- EARTH DATE: 03.09.2147
The Tirmatians launch a huge air attack to destroy the time travel base on earth.
The Human assault force is wiped out before it can be sent back in time...
One man is left alive... Dr. Vincent Gilgamesh.
He alone is left to face the Tirmatians...
Contra with Time Travel!
Time Slip is a 1993 Run-and-Gun game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, developed by The Sales Curve and published by Vic Tokai.
Set in the distant year of 2145, a race of aliens from Planet Tirmat, called the Tirmatians, discovered a space portal - or a "rift", as the game describes - leading from Tirmat to Earth, and sends their explorers and ambassadors to our world.
Meanwhile, humans currently researching intergalactic portals and about to reach a breakthrough makes First Contact with the Tirmatian leaders; an alliance is quickly established between humans and Tirmatians, with the Tirmatians agreeing to help humans in re-creating the space portal leading between earth and other worlds, on the condition that Tirmatians are allowed to set up their bases and research facilities on our world.
Two years later, everything the Tirmatians promised turns out to be a lie, for instead of achieving a mutual breakthrough in science, the Tirmatians are actually plotting an invasion to take over our world, and use the time portals created via an amalgamation of human and Tirmatian technology to travel to the past, rewrite earth's history, and drag humanity back to the stone age for ease of domination.
When the Tirmatians decide to launch an ambush to wipe out mankind's defenses first, all hope lies in the player's protagonist, Dr. Vincent Gilgamesh, who managed to hijack a Time Machine and escape into the past to stop the invasion.
Despite its title, the game is not related to the British TV series of the same name.
For more time-travelling madness, check out Spinal Breakers, Ninja Commando and Time Soldiers.
Time Slip contain examples of:
- Aliens Are Bastards: The Tirmatians, who in the backstory appears to be interested in forming an alliance with humans after discovering a portal leading to earth, but is secretly plotting an invasion. And then carries out a full-scale assault when their plans are exposed.
- Attack Drone: The city chase level have Vincent battling hovering Tirmatian drones of various sizes in a chase above the city, with the hero on a weaponized hover-bike shooting his way through. And have to fight four Giant Mook versions of the drones tall enough to form a wall at the end of said stage.
- Background Boss: The first boss is a massive dragon who remains in the back while it's head lunges ahead trying to attack Vincent. A dragon-like dinosaur shows up in the end of the prehistoric stage, also extending it's head from the background while lunging at Vincent.
- Badass Bookworm: Dr. Vincent Gilgamesh, the player protagonist, who's a scientist, doctor, and capable ass-kicker. As well as a One-Man Army who slays plenty of enemies via machine-gun.
- Bad Future: One of the last stages, which have Vincent traveling not to the past, but the future decades after Tirmatians had won the war, with New York turning into a massive set of ruins. The former citizens are now The Morlocks, for starters.
- Black Knight: A knight in black armor shows up as an early boss, which attacks Vincent while he's in medieval Europe. Said knight is tall enough to reach the area's top and attempts trampling Vincent, and turns out to be a robot sent by the Tirmatians to stop Vincent, though.
- Chicken Walker: The Tirmatians have multiple two-legged, bipedal, human-sized robots which they'll sic on Vincent throughout the game.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The prehistoric stage have a pterodactyl and a gigantic dragon-like dinosaur, both of them capable of breathing fireballs, somehow. Though they could be Tirmatians bio-weapons created to stop Vincent.
- Downer Beginning: The game's opening cinematics, which depicts the resistance's attempts to travel back in time to stop the Tirmatians, only for the aliens to invade and completely obliterate the human's hideout. The only survivor is the player's protagonist, Dr. Vincent Gilgamesh, who travels to the past to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
- Hover Bike: More than one Auto-Scrolling Level have Vincent leaping on a hover-cycle and speeding forward towards the next stage, while shooting at enemies along the way using the cycle's swivel-turret which allows him to shoot both in front and behind.
- Living Statue: Egypt have a building-sized statue of Set which inexplicably comes alive and attacks Vincent, serving as the stage's boss, though it's probably a weapon modified by the Tirmatians.
- Meaningful Name:
- The protagonist, Dr. Vincent Gilgamesh, named after the hero of a Mesopotamian epic and a saviour of mankind.
- The Tirmatian invading ship (which the last stage is set in) is called the Torquemada, very likely named after Tomas de Torquemada
, a 15th-Century Spanish Friar that homogenized religious practices in the Spanish Inquisition.
- Mummy: The stage in Egypt which brings Vincent into a pyramid predictably have a few mummies as enemies. Though, surprisingly they do not appear as frequently as expected, with the entire stage's mummy enemies being countable on one hand.
- Obstructive Foreground: The final stage set in another prehistoric jungle◊ have plenty of moss, vines, trunks and assorted obstacles practically blocking Dr. Vincent from view even as he's battling assorted enemies.
- Ret-Gone: In the game's Good Ending, it's revealed that after Vincent destroys the Tirmatian control center, a time-wave effectively prevents the Tirmatians from even existing, let alone discovering the temporal time-warp allowing Tirmatians to locate earth in the first place, therefore ensuring the Tirmatians never even meet the humans. As such, the entire invasion that followed never occured, and earth is now back to it's normal state.
- Spread Shot: A classic power-up, this game have one which allows Vincent to fire bullets in spreads of three per shot. It's especially useful in areas where enemies are trickier to hit, e.g. when Vincent is climbing up a wall and mooks are on hovering platforms above him, the angle from spread-out rounds will handily take down enemies otherwise out-of-reach.
- Starfish Aliens: The Tirmatians resemble humanoid shrimps, with their mooks depicted as barely the height of a human with bulging, oversized eyes. A promotional poster shows how a Tirmatian look like from up close.
- Swirly Energy Thingy: A rather small, human-sized swirling vortex appears at the end of a few levels, where they're used as exit (instead of doors). Touching them teleports Vincent to the next area.
- Time Travel: Dr. Vincent spends the entire game leaping across multiple different time periods thanks to hijacking a Time Machine, in order to stop the Tirmatian invasion before it can begin.
- Uncle Sam Wants You: Towards the end credits, a shot of an empty streets in the aftermath of the Tirmatian invasion shows a resistance poster declaring, "Your Planet Needs You". The subsequent World-Healing Wave from Dr. Vincent Gilgamesh completing his mission turns it into a rock concert advert poster instead, besides restoring the world back to life.
- Mission Accomplished
Tirmat is swallowed by the temporal rift and is wiped out of existence
