Time Lord is a Side-Scrolling Platform Game released for Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990. It is one of the earliest games to be released for the Nintendo by Rare.
In the year 2999, Earth is under siege by aliens from the planet Drakkon. The player controls the titular Time Lord, humanity's last hope against the Drakkon Lord, who must use a Time Machine to travel back in time to four different eras, where adapted Drakkon warriors are wreaking havoc in an effort to change the course of human development and render them more easily conquered in the present day. Using humanity's only remaining time machine, the Time Lord must travel to Medieval England 1250 AD, Western U.S.A. 1860 AD, the Caribbean 1650 AD, and France 1943 AD and defeat the Drakkons. However, he can only advance to each new zone by capturing power sources from the Drakkon forces, and if he fails to return to Earth by January 1, 3000... it's all over.
No relation to a certain other Time Lord.
Tropes present in this game:
- Bag of Spilling: Time Lord loses all his acquired weapons when he starts a new level.
- Boring Yet Practical: Sometimes, going unarmed has its advantages in obtaining orbs.
- Choice of Two Weapons: In each of the time zones, barring the middle ages, you can obtain two period appropriate weapons. Some of these overlap into several time periods. For example, the sword appears in the middle ages and the pirate ship and the revolver can be obtained in The Wild West and World War II.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The manual refers to the player character only as Time Lord.
- Flawed Prototype: The human time machine. While the Drakkons have perfected time travel and are using it to defeat humanity by changing its history, the time machine the player uses runs on San Dimas Time and is highly unstable. Taking too long to complete your mission will cause the machine to explode.
- Guide Dang It!: The orbs. Their placement is randomised and the methods to acquire them are ridiculously non-intuitive.
- Homing Projectile: A gun that fires these may be found in the final stage.
- MegaCorp: Apparently, Milton Bradley have branched out from board games into time travel.
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Nintendo Hard: See the time limit above, and add in you're pretty much a One Hitpoint Wonder, the abundance of enemies, the fact you start each level with only your bare hands to defend against said enemies, the Guide Dang It! nature of the time orbs you need to collect... - On-Site Procurement: Each time zone has packages with period-appropriate weaponry provided for the player. Until then, you start unarmed.
- Plot Coupons: You have to collect five orbs in each level, and a lot of them require you to solve some kind of puzzle, such as shooting it repeatedly to let you hover close enough to grab it.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: In the Wild West time zone, the player can collect a revolver and a shotgun. The revolver is a much more useful weapon for the boss fight, since while firing, you're invulnerable to his bullets. You have to spam the b button to a painful level to achieve this, though.
- San Dimas Time: The clock is always running in 2999, although there is no way in heck that conquering a couple levels would take a year unless it's an inverted Year Inside, Hour Outside.
- Timed Mission: You have 24 minutes and 34 seconds to complete the game in, as one day in "the present" In-Universe passes for every 4 seconds of play time. If you don't return to fight the Drakkon Lord before that time limit is up, you get a Non-Standard Game Over.
- Watch for Rolling Objects: Pirate ship stage has rolling barrels as stage hazard.
- A Winner Is You: Considering just how damn hard this game is, the ending paragraph is extremely unsatisfying.You have saved the Earth and driven the evil aliens from our planet. We must guard against their return. For the present we go forth in peace and tranquility.
