Mastery #13: Time Zone (NES)

 

    This was not my intentional plan in anyway. Megan had recently gotten Dragon Quest XI for the Switch so she was playing it out in our living room. As I was still waiting for my Retroid to be delivered I decided to pull out our little TV and my RetroPie I built last year. I wasn't crazy about the RetroPie which is why I don't use it too often. Without going down a long winded hyper-critical reason why I don't like playing on the RetroPie, this game fell on my lap with the 'random game' option built into the RetroPie menu. Seeing it was a game I have never played before & I had just finished smoking I figured, "what the hell". The opening was a cute little animation opening up for a possibly good game. Although the story was in Japanese (I do believe there is a English patch that is supported by RA) the cute artwork drew me in. I was not prepared for the strange frustrating but loving journey I was about to go on. The game immediately gives Super Mario 3 vibes. With it's overworld map and selecting the level, even in actual gameplay it plays very similar to it. This wasn't too uncommon by this point in the game industry though either.

        Each world consisted of 4 levels and one quiz stage & the game itself only contained 6 worlds. The four levels definitely played very similar to each other in each world. As in there is a introductory stage, than a moving screen stage, precise jumping stage, usually to a mix of the whole bag on the last stage. What really drew me into this game aside from the artwork was how the character attacks. Getting the feeling of "I have played something like this before..." my initial reaction to seeing the first enemy was to jump on them. Luckily this already taught me something which was you don't kill enemies by jumping on them, but also you don't die either. This will come in handy to my surprise when fighting bosses. But the main character's primary attack was he would throw his hat similar to a boomerang. But instead of a simple throw forward and it comes back to you the hat moved in a way similar to almost like a yo-yo. With the proper throw & jump the hat would circle your main character like a fly hovering dog crap. You can't throw the hat again until it returns back to the character, this simple fascinating mechanic wasn't used very often in the NES library. When thinking about it this kind of weapon doesn't exist in many games in general, but when throwing your hat & hitting an enemy the hat keeps going in motion hitting other enemies as well. Doing this attack releases some endorphins in my brain, it's like knocking over a bunch of dominoes lined up. It's difficult to explain without playing it and seeing it but it's such a cool mechanic that isn't used very often in gaming.

 

     Now to the nitty gritty, the achievements. Like mentioned before I randomly choose this game, so I had no idea what cheevos (short name for RetroAchievements) was in this game. I just randomly selected it the game and just figure I would play earning any rando cheevos along the way. After earning the first cheevos beating the first world was when I was interested in looking up the other cheevos. I noticed rather quickly this was a small simple set of only 6 achievements. https://retroachievements.org/game/4687

    It was at this point where I became way more attentive and interested in earning all the cheevos to this game. Seeing it was just a simple "Beat the game" cheevos set I started my quest. I was trying my best to beat the game in one sitting, but since it was a work night & it was already getting rather late I tried my luck beating it all in one go. At this point I realized just how annoying this game can be, mixed with the drowning repeating music the level designs were not the greatest & the enemy placement is almost meant to mess you up more than be 'obstacles'. The playable character moves fast & whenever he throws his hat he jolts forward a bit, but how the screen renders it doesn't give you the ample time to react when an enemy spawns on the screen. This gave me to a lot of game over screens which thank goodness this game gives you unlimited continues. After several trial n' errors I had to forfeit the night and prepare to power through it on a different day. But I felt comfortable getting farther faster for this game can be easily memorized thus getting far in each world is rather quick. 

This jump took me forever. How was I suppose to know that the blue head dinosaur was suppose to launch me up into the air to land on this tree?

    Getting to the end of the game was much easier 2nd time around. Also even though I can't read Japanese entirely I was able to figure out the answers to the quiz questions which stacked up even more lives on my stack. The only issue I had was fighting bosses again. The bosses overall was rather simple, just memorize their pattern and attack when open. Each boss actually was pretty fun, the boss fights had elements of Megaman boss fights mixed with Joe & Mac boss fights. Obviously some bosses were more difficult than others, like the 1600's Japan levels boss was a frustrating pattern to learn. Than there were others where I was confused exactly what the last boss was like the early 1885 America levels where you fight a train as the last boss. But since this was my 2nd run I got to the final world pretty fast.

This was the World 3 (1885 AD) where you fight a train as the world's boss.

    Fighting the last boss Dr Wily..I mean Dr Time was not an extremely difficult task. Just follow the method as the previous bosses. Learn the pattern & attack when you can. Also much like Dr Wily the doctor has two forms to him, since you can only get hit once I died a handful of times on his 2nd form. At first it seemed rather random but of course there was a rhythm to it. But when I did finally earn that last cheevo it was my last guy before getting a game over & although when you die on the level you have to repeat the entire level over again. But with a game over you have to repeat the entire world over again, which in retrospect isn't THAT difficult but just rather time consuming. But with much focus and not blinking I was able to beat the doctor, but I won't lie I did hold my breath for another form of the doctor. Thus I sat back and watched the ending with all it's glory & just happy to be done with the game entirely. 

    I know there were a lot more things that I missed to this game. And I know I can probably do some cleaning up and rework on this post but I am still a bit new to this idea and just trying to flush everything out without making it a novel of a review. I know I missed talking about the power-ups and such but just trying to get the perfect mix of the story of me hunting for the achievements & the lite-review of the game. Hope you enjoy none the less!

On the left is an enemy from Time Zone. On the left is a picture of ToeJam from "ToeJam & Earl". These two look like they could be brothers or cousins.