This game is rated ESRB: Everyone for Mild Violence.
Time Pilot is a multi-directional aerial combat shooter developed by Yoshiki Okamoto and released by Konami in 1982 for arcades, with ports following on ColecoVision, Atari 2600, MSX, and later PC and Xbox 360. The player controls a futuristic fighter jet on a mission to rescue stranded pilots scattered across different historical time periods. Each era presents waves of enemy aircraft to destroy before a boss mothership must be defeated to advance. The game's open-ended scrolling system allows movement in any direction across an unbounded sky, with the background shifting opposite to the player's craft, which stays fixed at the center of the screen. This design creates a sense of free-roaming aerial combat rather than a constrained flight path. Time Pilot appeared during the golden age of arcade gaming and was later recognized by the Killer List of Videogames among its top 100 arcade titles of all time.
This game has the player travel through five time periods, rescuing stranded fellow pilots. The player must fight off droves of enemy craft while picking up parachuting friendly pilots. Once 56 enemy craft are defeated, initially 25 on the MSX platform and increasing by 5 after each game cycle (finishing the last battle against the UFOs), the player must defeat the mothership for the time period. Once she is destroyed, any remaining enemy craft are also eliminated and the player time-travels to the next level. All the levels have a blue sky and clouds as the background except the last level, which has space and asteroids instead. The specific eras visited, the common enemies, and the motherships are the following: 1910: biplanes and a blimp 1940: WWII monoplanes and a B-25 1970: helicopters and a large, blue CH-46 1982 (Konami version)/1983 (Centuri version): jets and a B-52 2001: UFOs The mothership is destroyed with seven direct hits. Once all the eras have been visited, the levels start over again but are harder and faster. The Game Boy Advance version of Time Pilot in Konami Arcade Classics includes a hidden sixth era, 1,000,000 BC, where the player must destroy vicious pterodactyls in order to return to the early 20th century.
