Developed by French company Cryo Interactive and published by JVC for the Super Nintendo in 1995, Timecop is based on the 1994 film, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and directed by Peter Hyams. The game is arguably one of the worst titles ever released for the SNES…

Timecop is a scrolling action game featuring digitised graphics. The story takes place after the events of the film and in it you play as Max Walker, an officer for the security agency that regulates time travel, who must fight his way through fifteen different levels in order to stop the original inventor of time travel, Dr. Hans Kleindast, from causing havoc by meddling with events from the past.

Max can jump, duck, kick, punch and shoot a gun. The gun in particular is strangely implemented and this becomes obvious within seconds of starting the game, because after firing three shots you immediately run out of ammo and have to resort to kicking patrolling enemies in the shins… Elevators take you up and down levels and cracked floors give way underneath you, dropping you down a level. In the first few levels walls collapse and doors open and close for no apparent reason…

The digitised graphics don’t look too bad initially, but the animation is slow and controlling Max is a bit of a nightmare as a result. The reason for this are the delays that occur when performing actions. Even something as simple as turning around and running in the opposite direction takes far too long and opens you up to damage while the animation sequence plays out, and it also make it difficult to position Max accurately. If you sit and watch the turn-around animation (of Max) you might notice just how bad it actually is, but combine that with the restriction it has on controlling him, and you can’t fail to conclude that this game is truly awful. But the poor animation is just the tip of the iceberg…

Other rubbish things about Timecop are: the insipid level design; the terrible animation of enemies; the pathetic boss fights; spelling mistakes in cut scene text, and the moribund gameplay in general.

The gameplay is ridiculously basic. The majority of the time all you’re doing is slugging your way through waves of the same enemies, through an uninteresting maze of platforms, to find the exit to the next stage. Enemy animation is pathetic, as is the repetitive and weak beat ’em up gameplay. The way the enemies dressed in white attack you with kicks is hilariously bad. As is the ‘walking’ animation of Max in the underwater levels… In fact: progression in Timecop is a curse because the game doesn’t get better, it gets progressively worse…

Occasionally you get to drive a vehicle but even these are oversized and poorly realised. The submarine in stage two is ridiculously large for the screen size and fires its weapon very inconsistently.

I can’t think of a single thing about this game that is in any way positive. Timecop is a waste of good silicon, and anyone who bought it when it first came out must have been seething. This is not a game that anyone should waste their time playing now, unless you’re researching terrible video games. And this is one of the very worst on the Super Nintendo.

More: Timecop (video game) on Wikipedia