Game: Time Soldiers
Console: Sega Master System
Developer: Sega
Release Date: 1989
To make a truly good 8-bit game, all you really need is a good concept, and good gameplay. Time Soldiers nails a good concept, as players must travel through time to rescue their comrades, visiting prehistoric times, Rome, the world wars, and futuristic times in the process. The gameplay though is a different story; an offcentre shot makes it difficult to aim throughout levels, a lack of enemies makes the game super easy to just walk through and many repeats of each stage mean that there's almost no replayability.
All of the games levels play bottom to top, with players making their way past enemies and obstacles, but in no real danger as the enemies are slow, and have awful aim. Some take more than one shot to beat, which makes it hard to tell if your shot has hit its target or not. None of the levels are particularly interesting, even though their basis is in interesting historical locations, and bosses are much too easy to defeat for the most part.
Graphically the game is disappointing, sprites are small and undetailed, colours are bland and uninteresting and the animation is basic. Shots are represented by small circles and not much else, and even the powered up shot isn't very exciting. The game's music is also basic, with few redeeming qualities to the audiovisual presentation in general.
Overall Time Soldiers had a good concept with its time travel in order to save a team worth of comrades. With a few more stages, variation in obstacles and enemies, and a little more difficulty, in addition to better visuals and music, this could have been a classic for the time, but it seems like a lot less effort was put into the execution than the concept.
Rating: 39/100
Grade: E
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