Time Lord is a Side-Scrolling Platform Game developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Rare and released by Milton Bradley in 1990.
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:
- All There in the Manual: The game's plot and justification for some of the game's mechanics, particularly its time limit being the result of humanity's time machine being a Flawed Prototype, are explained in the manual.
- 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.
- On-Site Procurement: Each time zone has packages with period-appropriate weaponry provided for the player. Until then, you start unarmed.
- Plot Coupon: 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. The fifth one is always in possession of the level's boss, who won't spawn until you've collected the other four.
- 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.
- Set Wrong What Was Once Made Right: The aliens' plan is to change history in four different time periods (Medieval England, the Old West, the Golden Age of Piracy, and World War II) to weaken humanity so they can achieve victory in 2999.
- 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.
