Time Crisis
FORMAT PLAYSTATION / PUB NAMCO / DEV NAMCO / RELEASED 1997 / BEST WITH… G-CON45
This is perhaps the most famous lightgun game of all – masses of people have played it owing to the arcade version’s popularity, and its propensity to show up in motorway service stations.
In arcades Time Crisis bucked the lightgun trend by including a pedal which allowed players to take cover before popping back out to lay down fire. Combined with a constant countdown, it was a perfectly balanced mechanic which would push you through each area and boss fight – if a player took cover for too long they’d run out of time and be unable to finish the level, but if they took a careless all-action approach they would probably be gunned down.
With so many fans, it was only a matter of time before Time Crisis jumped from arcades to consoles, but there was be a down side: lightguns were already expensive, and bundling in a pedal would have killed sales. Players who didn’t want to fiddle with the oddly placed cover button on the G-Con45 (the Namco-developed de facto Time Crisis home controller) could plug a controller into the second port and put it on the ground. Enter the ingenuity of gamers – cardboard squares Blu-Tacked to the controller to create a makeshift pedal. Or they could yell at a younger sibling to “Press the damn button!”
Aside from this awkwardness, the home release of Time Crisis was a superb port and it eliminated the need to pump coins into a machine when you succumbed to death or time ran out. Time Crisis became a blockbuster series spawning many sequels, none of which seem to reach home consoles nowadays, which is a shame given the technology we have. Time Crisis VR anyone?