Time Crisis is a classic lightgun shooter, developed and distributed into arcades by Namco in 1995. The game is played in a 3D environment, with all the locations, characters and cut scenes fully-modelled as texture-mapped polygons. Unlike many lightgun shooters of the time, Time Crisis is a single-player only game, because it utilizes a foot pedal for taking cover.

You play “one man army” (the game’s description, not mine), super spy Richard Miller, who is on a mission to rescue the president’s daughter, Rachel Macpherson, from the evil knife-throwing villain, Sherudo Garo, and his crazed army of terrorists. Garo lives in a castle, on an island – in true James Bond villain fashion – which is where Time Crisis takes place. Oh, and you could be forgiven for thinking, given the game’s title, that time travel might play a role in story, but no – the ‘time’ thing is all about the time limits and time extensions that play a major role in the gameplay.

Time Crisis has two play modes: Story Mode and Timed Mode. In Timed Mode you can select a stage to play and have unlimited lives within a set period of time. In Story Mode the stages happen in story order, and you have limited lives. You keep going until all your lives are gone or the timer runs out. As mentioned above: time plays a significant role in the game and the aim is to try to shoot enemies and complete areas as quickly as possible to gain time extensions. Each stage is broken down into four areas, with the fourth being a boss battle.

One thing that was innovative and unique to Time Crisis (at least initially), was the introduction of the foot pedal, which you press and hold down to stand up from cover and start shooting. Conversely, you take your foot off the pedal to hide behind cover and reload. This is a crucial feature of the gameplay, which you use to dodge fire and avoid being shot. You can’t hide behind cover for too long, though, because those time limits are very pressing.

When you’ve dealt with the required number of enemies in each part on an area, you then run to the next position and are awarded a time extension. You cannot shoot when “wait” appears on screen, when you’re moving to a new position, although time does continue to count down during these transitions.

Visually, Time Crisis was cutting edge at the time of its release, with relatively high resolution graphics (at 640×480, the equivalent of MS-DOS-based Super VGA), and fairly detailed polygons (the modelling of the hands isn’t bad, but there’s no lip synching at all when characters speak). Granted: Time Crisis is primitive by today’s standards, but the graphics and gameplay actually hold up quite well to some degree, and it’s still fun to play now.

Four Time Crisis sequels were released, plus a number of spin-offs, and a bunch of ports for home systems, many of which have garnered praise and a large fanbase over the years. In fact: it’s become one of the most popular lightgun shooter series of all-time.

More: Time Crisis on Wikipedia