Poor Xbox Live Arcade. It started off with a bang, debuting with the fantastic Geometry Wars Retro Evolved, and the console bundled in the addictive Hexic HD for free. But then Microsoft treated Xbox360 owners to a veritable smorgasboard of nothingness. I swear there was a period right after I got my 360 of about 8 weeks when there were literally NO games added to Marketplace.
So to make up for it, they announced they'd be releasing a game every Wednesday! All right, a whole game a week?! Truly, this is the retro gaming experience pinnacle. How could any other console manufacturer possibly release more than 52 old games per year?
But, enough about Microsoft's botched handling of the Live Arcade. That's probably a whole other article in itself. The good news about Microsoft getting off their ass and deciding to put SOMETHING in the Arcade every week meant that I got to see one of my childhood favorites reborn.
Time Pilot.
Story
I can't remember whether this is the story I made up in my mind as a kid, or if this was something in the owner's manual for the Colecovision version, or if it's half and half. Anyway, it goes something like this. The Time Pilot is the pilot's equivalent of the Predator. He goes throughout time looking for prey, and the best place to shoot down prey is in the middle of one of Earth's wars.
So he goes to some of the great aerial battles from Eath's history, and shoots down a bunch of planes. Along the way, he'll encounter Time Pilots who didn't accomplish their goals (i.e. the lives you lost in previous attempts to beat the game. They're all stuck in the past with no plane to fly home now.) so he rescues them, if possible.
If that's not the story for this game, it totally should be.
As a side note, this is one of the first games I'd ever played where the US was an enemy. In the 1970's level you fight helicopters, and the boss, at least as described by the Coleco manual, was a Chinook transport copter.
Gameplay
Time Pilot doesn't play like your typical shoot 'em up. Instead of you moving your fighter as an individual item on an independently moving background, the background is infinite, and you rotate the background and your fighter at the same time. This means that while you're travelling through the level, you have to make sure you don't fly yourself into projectiles or other aircraft on accident more often than you would in a normal shooter. Once you get used to this bit of difference, the game controls pretty tightly.
You have to kill off a set number of fighters before the boss will appear, as indicated at the bottom of the screen. Fighters will sometimes in squadrons, and the elimination of the entire squadron will get you a small bonus. The failed Time Pilots will also appear at set intverals, and picking them up is usually you best bet for points. The first one gets you 1,000 points, all the way up until the 5th and each one after nets you 5,000.
Now, since you don't have to kill off any fighter, you could theoretically just pick up paratroopers and rack up a huge score. That's only partially true. The longer you stay on any given level, the fighters get more and more upset and the AI starts getting a lot more aggresive in its quest to kill you. There's a bit of risk vs. reward going on.
Graphics
Digital Eclipse plugged in some updated high-res graphics, making this the first game that's been updated in any way on the Live Arcade so far. They still don't wow you or anything, but it's nice that SOME effort has been put into to updating what you could have been playing on a emulator ages ago.
Other than that you're getting some of the niftiest visuals the arcade, circa 1982 had to offer. The 2001 level has you flying around in space trying to fend off UFOs with parallaxing asteroids in the background. Back in 1982, that was still big news. Nowadays, it's not going to do much to get your motor running.
Sound
The sound also got a bit of an update, but it's even more minor than the graphical update. Aside from the opening song, everything pretty much sucks, though. 4-5 different bleeps for you to try and curb your enthusiasm over.
Overall
A pretty good job porting the game, but if you don't get into this game for the sake of make a run at the top of the leaderboard, or if you're not a shooter aficionado, you're probably not going to be to enthralled by this game. However, if you have Microsoft points lying around, this is sadly one of your better buys on the system at this point.
