This Week In Retro: Time Crisis (1996) (Patreon)

January 1996: Sometime, somewhere, someone is plotting a government overthrow…

by Diamond Feit

Guns, guns, guns. Where would video games be without them? What would the history of this medium look like if people lacked an innate understanding of firearms? I dislike taking pride in ignorance but whenever a Japanese person asks me about gun culture in the United States, I'm all too eager to explain that I only touched a single pistol in my entire life and I never, ever pulled the trigger.

Regardless of my real-life innocence, as a video game fan I have spent thousands of hours handling virtual weapons of all shapes and sizes. In my early days, the primitive nature of graphics rendered the violence I committed in an obscure manner; nothing about Combat or Outlaw for the Atari 2600 resembles an actual armed showdown.

As technology improved and publishers grew more savvy, games built entirely around the act of aiming and firing a gun became commonplace. Nintendo had experimented with toy guns and mock target ranges in the 1970s, later adopting these concepts into 8-bit games like Duck Hunt and Wild Gunman. Exidy's arcade Crossbow featured a plastic interpretation of the eponymous medieval tool mounted on the cabinet.

While the themes and configurations varied wildly, by the end of the 1980s players had their pick of multiple shooting games in arcades and on consoles. In fact, with more children gaming at home, a flashy machine with a bespoke control interface could lure players back to arcades for experiences that simply wouldn't work on living room televisions. Titles like Operation Wolf and Beast Busters had licensed ports made for home platforms, but they didn't ship with an uzi in the box so they never measured up to the originals.

The downside to these gun-based games, in my opinion, was the inflexible nature of progression. By this point in my gaming habit I had grown accustomed to assuming the role of a character in a space that I could explore at my own tempo. Light gun games of this era seldom offered any sense of agency; players only exist to fire at things on the screen while the scenery auto-scrolls in one direction.

30 years ago this month, Namco introduced one simple twist to the genre that restored a modicum of control to players which I believe improved the game experience a hundred fold. Instead of locking players into a non-stop roller coaster, Time Crisis actually lets you hit the brakes.

From a narrative and presentation perspective, Time Crisis does nothing to stand apart from other light gun games of the mid-90s. The hero, a "one-man army" named Richard Miller, looks like any number of other white leading men. Richard must rescue the kidnapped Rachel Macpherson—a typical white damsel—in the fictional, vaguely-European country of Sercia. We don't get any sense of where Sercia might lie as all we ever see is a stately castle on a single island; for all we know, the entire nation only exists on this one landmass surrounded by open sea.

The attract mode and opening cinematic of Time Crisis explain that Rachel is the daughter of Sercia's unseen president and that her captors seek to rule the nation in his place. Two of the bad guys get proper introductions, a sneering anime villain named Sherudo Garo and a sunglasses-wearing man of action called Wild Dog. Their army of underlings—hordes of whom Richard will shoot to death in order to complete his mission—fail to merit any means to identify them, not even the first boss who dresses like a ninja.

Running on Namco's System 22 arcade board, Time Crisis uses 3D graphics to bring Sercia and its inhabitants to life. Richard always takes the same route through the castle to find Rachel but that path includes many twists and turns along the way. The camera stands in for Richard himself, putting players in his position once he infiltrates the facility via a submarine bay. When a docked vessel loaded with cargo explodes during the initial shootout or industrial cranes swing towards Richard's head, the first-person perspective helps sell Time Crisis as a constant stream of chaos.

A foot pedal at the bottom of the cabinet represents the other major method Time Crisis uses to increase player immersion and the one that made the series famous. Players can step on the pedal at any moment to send Richard behind cover. This removes him from immediate danger and reloads his pistol which only holds six bullets per clip. While taking cover, enemies and obstacles cannot hurt Richard but he remains immobile and unable to shoot until players release the pedal.

Time Crisis, as the name suggests, urges players forward with a countdown ticking on the screen. Successful kills and clearing certain checkpoints add seconds to the clock but it doesn't stop when Richard takes a break. If the timer reaches zero, the game ends regardless of Richard's remaining health.

Aside from the pedal-driven cover mechanic, Time Crisis comes across as rather bare-bones compared to other shooting games of the era. Richard never upgrades his default pistol nor does he find any subweapons like grenades. A few explosive objects can help with crowd control but for the most part, players need to focus their attention on shooting enemies rather than scanning their surroundings for destructible barrels or hidden items.

Time Crisis also takes the "one man army" concept literally as the cabinet only supports single-player action. If you and a friend want to save Rachel or you enjoy spending extra credits to dual-wield handguns like Chow Yun-Fat, you're out of luck here. In my memories I thought for sure I had played this game co-op but that feature debuted with the sequel released the following year.

These misgivings amount to very little, however, because Time Crisis absolutely blew our minds back in 1996. Playing the role of a lone hero trading bullets with dozens of bad guys, ducking behind crates and pillars as I fought my way up to the castle's tower, it really felt like an action movie come to life. The developers at Namco knew that too and embraced it: In a 1997 interview, Mamoru Takahashi described Time Crisis as "the most awesome B-movie game ever."

Adding to that atmosphere, the English voice cast is a trio of now-legendary actors. Scott McCulloch—known today for his roles as Chris Redfield and Richter Belmont—has the most lines and gets top billing. Michael Guinn plays the sinister Sherudo and would later face off against McCulloch as Dracula in the infamous introduction to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Lynn Harris voices Rachel mere months before her performance as Rebecca Chambers in the original Resident Evil (again working with McCulloch).

Namco ported Time Crisis to the PlayStation in 1997, bundling it with the new Guncon controller to better replicate the sensation of the original arcade version; a button on the side of the Guncon replaces the need for a pedal. The home version includes the standard Story mode and adds an exclusive Special campaign featuring more exploration to increase replay value. As Masanori Kato explained in that aforementioned 1997 interview, "Collecting, discovering, and finding stuff is a style of gameplay that’s unique to console games, and we wanted to see if we couldn’t include those elements in a lightgun game too."

Personally, I preferred story-driven console games that demanded more of me than pointing and shooting, so as much as I enjoyed playing Time Crisis at the mall or multiplex, I never invested any time in any home conversion. The series continued for nearly two decades with the most recent game dropping in 2015, a fact that surprised me when I read up on the franchise.

Arcades are in serious decline at this point but more people enjoy video games than ever, so I'd wager that we haven't heard the last from Time Crisis. A third-party recently licensed the brand from Bandai Namco for their own gun peripheral, one that works on modern flatscreen televisions without any need for a dedicated console. A 2025 Kickstarter campaign sought seven million yen in funding but ended up drawing over 25x that figure; clearly there's more time left on Richard Miller's 15 minutes of fame.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit has written professionally since 2009 and contributed to Retronauts since 2018. Look up feitclub on social media or visit Diamond's lofi website.