Action across different time zones, behind the scenes politics, and enough loop-the-loops to make you dizzy. Yes welcome to the crazy world of 'Time Pilot'.

OK before we go any further I absolutely loved this game. I still play it today, and if I might be so bold to say, I am still as ace at it as I was back when I was a 15 year old boy. I too it would seem can travel back through time, just like the Time Pilot.

Gameplay is simple, the CPU places the player's jet fighter in the middle of the screen, by use of an 8-way joystick the player can move the jet in any direction on the screen the aim being to shoot down as many enemy craft as possible and then time-warp to the next zone.

There are 5 different time-zones to blast through:
1910 - Biplanes and Airships
1940 - W.W.II Fighters and Bombers
1970 - Helicopters
1982 - Jet Planes
2001 - UFO's

Time Pilot 'attract mode'

The game was designed by Yoshika Okamoto...who I hear you say? Well he went on to design Street Fighter, Final Fight, 1942, and Gyruss, good on anyone's CV I am sure you'll agree. The manufacturer for Time Pilot was Konami and the game was released in 1982.

Yoshi San was originally asked to design a driving game, but this did not appeal to his shoot-em-up, beat-em-up tendencies so he ignored his bosses completely and instead started to design a game based around one of his own favourites, Bosconian. The influence of Bosconian in retrospect is obvious both in the style of movement and game play, but at the time Time Pilot seemed pretty unique.

When Yoshi's boss asked to see this great driving game that he had been assigned to do, he was shown Time Pilot instead. Well you can guess what happened. The boss went mad, until of course the game became a massive hit, when of course the boss took all the credit. Oh life's a bitch! Well the disgruntled Yoshi then buggered off to Capcom, and thank god he did because there were many more games in his mind that he then went on to create while at Capcom, ... Gyruss & 1942 being Classics in their own right as well as the now famous Street Fighter.

But let's get back to Time Pilot and away from the behind the scenes politics we find a thoroughly addictive and challenging game. Gamers fell into 2 groups, you either loved, (or more often than not), hated, the joystick control. However, the shooting definitely had a very satisfactory feel to it, as enemy ships exploded in and around you filling the screen with juicy explosions. You had to destroy 56 enemy ships in order for the mother ship to appear, this progres was indicated by a decreasing gauge at the bottom of the screen.

The first time-zone encountered is 1910. Yes a strange year as W.W.I was in fact from 1914 onwards, so quite what battle you were caught up in is a mystery, but what the hell. Barnstorming biplanes attack from all over the screen, parachutists drift down through the clouds just begging to be saved for those massive points junkies and finally a dirty great big Zeppelin appeared which you had to blow up to advance to the next zone.

Time Pilot Time Zone 1910

Zone 2 sees you re-materialize in 1940 slap bang in the middle of W.W.II. However, the U.S.A was not involved in the war until 1941 if my memory serves and those bombers do look a lot like B52's, but hey we are time traveling and things get screwed around ... right! American, Nazi, Japanese whoever they are shoot first, ask questions later. This stage is slightly harder, as you would expect, but you can still zip around the screen and have a good old shoot fest as the planes offer little resistance. The enemy planes shoot and drop bombs at you but nothing you can't handle. Formations offer bonuses of 2,000 points as in Zone 1. Bombers afford you 1,500 points.

Time Pilot Time Zone 1940

Having zapped the Nazis or whoever it's supposed to represent its through the time-portal again and smack bang into the middle of Vietnam in 1970. Helicopters with heat seeking missiles sees that you do a different jig on screen to avoid being hit from now on. The game gets harder from here onwards so be warned.

Time Pilot Time Zone 1970

Having dispatched the bad guys in 'Nam' its forward through time to urm.. 1982. Which war exactly.....? hell I don't know, and in 1982 I didn't ask any questions either. Wherever we are it's jets just like ours that we are up against, and this time with more ferocious homing missiles than before. A continual circular motion on the joystick worked best here and you can forget about hanging around collecting points, it's too darn hard.

Time Pilot Time Zone 1982

Mission completed and we zap into the future, well its the past now really, but it was the future then, back in the past if you see what I mean. Time travel is complicated don't you know. 2001 and we are fighting UFO's, obviously from space, as we now have an asteroid filled space backdrop to fight in, although we still seem to be in our 1982 jet fighter, presumably refitted for deep space.

Anyway, you blast the UFO's, blowup the mother ship for 3,000 points and can still be back home in time for tea and Doctor Who on the TV if you play well.

Time Pilot Time Zone 2001

Tips & Tricks:
The enemy planes find it hardest to shoot you when you are moving in a diagonal direction! So fly diagonally...simple hey!

Concentrate on collecting the parachutists for maximum points. The first is worth 1,000 points and the value increases by 1,000 points until the maximum value of 5,000 points is reached. From that point on all parachutists are worth 5,000 points on that level.

Homing missiles can be lost by maneuvering them off the screen. Once off the edge of the screen they do not reappear.

On the 1940 stage NEVER EVER touch the fire button, eventually parachutists start appearing, try to collect them without firing a shot. If you can survive the fighters without shooting and collect the parachutes the stage will go on forever... points heaven.

Summary
Time Pilot was one of Konami's best with many home versions made for the Atari 2600, the Colecovision and even today on the Playstation. I first played Time Pilot in a Pizza Parlour near my home at Gants Hill in beautiful urban Esse. We would cycle there on our bikes, leave them outside, order a pizza and fill the Time Pilot cabinet with our har earn't credits.

Those lazy, hazy gaming days were truly some of my favourite from the past. Now of course the Pizza Parlour has turned into a Domino's Pizza shop and is just another sad example of tragic 21st century globalisation, the pizzas are crap and the games are all gone.

If I could have one wish it would be this; that I was the Time Pilot and I could zap back through some time-portal, back to 1982 and the Pizza Parlour, hitch my bike up and drop a credit or two in Time Pilot and waste a few more hours of my life playing one of my favourite games.

Overall Classic Game Rating - 8.0