This year, I've been chasing a dream alongside my freelancing. I'm a big fan of entertainment media and games in particular, and I've been lucky enough to land a contributor spot at GameSpew, an independent news outlet for all things games. You should check them out. Initially doing the odd feature article, I seem to have found my niche in digging through gaming history.
I've covered Time Crisis, Future Cop, and plan to cover the ancient PES/FIFA rivalry in the coming weeks too. Bit of a proud moment for me, doing cool stuff like this is one thing I dreamed of as a kid, but never really figured I was cut out for. Funny how things turn out.
Check out a sample of the article below, or just go ahead and jump over to the site, and give them the traffic!
You remember light guns, right? You know, you’d point the gun at the screen and shoot until everything on the screen is dead? Or until your arms give out under the unbearable agony of cramp?
Light gun games are now commonly referred to as rail shooters, whereby the player is set on a predetermined course, only controlling the gun in their hand rather than their own trajectory. As boring as that sounds on paper, the genre has been a staple of arcades ever since Duck Hunt. They’ve fallen off with the arrival of the first-person shooter, but the genre enjoyed a great run, with arguably its golden age in the nineties with the arrival of Time Crisis.
A new kind of rail shooter
Time Crisis changed the rail shooter. Beforehand, players would face an onslaught of increasing numbers of enemies and have to constantly keep their finger on the trigger.
Time Crisis made things more tactical. Introducing the use of a pedal, players would step on it to pop out of cover and release it to drop back into safety and reload their guns. It brought a whole new emphasis to the genre as it played out in real-time, stressing the need for quick reflexes and shrewd aim as players were against the ticking clock to clear each area of enemies. If the timer hit zero, it was game over.
With different coloured enemies signifying the types of threat, certain ones would drop time extensions if players were quick enough to put them down.
Players assumed the role of Richard Miller, known as a ‘One Man Army’ despite having a name that’s more fitting to a geography teacher. Players had to fight their way through a castle controlled by a militia seeking to retake control of their former country, to rescue the former president’s daughter, Rachel Macpherson. In charge was the knife-wielding Conan O’Brien-lookalike, Sherudo Garo, assisted by bomb-fanatic and series-recurring antagonist Wild Dog.
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