YMMV / Time Gal

• Awesome Music: The Japanese opening features a vocal theme song, "Exceed the Space Time", performed by Reika Kirishima's voice actress, Yuriko Yamamoto. Even better, the full version.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The most remembered thing about the game is the fact that it has an attractive anime-styled girl running around in a bikini for the whole game.
• Fair for Its Day: Examining the game decades after its release may raise criticism about how the game derives much of the humor from emphasizing the protagonist, Reika Kirishima, as a Ms. Fanservice; one game over simply ends with her getting her pants torn off without any fatal injury. Compare her to Dragon's Lair's Dirk, the other Plucky Comic Relief hero of Interactive Movie game, and the difference is obvious. However, Reika was a breakthrough in video gaming when Time Gal came out in 1985. The fact that a major publisher like Taito released a heroine-centered title (without hiding her identity like Metroid did) was noteworthy, and Reika is portrayed as a straight hero who saves the world by herself just like other FMV game heroes.
• Funny Moments: Many of the deaths are this, a good example being when Reika is defeated by having her bikini bottom destroyed, leaving her naked.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The 2001 and 2010 stages are depicted as a futuristic Cyberpunk setting and The End of the World as We Know It, respectively. Needless to say, Taito was way off.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The 1990 stage features Reika escaping from pursuing tanks and helicopters. While the game was released in 1985, in real life, The Gulf War happened in 1990, and as such later releases changed the date to 1991.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In B.C. 30,000, one death scene has Reika accidentally shoot one of her ancient ancestors, erasing her from existence via disintegration.
  • Even when rendered in her Chibi form during it, one death in B.C. 16,000 is particularly awful. The giant Woolly Mammoth that's chasing her falls through ice into deep water, and grabs Reika in its trunk; if she doesn't jump out in time, she panics and flails as she's slowly dragged under with the Mammoth and drowns.
  • There's a part in 3999 where, if Reika doesn't shoot webbing from the aliens off of her leg after she opens the escape hatch to get rid of them, she'll be sucked out into space. It's made even scarier in the U.S. version; in the Japanese version, she just says "Goodbye!" (in one version; in another, she says "I hate aliens!"), while in the U.S. version, she screams in terror. Chilling.
• Older Than They Think: Debuting in 1985, Reika is among the earliest video game heroines in history, predating even Samus Aran.
• Porting Disaster: It still plays like the arcade, but the Sega CD version has far inferior visuals. The framerate is lower, and the artistry of the original is downgraded severely. Comparison here.
• Quirky Work: A 16-year-old girl who goes through time battling (among other things) dinosaurs, cavemen, pirates, and rogue motorcyclists.