{"id":25775,"date":"2026-09-09T21:20:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T02:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/?page_id=25775"},"modified":"2026-09-09T21:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T02:20:23","slug":"time-killers-arcade-review","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/time-killers-arcade-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Time Killers (Arcade) Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Time Killers (Arcade) Review<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Time Killers Home Page<\/a><\/td>Arcade Game Catalog<\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tis but a flesh wound!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~by tankMage (September 2026)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Score: 65\/100 (Poor)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time Killers is often dragged for breaking a lot of the cardinal rules of fighting game design. Any serious fan of fighters is going to sneer at the insta-death moves that can end a fight immediately at any time, the poor character balance, and trash AI. Worse yet, it costs two coins to play,  which was very steep for a third rate arcade title in 1992. With all these things going against it, it’s no surprise Time Killers garnered a terrible reputation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I disliked this fighter, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to give it a completely negative review. Sure, it doesn’t look good or play well, but it’s undeniably entertaining for a brief time until its novelty wears off. It’s also much more serviceable than some of the other despised fighting games floating around out there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a nutshell, Time Killers is not a tournament tier fighter. Nobody won purses or earned nerd fame for being good at it. But it has some value as a curiosity. It’s one of those games that are fun to try over a few beers with some friends. Beyond that, it’s tripe.<\/p>\n\n\n

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What a steaming pile of dino dung.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Wait, there’s a story?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you may have guessed from the name, Time Killers seems to be about a group of warriors who have been plucked from different points in history in order to fight in a tournament. I sat through the teaser several times to see if there’s any explanation as to why these guys are hacking each other to bits, but it’s never explained. However, every character has a brief bio and an ending, so that counts for something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not sure how I feel about the way the devs handled the story, mostly because I couldn’t bring myself to care. The premise is actually pretty cool, but it’s kind of like glazing a turd with sugar. You can roll it around in sugar all you want, but it’s still a turd. I’ll also add that it’s not worth slogging through this mess of a game with all eight characters just to see their three sentence ending blurbs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art Killers<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not sure who looked at Time Killers and said \u201cThis is ready for mass production\u201d but they were wrong. The graphics should work with its gore and super colorful comic book art style, yet there’s something wrong with the way this game looks. Maybe it’s the character’s strange proportions. Or it could be the color scheme. Or maybe it’s just the generic character designs. Either way, the graphics have this amateurish look. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time Killers\u2019 graphics could have been truly impressive if not for the glaring flaws. Most fighters at this time were styled after anime, so something that looked like a Western comic book could have really stood out. In fact, Time Killers DID stand out, but not for the right reasons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As much as I knocked the quality of the graphics, I have to give the artist(s) credit for trying. There are a lot of details that catch the eye and the creators were trailblazers when it comes to things like dismemberment\u2026though that’s a rather dubious honor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when I say this game is a gore fest, I mean it. It may not be as violent as Mortal Kombat, but it’s close. Limbs are severed on a regular basis, characters bleed, and decapitation is the main way to finish a fight quickly. Wounds also show up on fighters as they take damage. Incredible Technologies even made it so severed limbs would twitch on the ground. Guess you can’t call the artist lazy, that’s for sure. As much as I dislike the graphics, I have to admit that they must have played a role in Time Killers\u2019 modest success. After all, this fighter caught my eye. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is kind of a post script since I forgot to describe the generic cast. Pretty much everything you’d expect from a game about a bunch of guys from various time periods fighting each other is in Time Killers. There’s a knight, a viking, a samurai, a caveman, and a girl from the future who predictably wields a light saber. Incredible Technologies tried to get imaginative with the other three characters and mostly failed. They added a mutant bug thing, a guy from the 21st century with a chainsaw, and another guy from the future for some inexplicable reason. Both futuristic characters look like redrawn sprites of each other, so I guess there’s our answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can’t say they did anything wrong when it came to their choice of time periods (aside from the two space age characters) but they did fail to make them distinctive in any meaningful way. This is pretty sad when you consider the fact that Ryu, a guy in a karate gi, is one of the most recognizable arcade characters of all time. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Oh boy, a light saber! Just like the movie! This game sucks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Insta-Death Derby<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graphical issues hurt Time Killers, but it truly fails as a fighting game. Devs had largely figured out design for this genre by 1992 and the rules for what is considered a good fighter are fairly clear. There has to be some semblance of balance as well as variety between playable characters, there should be ways to avoid or break out of spammed moves, matches should last about 30 seconds to a minute\u2026you get the idea. Incredible Technologies took one look at these rules of thumb (if they even did that much) and said \u201cNah, we know better than those dummies who made Street Fighter II!\u201d when they set the rules for Time Killers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what’s wrong with the mechanics you may ask? The answer is: A lot, so buckle up. First off, all the characters feel very similar to one another. You can pretty much separate the entire roster into two groups that have pretty much the same fighting styles. I understand there’s a finite pool of special moves and combat styles, but surely they could have made everyone feel more unique, even if only within the context of the game. Consequently, the roster of warriors is really bland and picking a hero feels inconsequential after you’ve tried a few of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major fault is the terrible AI of the computer controlled opponents. I’m not a fighting game expert by any means, so there’s something wrong if I can get through an entire game by spamming the reach attack and blocking. This tactic worked with multiple characters too, though I was only able to stomach the game enough to fully beat it with Rancid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final and most grievous sin of Time Killers is its insta-death move mechanic. Mashing all four attack buttons at once will make your fighter perform a super death move that can instantly defeat their opponent in a single hit. This works even if the other guy has full health from what I can tell. The computer also likes to use this move a lot. I don’t think I need to point out how cheap this sort of thing is in a fighting game, especially since it’s so easy to pull off. I can’t imagine any hardcore fighting game player taking Time Killers seriously thanks to this one mechanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fair, it’s not difficult to block or dodge any of the insta-death moves. Plus you can punish someone who tries it with a well timed counter attack. That said, it’s still a bad way to design a fighter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to admit there are some things I couldn’t quite figure out. Executing special moves felt like a matter of chance and I couldn’t seem to use many of them despite the fact that all of them are supposedly just combinations of the attack buttons and not Street Fighter style combos. There’s also instances where one of the combatants\u2019 health bars starts to fill up with a lighter green color, but I’m not sure what it means. Maybe it’s supposed to be padding against instant death?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time Killers really feels like a mockery of the fighting genre. I find it difficult to believe none of the devs took a minute to compare their game to others like it or paid attention to how their audience interacted with such games. Fighting games would often draw crowds of spectators and I remember arguments breaking out among players, so something like one-hit-KO moves was sure to start actual fights. Consequently, Time Killers strikes me as a joke or something designed by trolls rather than an honest attempt at a fighter. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Highway Robbery<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It cost two coins to play Time Killers back in the 90s. This may not sound like much, but that fifty cents US was the preserve of hot titles and cockpit flight sims. Big names like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Afterburner could get away with charging fifty cents or even a dollar because they were premium games. Time Killers is a hokey wannabe that barely merits a single quarter. Worse yet, the hot games that everyone wanted to play were generally far more fair. Sure, the CPU may have cheated a lot in MK1, but it wouldn’t insta-kill you right out the gate the first time you played it. In fact, the first few matches were pretty easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Wikipedia, Time Killers sold 7000 cabinets, which is a lot for a no-name developer. I can guess why this was the case. The game is eye-catching and the high price of a single play meant arcade owners could expect a return on investment. Add in the cheap mechanics and you have a box that’s designed to eat change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bad Music to go with Bad Gameplay <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time Killers runs on Sega hardware, which means you actually have to know what you’re doing, or at least care, to get good music out of the machine. A sure sign of bad game is the cheap, sleazy guitar sound font that lazy composers seemed to lean on so much. You guessed it, Time Killers uses all the worst sound fonts in the lowest effort way possible and the music is pretty bad as a result. It’s it awful? No. But I’d rather turn the sound off than listen to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also get treated to crackling 8-bit voice samples. I can’t fault the devs for the sound quality since Sega’s sound chips weren’t really designed for this sort of thing. If anything, I’m kind of impressed they were able to add so many voice samples. That said, it took a while for me to realize the viking dude was shouting \u201cWoden\u201d at the end of each match, which is something I should have recognized right away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK, adding another post script here. It was very hard to recall what the music sounded like when I was first writing this review, so I listened to the OST. It turns out that the music is basically a bunch of noise. They must have been going for some kind of artsy crap, but it doesn’t work. It’s just plain awful and another reason this game sucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now for a rambling old man story!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I actually saw Time Killers in an arcade back in 1993 or so and played it. I was just old enough to be left alone in an arcade at the time (hey this was the 90s!) and couldn’t resist the temptation to play this gory, violent game that my mother would object to\u2026hell even my dad would have raised an eyebrow at it. So, I put my two quarters in the machine, got instantly gibbed, then died in about thirty seconds on the second bout. Needless to say, I felt ripped off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arcade had a good crowd, but Time Killers was basically empty the entire time I was there. This leads me to believe a lot of gamers had similar experiences and avoided it like the plague. It was actually that experience that led me to review it all these years later and I gotta say it’s a poor excuse for a fighter even when played on an emulator where money is not an object.<\/p>\n\n\n

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I took this screenshot and I’m not even sure what’s happening here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Final Thoughts<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was hard on Time Killers, but a lot of the other reviews I’ve seen were far more critical of it. While I can understand its negative reception, I won’t pretend this game is completely without merit. It’s at least somewhat entertaining with its over the top gore and eclectic cast. We’ve also got to be honest with ourselves and admit that there are far, far worse fighting games out there. I know one thing being worse than another thing doesn’t give the less bad thing a pass, but perspective matters. If you don’t believe me, give Rise of the Robots a whirl. Heck, try the console version of Time Killers which is the digital equivalent of dog vomit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything, Time Killers has some value as a curiosity. It’s a bizarre attempt at cashing in on the success of Mortal Kombat and a relic of a bygone era. While not worth playing as a fighter, it’s so odd that curious gamers may be able to get a bit of mileage out of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for reading my review of Time Killers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RetroMaggedon.com \u00a92026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time Killers (Arcade) Review Time Killers Home Page Arcade Game Catalog \u2018Tis but a flesh wound! ~by tankMage (September 2026) Score: 65\/100 (Poor) Time Killers is often dragged for breaking a lot of the cardinal rules of fighting game design. Any serious fan of fighters is going to sneer at the insta-death moves that can … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25775","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25777,"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25775\/revisions\/25777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}