Time Pilot
Time Pilot is an arcade game developed by Yoshiki Okamoto and published by Konami in 1982, distributed in the United States by Centuri and scrolling in multiple directions. The game, which debuted in the golden age of arcade video games, is a time travel game in which the player's plane can move freely over an open airspace that can be moved indefinitely in all directions. The Killer List of Videogames has included Time Pilot in its list of the 100 best arcade games of all time. The player takes on the role of a pilot of a futuristic fighter jet trying to rescue other pilots trapped in different eras of time. The player must fend off hordes of enemy spaceships and defeat the mothership (or "boss") that exists in each level. The background moves in the opposite direction to the player's plane and not vice versa; the player's plane always stays in the center.
Story
In this game, the player travels through five eras and rescues stranded fellow pilots. The player must fend off armies of enemy spaceships while picking up parachuting friendly pilots. Once 56 enemy spaceships have been defeated - on the MSX platform there are 25 initially, and 5 more with each game cycle - the player must defeat the time period mothership (after the final battle against the UFOs). Once it is destroyed, all remaining enemy ships are also eliminated and the player travels to the next level over time. All levels have a blue sky and clouds as a background, except for the last level, which shows space and asteroids instead. The eras visited, the common enemies and the mother ships are the following: 1910: Biplanes and an airship. 1940: monoplanes from the Second World War and a B-25 1970: helicopters and a big 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 you've visited all the eras, the levels start over, but are more difficult and faster. The Game Boy Advance version of Time Pilot in Konami Arcade Classics includes a hidden sixth era, 1,000,000 BC, in which the player must destroy vicious pterodactyls to get to the early 20th century.