| Time Cruise | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Face |
| Publisher(s) |
|
| Composer(s) | Hiroto Saitō Nozomu Takahashi |
| Platform(s) | PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Pinball |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Time Cruise (known as Time Cruise II in Japan) is a science fiction themed pinball video game developed by Face for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 game system, released on November 8, 1991 in Japan and December 1992 in the United States.
Time Cruise's plot centers around Eric, a young scientific genius. Eric learns the secret of time travel by channeling with an intelligent extraterrestrial lifeform. After 8 years of hard work, Eric completes his time travel system (seven buildings with a time-travel pod moving between them at high speeds) and sets off in his shining silver time travel pod to explore the limits of time and space.
The Time Cruise playfield consists of seven screens and scrolls both horizontally and vertically. The player can nudge the table to influence the ball's path, but doing this too many times can cause a tilt condition, resulting in a lost ball. Scattered around the playfield are five different time travel switches. Hitting a switch with the ball activates its corresponding time travel mechanism, and landing the ball in an activated mechanism causes a time warp to take place. These alternate times range from a prehistoric sea floor in 460,000,000 B.C. to an orbiting Mars colony in 2054, and take the form of bonus stages where the player can earn points and extra balls. Occasionally, due to flaws in the time travel system the player will be brought to an alternate dimension (a sixth bonus stage) rather than the time period they intended to warp to. The game ends either when the player loses all of their balls, or when they attain a score of 99,999,999 which causes an ending cut-scene and the game's credits to be displayed.
In the United Kingdom, Time Cruise was the top-selling PC Engine game in November 1991. [1]
In March 1993, the critic Otter Matic of GamePro magazine praised Time Cruise for its visuals and controls, but heavily criticized the game's audio and soundtrack as the weakest aspect of the game. The game received perfect scores of 5 out of 5 for graphics, control, and fun factor, but only 1.5 out of 5 for sound. [2]
Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails called 'pins' and had hollows or pockets which scored points if the ball came to rest in them. Today, pinball is most commonly an arcade game in which the ball is fired into a specially designed cabinet known as a pinball machine, hitting various lights, bumpers, ramps, and other targets depending on its design. The game's object is generally to score as many points as possible by hitting these targets and making various shots with flippers before the ball is lost. Most pinball machines use one ball per turn, and the game ends when the ball(s) from the last turn are lost. The biggest pinball machine manufacturers historically include Bally Manufacturing, Gottlieb, Williams Electronics and Stern Pinball.
A glossary of terms, commonly used in discussing pinball machines.
Psycho Pinball is a 1994 pinball video game published and developed by Codemasters, released for the Mega Drive in the United Kingdom, and MS-DOS in the United States and Europe.
Pang , originally released in Japan as Pomping World and known in North America as Buster Bros., is a 1989 action game released by Mitchell Corporation for arcades in 1989. It was the tenth game released for Capcom's CP System arcade hardware.
The Addams Family is a pinball machine released in March 1992. It was designed by Pat Lawlor and Larry DeMar and released by Midway. It was based on the 1991 film of the same name, and features custom speech by the stars of the film, Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia. It is the best-selling solid state pinball machine of all time with 20,270 units sold.
Zuma is a 2003 tile-matching puzzle video game developed by Oberon Media and published by PopCap Games. It was released for a number of platforms, including PDAs, mobile phones, and the iPod.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is a widebody pinball game, designed by Steve Ritchie and released in November 1993 by Williams Electronics. It was part of WMS' SuperPin series, and was based on the TV series. It is the only pinball machine that features three separate highscore-lists. Apart from the regular highscore-list and the buy-in-list, it also features a reminiscence to The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot billionaires club. It is also the third pinball game overall based on the Star Trek franchise, following the 1979 pinball game by Bally, and the 1991 game by Data East, and preceding the 2013 pinball game by Stern.
Black Knight is a 1980 pinball machine designed by Steve Ritchie and released by Williams Electronics. Ritchie designed two sequels: Black Knight 2000, released by Williams in 1989, and Black Knight: Sword of Rage, released by Stern Pinball in 2019.
Twilight Zone is a widebody pinball machine, designed by Pat Lawlor and based on the TV series of the same name. It was first released in 1993 by Midway. This game is part of WMS' SuperPin line of widebody games alongside Star Trek: The Next Generation and Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure.
Alien Crush is a pinball video game developed by Compile for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. It was released in 1988. The game is the first installment in the Crush Pinball series. It was followed by three sequels, Devil's Crush, Jaki Crush, and Alien Crush Returns. Alien Crush was later rereleased on the Virtual Console and on the PlayStation Network.
Star Soldier is a series of shoot 'em up video games mainly developed by Hudson Soft. Konami has owned the rights to the series since their absorption of Hudson Soft in 2012. The first game, named Star Soldier, appeared on the MSX and NES in 1986, and the series has continued on various gaming systems. Star Soldier itself has received enhanced remakes for both the GameCube and PlayStation 2 in 2003, and a different remake for the PlayStation Portable in 2005, while the latest installment of the series was released on the Wii as a WiiWare game in 2008. In addition, Super Star Soldier, Final Soldier, Soldier Blade and Star Parodier have been re-released on the Wii's Virtual Console and on the Japanese PC Engine's Best Collection lineup for the PSP. The Star Soldier games are best known for their distinctive music, unique weapon power-ups, and a special time attack high score mode called "Caravan Mode".
Peggle is a casual puzzle video game developed by PopCap Games. Initially released for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X systems in 2007, it has since had versions released for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, the Nintendo DS, Windows Mobile, iOS, Zeebo, and Android; the game has also been ported as a Java application, and an extended minigame incorporated into the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. A sequel was released in September 2008, titled Peggle Nights. PopCap, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, announced Peggle 2 at E3 2013.
FunHouse is a pinball machine designed by Pat Lawlor and released in November 1990 by Williams Electronics. Starring a talking ventriloquist dummy named Rudy, the game is themed after the concept of an amusement park funhouse. FunHouse is one of the last Williams games to use an alphanumeric display; the company switched to dot matrix the following year.
Off the Wall is an arcade game produced by Atari Games and released in North America in 1991. A remake of Breakout, it has a much wider variety of gameplay elements of the original. Most notably, it models spin on the ball. Off the Wall supports up to three players simultaneously. The game's graphics include many backgrounds modeled after modern abstract art.
Jack-Bot is a 1995 pinball game which was designed by Barry Oursler and Larry DeMar, and released by Williams. It is the third game in the Pin-Bot series, following Pin-Bot (1986) and The Machine: Bride of Pin-Bot (1991).
The Machine: Bride of Pin-Bot is a 1991 pinball game designed by Python Anghelo and John Trudeau, and released by Williams. It is the second game in the Pin-Bot series, and is the last game produced by Williams to use a segmented score display rather than a dot-matrix screen. It is also one of the few pinball games produced that uses a variable-brightness segmented display.
Pin Bot is a pinball video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in North America in April 1990. It is a conversion of the pinball machine by the same name. The NES version of the game accurately reproduces some of the game-play and aesthetics of the pinball machine, while introducing new features and added challenges.
Judge Dredd is a four-player pinball game produced by Bally Manufacturing in 1993, based on the British comic strip Judge Dredd in 2000 AD. Nearly 7,000 were made.
Comet is a pinball machine released by Williams in June 1985. It was designed by Barry Oursler, who was inspired by the Comet roller coaster at Riverview Park in Chicago, and was the first in an amusement park themed pinball trilogy followed by Cyclone in 1988 and Hurricane in 1991.
Hurricane is a pinball machine released by Williams Electronics in August 1991. It was designed by Barry Oursler as the third game in Oursler's amusement park themed pinball trilogy. The first being Comet, released in 1985, and the second being Cyclone, released in 1988.
