

The main gimmick of this game is ability to remove limbs. Limbs which are removed are no longer usable in attacks, rendering the player or opponent unable to perform certain special moves as a result. Limbs seem to fly off at random, and if a player is lucky he will even score a headshot, and instantly win the match, no matter how much health the opponent has. It's a horribly gimmicky mechanic, and doomed Time Killers to never be taken seriously as a game. Considering the whole point of a fighting game is that is down to the player's ability (and their ability alone) in order to win, this created an incredibly unfair sense of chance in the game which wholly ruined the competitive experience ushered in by Street Fighter II. I will admit that, for about five minutes, the limb-hacking system is rather fun, but it soon becomes tiresome after leading to numerous unfair, cheap deaths.

With such an emphasis on death, I suppose it's not entirely surprising that the final boss of the game is Death himself. Appearing in a rather menacing depiction at first, he soon transforms into some horribly garish-looking goblin creature (like something out of a chinese bootleg game), and uses a rather strange looking scythe. Death has a lifebar, but this is redundant as the only way he can be defeated is by a headshot. This means a battle against death himself is down to pure, dumb luck, and once more ruins much of the game. Also, death is immortal, but can be defeated by having his head lobbed off? Apparently the developers' sole knowledge of immortality came from having watched the film Highlander.

So, Death is awful as a boss, and a character in general. He doesn't even appear to have any special moves. You are also unable to complete the game with him; the game will just loop and force you to fight the last regular opponent over and over again. There's that shitty early 90s programming again. But, Incredible Technologies would go on to make far worse games, so this is only the beginning of their ineptitude.

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