Time Killers

Time Killers is a fighting game developed in 1992 by Strata for the arcades. It was later ported to the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.

In the game, warriors from different eras fight each other for a chance at taking down the Grim Reaper and obtaining immortality.

Why It’s a Time Killer (in a Bad Way)

 * 1) Bland, generic, forgettable and stupid characters: Wülf (the knight), Leif (the Viking), Thugg (the caveman) and Musashi (the samurai) are all extremely simple with nothing that makes their design stand out, while the other 4 from the future (Rancid, Orion, Matrix, and Mantazz), look just ridiculous.
 * 2) * The final boss, The Grim Reaper, is the worst looking character, resembling the Ghost Rider in a dumb supervillain costume, even his scythe looks badly made.
 * 3) The game has horrible graphics:
 * 4) * The characters (and their portraits) look awful, poorly drawn, very pixelated, and have ugly colours, some examples include Wülf having a really ugly saturation of colours in his armour, and The Grim Reaper having the poor fire effect on his head and, when he uses his cloak, looks downright amateurish.
 * 5) * The stages look hideous, some look as bad as the characters, while others like the final boss stage, looks like it was a poorly edited photo.
 * 6) The animations are pathetic, they lack frames, and the moves are just stupid, for example, Orion's victory pose.
 * 7) Lame and tasteless gore, which is there just to cash-in Mortal Kombat 's popularity.
 * 8) * Plus all the fatalities are the same, and executed in the same way (pressing all the buttons at the same time)
 * 9) * If a fatality is executed in the first round, the opponent will come back likes nothing happened in the second, losing all the impact.
 * 10) Awful sound design:
 * 11) * The music is forgettable and boring at best.
 * 12) * The characters repeat the same screams and lines constantly to the point that it gets tiresome, for example, Wülf constantly screams EXCALIBUR!!!!, and The Grim Reaper constantly says I AM IMMORTAL!!!
 * 13) Their special moves suck.
 * 14) * The button combinations are stupid and unintuitive.
 * 15) * While not completely useless, they lack power and are too long for a start-up, so players are better off using normal moves.
 * 16) The difficulty is exaggerated: the AI is incredibly aggressive, the opponents screw you by cutting your arms constantly, sometimes they can decapitate you without you being dizzy, also it seems that your character gets stunned way more often than the opponent.
 * 17) * The final boss is especially cheap, as he is way harder to stun, deals massive damage, can interrupt your moves with ease, and in some cases, can stun you as the match begins and if he does, he will kill you instantly with a Fatality.
 * 18) * Plus, to defeat him, you need to decapitate him after taking all his health, however, if he is attacked with a normal move instead of the fatality, he will get up and recover half of his health.
 * 19) * Even worst if that is not impossible for you to have lost your arms to this point, and if that happens, it is literally impossible to do the Fatality, and by extension, is impossible to defeat The Grim Reaper, if that happens the only way for you to win is by letting the timer run out, but that's of course if you survive that long.
 * 20) The Gameplay is wretched, the main mechanic is the dismemberment of the enemies, you can take their arms and head, the first cause your opponent to not be able to use his weapon or special attacks that use the arms, and the latter insta-kills the enemy, however this mechanic just makes the game worst due to the following reasons:
 * 21) * The loosing of arms while it can only happen when being hit with a weapon happens mostly at random, which is incredibly frustrating, as the fighter who loses his limbs is at a severe disadvantage.
 * 22) * Stun happens way too often, and when a character is stunned is vulnerable to an instant kill, which is rage-inducing, especially when you are winning and suddenly you get stunned and you instantly lose the match.
 * 23) Horrible Genesis port:
 * 24) * It uses only 3 buttons.
 * 25) * Visuals-wise is far worse, plus the port came in 1996, but looks worse than most games released on 1989, in fact, it looks more like a Master System game.
 * 26) * Sound design-wise is just atrocious and makes the already poor sound of the original game even worse.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) While likely not the first one, it's one of the earlier known weapon-based fighting games, as Samurai Showdown would come a year later.
 * 2) Fighters from various time periods, past, present, and future was at least an interesting idea at the time, though both World Heroes and Eternal Champions executed this better, both gameplay and story-wise.

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