Video Game / Time Stalkers

"Hey! You're our hero!"

Time Stalkers (or Climax Landers in Japan) is a 1999 Roguelike turn-based JRPG developed by Climax Entertainment, the minds behind Shining Force and Landstalker, and published by Sega. It has the distinction of being one of the first RPGs on the Sega Dreamcast. The main cast of Time Stalkers features Crossover characters and locations from other Climax titles.

The story follows Sword, a wandering swordsman who pursues an assailant into a clocktower. Inside he finds a library and, after casually flipping through a random book, is knocked unconscious and transported to a floating landmass pieced together from different worlds and time periods. He is immediately confronted by an old man calling himself Master, who declares Sword to be The Chosen One destined to save Ring World from an unspecified evil out to destroy it. Over the course of the story, Sword is joined on his quest by Rao (implied to be from the world of Feda: The Emblem of Justice), Nigel from Landstalker, Pyra from Shining in the Darkness, and Lady from Lady Stalker.

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Time Stalkers contains examples of the following tropes:

• Abhorrent Admirer:
  • Captain Hawk aggressively hits on every woman in ring world, who react either with contempt or confusion.
  • Sho is infatuated with June, who for her own part condescends to him and is put off by his affection. She still goes on dates with him, though.
  • Ash to Captain Hawk, though if Rao confronts them about it they'll insist it's just a joke.
  • Bob is quietly obsessed with Pyra, who does not take well to his stalking.
  • June flirts aggressively with Sword. Sword bluntly demands that she shut up and go away.
• Aborted Arc:
  • After recovering from his depression, Dr. Alan begins research into a mysterious star. This is never resolved.
  • Masaru Tanaka becomes convinced that he's the creator of Ring World, and that an equally powerful being is restricting his powers. After fretting about it for a while, he goes to see Dr. Alan for an invention to boost his power. When Dr. Alan ignores him, Masaru simply gives up and goes home.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Miss Joanne will sometimes admit to liking Howard's joke during her debriefing.
• Adventure-Friendly World: Ring World was designed from the ground up to be this. The inhabitants are equipped to facilitate heroes, who bear the requisite token needed to bypass the dungeon's barriers.
• Age-Gap Romance:
  • Akane Yamada, a high school student, is the object of both Captain Hawk and Nigel's affections. Captain Hawk is at least in his late twenties, and Nigel is in his eighties. Akane doesn't seem to notice their affection, much less return it.
  • The middle-aged Daisaku is infatuated with Princess Rose, who appears to be in her late teens to early twenties.
• All Just a Dream: Some of the characters hold this view of their new situation. Sandy believes she's just dreaming, and Masaru Tanaka thinks he's the solipsist creator of Ring World.
• Always Accurate Attack: Astral Magic circumvents magic's low accuracy and allows the caster to hit with 99% accuracy—the highest obtainable in the game.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Sword's race is never specified. His ears are pointier than a human's, but smaller than an elf's, and his character model has fangs. There's potential dialogue that goes into his origins, but it's between him and Marion, so there's no guarantee the player will ever see it.
  • Master is ambiguously elvish. He has ears similar to Pyra's and Nigel's, but he's bearded and looks quite elderly for a species with such a long lifespan. His race is never specified. It's also possible that his real body looks nothing like his avatar in the Ring World, if he even has a body at all.
• Ambiguous Situation: Rao comes from a world where a thousand-year war has waged against a Liberation Army and resulted in the creation of the Phantom Zone. While never spelled out explicitly, the evidence is compelling that Rao is from Mildras Graz of Feda: The Emblem of Justice, a sister series to the Shining franchise.
• Anachronism Stew: Ring World is built from multiple worlds across multiple genres and timelines. Its base components include a prehistoric volcano, several standard fantasy settings, a 1980s Japanese suburb, a 1950s urban center, and a futuristic sci-fi setting.
• Animal Lover: Sword prefers animals to people. Most of his downtime is spent either playing with dogs or nuzzling Mutton's coat.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Only one PC can enter a dungeon at a time, due to magic barriers that keep out anyone not carrying the Hero's Crest. Heroes can take up to two captured monsters with them into battle.
• Armed Legs: Cyborg-type monsters primarily attack with bladed kicks.
• Auto-Revive: A skill inherent to certain monster types. It can activate multiple times in one battle, making it especially annoying on enemies.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The heroes can wear ten rings at once; one for each finger. The character with the highest starting carrying capacity is Nigel, who can bring 8 items into a dungeon. To max out rings, a player would have to load a character with nothing but rings, send them into a dungeon, and get lucky enough with treasure hunting that they find an additional 2+ rings.
• Ax-Crazy: Lady prefers (and enjoys) violent solutions to problems.
• Bad Date: Zunda, a prehistoric tribal, takes June, a 1980s suburbanite, on a date to the convenience store.
• Beast and Beauty: Mr. Noiman and Bunny. Noiman is a portly, bizarrely dressed rabbit man, while Bunny is an attractive woman with rabbit ears.
• The Bully: When his wife is away, Jiro Yamada invites himself into Kenji Tanaka's home to insult him and his dog, wife, and son.
• But Thou Must!: Defied. The true plot revolves around the heroes' attempts to escape the story.
• Can't Spit It Out:
  • Bob, when confronted by Pyra about his stalking, can only stammer and avoid the topic.
  • Daisuke, normally a confident speaker, can't express his feelings toward Princess Rose.
• Casanova Wannabe: Several characters. Captain Hawk is the biggest offender. Sword is a middling example. He presents himself as a womanizer, but his interest in women seems limited to talking about how interested in women he is.
• Central Theme: Explore and embrace the world outside your borders while keeping to heart where you came from.
• Contemporary Caveman: Sho is the only member of the prehistoric tribe to venture outside of the village. He's fascinated by modernity and wants to fit in, but is just off-kilter enough that he fails.
• Contrived Coincidence: Master punishing the world for Sword's trick coincides with Masaru Tanaka wishing it would all disappear. This convinces Masaru of his suspicion that he is the true creator of Ring World.
• Cosmetic Award: The only high-value items for sale are art pieces purchased from Ash's Fashion Shop.
• Crapsack World: Rao's world has been locked in a state of war that's been perpetuated for so long that it has warped the landscape, creating areas like the Phantom Zone. Sword calls his own world cursed and hints at prolonged conflict with dark forces, but isn't as forthcoming with details.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Captain Hawk's reputation of "The Galaxy's Greatest Hero" is belied by his failed womanizing and disinterest in the threats facing the world. It's enough to make the heroes write him off. Then he emerges completely unharmed from Dr. Alan's death traps and they're forced to reassess his abilities.
  • Ash is as good of a boxer as they've ever been, new lifestyle notwithstanding. They manage to easily chase Boss and his gang out of their shop after a failed takeover.
• Cute and Psycho: Lady is an attractive young woman with an impulsive violent streak.
• Cypher Language: Kiwi, Dr. Alan's creation, has a relatively simple one. The text is reversed and an extraneous letter is added to the beginning of each word.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: Sword's full plan for dealing with Master: keep him distracted while one of the heroes goes on an adventure. The only thing it accomplishes is pissing Master off, which Sword concedes was the entire point.
• Dimension Lord: Master is this to the Ring World. He pieced it together from various worlds and timelines, and can manipulate its denizens at will.
• Don't Explain the Joke: Miss Joanne's whole purpose is explaining Howard's jokes.
• Driven to Suicide: Part of both Arthur and Zunda's plot arcs. They stand on the edge of Downtown, contemplating a cessation of existence. Both of them get better.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire, ice, and lightning. Fire and ice are opposed to one another, and lightning exists independently. In practice, none of this matters in gameplay.
• Endless Daytime: Ring World is locked in a state of perpetual day.
• Evil Doppelgänger: One of the boss types in the Doll House is an evil version of Marion.
• Exact Words: An injured Nigel convinces Sword to rescue Friday by assuring him that she's really cute. What he neglects to mention is that, as a sprite, Friday is only a few inches tall.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Despite having a Star Trek-esque space civilization and two modern urban centers as part of its composition, there isn't anything resembling a firearm to be found in Ring World. Cyborg-type monsters get access to a technique called "gun bullet," which appears to fire a point-blank bullet out of their arm. The Undead Lord bosses of the Phantom Zone have bandoliers, but no guns.
• A Fate Worse Than Death: Inflicted on the party. For robbing Master of his "living story", Ring World is cursed with undying hunger and thirst.
• Forever War: Rao comes from a world engulfed in one. By his own admission nobody remembers what it's being waged for.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: The party doesn't take too well to Lady. Pyra theorizes that Master summoned her to deliberately annoy the party.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Saved games have a tendency to become corrupted as they go on, with the community believing that it happens because a hero learns too many skills.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Implicitly invoked with most enemies, including the final boss. There's no context given to the bosses or where they came from because the heroes deliberately refuse to learn it.
• Gold Digger: June spends her time in Ring World searching for wealthy marriage material.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Boss's gang is ineffectual to the point of being harmless.
• Happily Married: Mr. Noiman and Bunny are perhaps the only happy, functional relationship in Ring World. Whenever the two are on screen together they spend their time fawning over one another.
• Has a Type: June is aroused by the "primitives" of the prehistoric tribe. When she finds out Sho is one of them, she goes from wanting him to leave her alone to resenting him for leaving.
• Henpecked Husband: Most of the married men, but Kenji Tanaka in particular. Interestingly, he claims enduring his wife's insults is a show of strength that provides her comfort.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • A given, considering it's a crossover. Pyra, Nigel, and Lady are all protagonists in their respective games.
  • Captain Hawk may be this, having identified himself as "The Galaxy's Greatest Hero." He has the strength to back up the claim, at least, but is ambivalent to the conflict and only engages with the heroes when he's making passes at them.
• Hobos: Billy and Bob are homeless men who wandered into Fountain Square just in time for it to get abducted into Ring World. Billy pursues his dream of living in the big city, which seems to include every location in Ring World. Meanwhile, Bob develops an infatuation with Pyra and follows her wherever she goes.
• Hypocritical Humor: If talking to Captain Hawk with a heroine, he'll warn them to be careful of perverts who would use them as sexual objects, denouncing them as the worse kind of human beings.
• Impossible Task: Heroes can take missions from Mr. Noiman that take the form of a task you must complete before finishing a dungeon. If the assignment requires them to find items that the dungeon decides not to spawn, or raise a monster to a certain level without providing enough XP, there's not much the hero can do about it.
• Infinite Stock For Sale: A feature of the Ring World. All stores have their stock magically refilled.
• Instant Expert: Marion is able to knock out Rao after only rudimentary instruction and cast a fire spell immediately after observing Pyra.
• Invincible Villain: Master proves to be this. His continued existence isn't linked to his physical body, and the heroes have no way to confront him on their terms. The best they can do is meet him halfway and give him the Grand Finale he craves.
• The Jeeves: Mutton, Sword's unfailingly polite and obedient servant. Mutton was magically created alongside Ring World and will likely disappear with it, but it's not in his nature to worry much about it.
• Kamehame Hadoken: The Energy Ball technique, which can be used with knuckles-type weapons or while unarmed.
• Karma Houdini: Other than not getting what he wanted from the world he built, Master doesn't face any consequences for his actions. He and the heroes part ways on relatively benign terms.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Sir Arthur's entire shtick involves him grumpily fretting over Princess Rose's safety as she explores her new surroundings. Follow his arc to its conclusion and he'll eventually get over himself, joining in on her adventures.
• Late Character Syndrome: Lady joins the party late into the game and has very little to contribute to the plot.
• Leitmotif: Each hero gets their own theme song that plays while they're the active character.
• Level-Locked Loot: Equipment requires certain stats in order to use. Because initial inventory space is so limited, this can be a problem when bringing higher-level gear into dungeons. Legendary Items can be upgraded at the shop to gradually reduce the stat requirements, making them easier to equip than other gear despite their superior value.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Inverted. Spellcasters like Pyra and Marion can one-shot enemies early on with spells, but their damage tends to not scale as well as physical attackers like Sword and Rao. More importantly, physical attackers get access to skills that allow them to hit one target multiple times, whereas higher level spells are limited to hitting multiple targets with the same damage as base spells. Either archetype can easily handle a dungeon, but high level warriors are much better at chewing through a boss' health bar.
• Made of Iron: Captain Hawk shrugs off Dr. Alan's death traps and Lady's deathblows.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Alan starts as the typical Absent-Minded Professor concerned with revealing the mysteries of Ring World, but after Professor Hawk unwittingly sabotages his work one too many times he dedicates his inventions toward revenge.
• Magic Knight: Sword is proficient with both weapons and magic, with an emphasis on fire spells. He's also capable of equipping staffs, which are caster-focused weapons.
• Make a Wish: Ring World tends to provide the heroes with what they say they need. Sword deduces this fact, and uses it to wish for someone who can circumvent Master's wards.
• Mascot RPG: It brings together the mascots or pre-established characters from the different games by Climax Entertainment.
• Mayfly–December Friendship: Pyra remarks how it's nice having a girl friend her age in Akane, only for a jealous Lady to chide her; as an elf, Pyra is close to ten times Akane's age.
• No-Sell:
  • No matter how high your defense gets, enemy attacks will still do a minimum of 1 damage. Negating damage completely requires the appropriate skill, like Mag Invalid or Dmg Invalid. These skills are very hard to learn, but can be found on certain items, like shields, or monsters, like Hard Bugs.
  • Balloon-type monsters can invalidate both Priority skills and spellcasting just by being present in a battle.
• Not Listening to Me, Are You?: Dr. Alan has a tendency to do this, which leads him to neglecting requests from Captain Hawk and Masaru Tanaka. He dismisses them as voices in his head.
• Not So Omniscient After All: Master usually knows everything that's going on in Ring World, but his senses become limited when he sends his soul to inhabit a body.
• Older Than They Look: Both Pyra and Nigel appear to be in their late teens, but are actually in their eighties. They're elves, after all.
• One-Man Army: Heroes with technique or spell priority combined with either All Tech or Mega/Giga spells can attack entire enemy groupings twice per turn. With a decent weapon and stats, this skill set-up will let the hero character clear the screen in a single turn or eat through boss HP by themselves.
• Physical God: Master can take a physical form to interact with the world. He's still effectively omnipotent, but no longer has a bird's eye view of Ring World. Given his motivations this turns out to be a critical weakness, and one that Sword manages to exploit.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Boss' gang spends most of the game getting chased out of prospective hideouts. When they finally manage to hold up in Rao's abandoned home they spend the rest of the game exalting in their new base of operations.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: The most obvious way the game balances attacks: techniques that deal more damage typically come with a hefty accuracy penalty. Spells in particular can have a 45-60% hit rate depending on the target to balance out the fact that they can wipe out whole parties.
• Princess Classic: Princess Rose looks and behaves as if she came straight out of a classic Disney film. Despite this-and Sir Arthur explicitly referring to her as "Princess"-she claims she's the daughter of an earl and thus not actually a princess.
• Purposefully Overpowered:
  • Marion can carry more items into dungeons than anyone, register more skills than anyone, has twice the hunger meter and bonus skill points, and naturally learns skills that negate physical and magical damage.
  • The secret dragon-type enemies are basically bosses that you can include in your party. They have 999 hunger, 6 to 7 times the hp your hero will have by the end of the dungeon, and can one-shot most enemies.
• Reality Warper: At minimum, Master can alter Ring World any way he sees fit by adding or removing pages from the book it exists in.
• Refusal of the Call: The driving force of the plot. None of the cast want to be heroes of Ring World and are doing their best to return home.
• Refused by the Call: Mr. Noiman is declared to be the chosen one by Master after his arrival, only for Master to rescind the proclamation after getting a better look at him.
• Roguelike: Heroes begin each randomly generated dungeon at level 1 with a limited pool of equipment brought with them from past adventures. As Time Stalkers came out before the Roguelike boom in the indie gaming sphere, the level reset was a frequent source of confusion and criticism.
• Rollerblade Good: Cyborg-type monsters move as if wearing skates.
• Scavenger Hunt: A possible mission type that involves finding one or more specific items in a dungeon. The game doesn't necessarily prioritize spawning the required items during a run, so whether or not the mission can be finished is a crap shoot.
• Scratch Damage: Provided you aren't grossly under-leveled for the floor you're on, most enemy attacks will only deal 1 damage. It's unclear if this was a deliberate design choice or not. Bosses and spellcasters can reliably do much more damage, and can quickly end a run if you're not careful.
• Sexy Dimorphism: Mr. Noiman is a rabbit-man, emphasis on rabbit. Bunny is a rabbit-woman, emphasis on woman.
• Sickeningly Sweet: The Bunny family lives in a fairy-tale house in a pastel world with smiley-faced flowers built on top of a googly-eyed flying turtle. Mr. Noiman is noticeably out of place there.
• Squishy Wizard: Pyra and caster-type monsters tend to be more susceptible to damage.
• Stalker with a Crush: After Pyra joins the party, Bob will always follow her around and pine after her from a safe distance.
  • Nigel appears to be this to Akane, spending a lot of time in the convenience store while she's manning the register. When confronted on this, he denies it.
• Stat Grinding: Skills have a stat requirement associated with their mastery. If the total value of a hero's stat requirements exceeds their current stats, all their skills are deactivated. The player can "seal" skills, temporarily removing them from the pool until their stats reach a point where they can be activated again.
• Stripperiffic: Lady wears a hot pink shoulderless mini dress, while Marion rocks a unitard with a Cleavage Window.
• Team Shot: The title screen has all the heroes in their action poses, looking up at the camera. Weirdly, the developers decided to have Nigel repeatedly scratch his nose and to pose Marron as an inanimate doll.
• Theotech: Dr. Anna's church is a part Shinto shrine, part Catholic cathedral, and part biology lab.
• Treasure Hunter: Nigel is one by trade, it being the focus of his debut game. Lady is likewise a treasure hunter in her original game, but that aspect of her character is less emphasized here in favor of general thrill-seeking.
• Trespassing Hero: Averted. Kenji Tanaka and Nattie both question why the heroes think it's appropriate to barge into homes.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: An in-universe example. Master is furious that Sword distracted him from part of the story, and ends up taking Sword up on his offer of a premature Grand Finale. The party never learns what exactly they were meant to "save" the world from.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Mr. Noiman is a short and squat anthropomorphic rabbit wearing bondage gear and a digital clock, while his wife, Bunny, is an attractive woman with bunny ears.
• The Unfought: The heroes never throw down against Master. As a disembodied presence that exists outside of Ring World, it's not really an option.
• Useless Useful Spell: Curses and certain weapons and techniques can inflict status effects. Most enemies can be defeated in one-hit, making their value dubious.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Predictably, the Final Cavern. It was created for this expressed purpose.
• Weirdness Censor: The residents of Fujimi Town are much more skeptical of their new surroundings than other Pieces, whose fantasy and sci-fi backgrounds can help explain their new neighbors. Masaru Tanaka believes the world is his solipsist creation, Sandy chalks it up to being a dream, and the Yamadas think their neighbors are wearing costumes or part of television crews.
• What Does She See in Him?: The character profiles asks this question of Bunny and Mr. Noiman. She never answers the question, but is obviously madly in love regardless. Mr. Noiman is conscious of the difference, and frets whenever she takes over the shop for him.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Ash, a former boxer turned friendly antiquarian. Being a game from the '90s, it's mum on whether Ash is a cross-dresser or transgender, with her character profile attributing their behavior to head trauma. Nonetheless, they're very cordial.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Predictably for a JRPG, many of the characters have atypical hair colors. Of the main cast, Sword has blue hair, Pyra has pink hair, and Marion has white hair.

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