The Arcade Archives lineup has brought many great classics to modern systems, such as In The Hunt and The Astyanax, and it is always great to see the variety of arcade titles that HAMSTER brings. One arcade classic that many have fond memories of is Konami’s Time Pilot, but not as many people are familiar with the follow-up Time Pilot ’84. It is not uncommon to see a sequel to a classic not be as well known, but does that make Time Pilot ’84 a bad game? Absolutely not.
Time Pilot ’84 is a field shoot ’em up game where you control a ship with 8 way controls while taking down enemies. You have two kinds of weapons here, a forward firing gun and and homing missiles, and each are needed to defeat different enemies. In every stage, there will be green ships and metallic looking ships, and different ammo is needed for each, with the forward firing gun being used on the green ships and homing missiles on the metallic ones.
Control in the game may take a while for modern gamers to get used to due to being a bit floatier than many might expect, and it is recommended that you give the game a few practice plays before really going at it. veterans players will have no issues, but if you are new to the game, then I recommend checking out the caravan mode that Arcade Archives has, because you will restart a lot faster within the time period and you will be able to adjust to the controls and gameplay more.
Attacking is rather simple to be honest, since as mentioned, green enemies are hit with one gun and metallic enemies with the other, but there is something interesting here, When you get close to the metallic enemies, the game will put a lock-on square will appear over them and when you fire a homing missile, it will follow and destroy the enemy. You must destroy a set number of enemies in each stage to trigger the boss and when that happens, you must use the homing missiles to destroy them and head to the next level.
One area where Time Pilot ’84 falls short of its predecessor is that the backgrounds and levels are nowhere near as good, and can often be a bit repetitive here. Obviously the core gameplay is still amazing, but it is something that needed to be mentioned even if the levels get some more variety later on.. Visually, the game is fine, even for an arcade game from the first half of the ’80s, and the minimalist look does help in some ways even if it starts to feel the same. The audio is replicated perfectly from what I have seen of gameplay online, and I commend HAMSTER on getting it right.
One other thing that needs to be mentioned, is that the Arcade Archives release supports TATE mode display, and therefore is great for players on the Switch who have a flipgrip and enjoy playing games that way. This may actually help some players due to the screen layout feeling more compact and less cluttered. It also needs to be said that the High Score Mode is also great to check out when you have familiarized yourself enough with the game. If you feel confident, you can try and beat high scores worldwide and see how you stack up.
Overall, Time Pilot ’84 is a great release by HAMSTER for Arcade Archives and is a great way to play Konami’s game. We do recommend checking it out, but if you are new to it, then give it a few tries to let the controls click for you. You will have a much better experience that way.
Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.
Also Available on PS4
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
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