Ludography
Time Cruise cover

1991 · Pinball

Time Cruise

NEC exclusive

A sci-fi themed pinball game on the TurboGrafx-16. The pinball can activate time machines which sends it to bonus tables in different time zones.

Released
8 November 1991
Platforms
TurboGrafx-16
Genres
Pinball
Developers
—
Publishers
—
Perspective
Bird view / Isometric
Themes
Science fiction

About

Time Cruise (known as Time Cruise II in Japan) is a science fiction themed pinball video game developed by Face for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 game system, released on November 8, 1991 in Japan and December 1992 in the United States.

Media

Time Cruise screenshot 1

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The Time Cruise playfield consists of seven screens and scrolls both horizontally and vertically. The player can nudge the table to influence the ball's path, but doing this too many times can cause a tilt condition, resulting in a lost ball. Scattered around the playfield are five different time travel switches. Hitting a switch with the ball activates its corresponding time travel mechanism, and landing the ball in an activated mechanism causes a time warp to take place.

C. to an orbiting Mars colony in 2054, and take the form of bonus stages where the player can earn points and extra balls. Occasionally, due to flaws in the time travel system the player will be brought to an alternate dimension (a sixth bonus stage) rather than the time period they intended to warp to. The game ends either when the player loses all of their balls, or when they attain a score of 99,999,999 which causes an ending cut-scene and the game's credits to be displayed.

Story

Time Cruise's plot centers around Eric, a young scientific genius. Eric learns the secret of time travel by channeling with an intelligent extraterrestrial lifeform. After 8 years of hard work, Eric completes his time travel system (seven buildings with a time-travel pod moving between them at high speeds) and sets off in his shining silver time travel pod to explore the limits of time and space.

Reception

Time Cruise garnered generally favorable reviews from critics. GamePro's Otter Matic magazine praised the game's visuals and controls, but heavily criticized the audio and soundtrack as the weakest aspect of the game.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
TurboGrafx-168 November 1991Worldwide

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Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.