We are all guilty of killing time.

If you were among the more well-read youths in your grade school, you might be experiencing harrowing flashbacks to having a dog with a clock implanted in its thigh accosting you on this matter. But for the rest of us, The Phantom Tollbooth is what we'd like to imagine the Bollywood version of Episode One was in our current era of E-ZPass®.

In any case we are still all guilty of killing time at one point or another in our lives. But let me take a moment to take a slightly different approach. Let's pretend it's Mortal Kombat 2 and Sub Zero is about to pull off his 2-part fatality that involves throwing freeze shots at your opponent 6 times in the first step. Ignoring that in standard Mortal Kombat logic that Sub Zero would freeze himself several times in this process, your opponent is now deeply frozen to the point where a simple uppercut executed by a complex series of commands would cause him/her to explode into a mess of what we now know as “gibs.”

Now imagine that the frozen victim in the first half of the last paragraph is time itself. Time has been shown viscerally in many forms over the years, whether it be Happy in Rudolph's Shiny New Year or Mickey Rooney in every modern appearance on television to let us know that yes, in fact, he is still making royalties off of Thoroughbreds Don't Cry. Japan is still eager for him to die because despite all devils currently being thoroughbred, they still can't put in a legal injunction for Hideki Kamiya's sake. But discarding all that irrelevance, let's focus on the topic at hand: the state of ultraviolence in the early 90s.

You're a young boy again. Or maybe a girl. Chances are not on the latter if you're still reading this article, but maybe you're Patty Hearst and have been craving for a game whose greatness would rival your appearance in the near-future film classic Bio-Dome. So, gender aside, you're stuck with your family in a campground in Montana. It's a KOA, because any company who is smart enough to run campgrounds in a state that's entirely made of campsites is going to take advantage of every off-the-road exit on the way to Yellowstone. Thus, you end up going to their visitor's center, where among the aisles of jackalopes and oversized mosquito goods, you notice a small arcade pulsating in back. This arcade is brimming with action and life, even if everyone has a worse haircut then your finely-trimmed bowl cut self.

As you attempt to peer though the rat-tailed young gentleman in front of you, you notice a glowing marquee above you that reads “MORTAL KOMBAT.” You may be too young to know what mortality means, but combat is something you understand very well after years of playing Street Fighter 2010. You notice that the voluminously long-haired boy was soundly beaten by the rat-tailed gentleman, and the long-hair just uttered a word beginning with “Fuh” that you've neither heard before nor understand. Afterwards, said long-hair walks away in shame, wallowing in the display of Jackalopes that Dave Coulier helped popularize via America's Funniest People; that is, before he would forever be held in shame because he'd never find another woman like Alanis Morissette, a woman who would go down on him in a theater, not to mention redefine what irony meant in the minds of everyone who would listen to the radio between 1996 and 1998.

You have enough quarters in your pocket to put the bald eagle on their backside back on the non-endangered species list, so you step up to Mr. Rat Tail. Of course, you're thinking in the backside of your mind how you heard once from a friend that successfully getting a Rat Tail means you can get the Adamant and thus forge the Excalibur. So, after countless hours of searching, you are almost certain this is the random encounter you've been wiating for. If you beat this guy, you get the Rat Tail; and then you're only mere moments away from becoming King (or Queen) Arthur.

You select the guy in the sunglasses, because you know as well as anyone that a dude in sunglasses, even at night, is totally awesome. It worked for one of the skin diseases in Battletoads; not to mention the Terminator, and probably Jack Nicholson. As battle commences, you try jumping, kicking, punching, whatever. You accidentally pull off a sliding kick, but it's for naught as your opponent's thinly braided coif telegraphs a seemingly unavoidable spear into your heart and asks you in a manner that's ruder than you're accustomed that you come over there. Despite your character's aviators making you think he should be able to sternly refuse the offer and saunter off to the much more accommodating red carpet, your opponennt makes a red carpet on the sidewalk out of your blood as he uppercuts you to the pavement. Despite your repeated attempts to drain him of his precious life force, he remains prevalent and eventually hits you with one last uppercut.

This uppercut would change your entire life.

This uppercut would send you into what seemed like a vast underground.

This uppercut would send what seemed to be your sun-shaded and invincible protagonist to a penetrating doom, impaling his body on a bed of undulating spikes. You thought that perhaps if he had opted for hammer pants instead of spandex, he might parachute to slightly less doom among the drop, but it quickly became clear that when it came to being penetrated by spikes, your internal organs Could Touch That.

Adrenaline seeped though your veins, quite likely for the first time you were aware of. You knew you couldn't best him in Mortal Kombat, so you looked to FINISH HIM at a completely different title. You glance at the Street Fighter cabinet behind him, but the life bars were “larger” than Mortal Kombat so you knew that would be an exercise in failure. Then, you look to your right.

There it was.

A game he didn't know.

Time Killers.

Arcade Flyer

European Mega Drive Cover

Time Killers (Arcade)

SAVE THE DRAMA FOR YOUR MAMA... 'S ALLOWANCE He told me he'd play with me, but oh! He was out of quarters. He couldn't possibly face me at this challenge. I shoved my hands in my pockets and fished out a handful of round Washingtons. I told him that he could either take it and fight me in a battle of death governed by the entirety of time, or he could pretend like winning against me in a game simulating Kombat in the modern, Mortal era mattered. Because he was as young and developmentally non-mature as myself, he was more than happy to oblige. After all, he knew that Mortal Kombat was just that - Kombat. Time Killers? It meant he knew he could kill, no matter what. After all, it was in the title, so it had to be true, much as how the Three Kingdoms have been in a constant state of regularly-updated romance since 1985. Naturally, he chose the strongest-looking character. In the case of Time Killers, it would be Thugg the Caveman: a burly gentlemen who was large and, shockingly, Caveman-esque. I chose a slightly more unpredictable opponent: Mantazz. He was, after all, the bug thing that appealed to young boys liking bugs well before Japan's arcades made half of their annual profit on digital cockfights involving stag beetles versus scorpions that can't fire spears. Well before the introduction of the Tekken series, I hammered out a first round win by jamming on the buttons. Thugg took the second round swiftly as my cockiness in being a mantodea taking down a poster-boy carnivorous jerkface made me darn near the spitting image of a modern militant vegan; and thus duck soup, so to speak. In frustration, the final round had me jamming on buttons even harder than before, which led to something shocking. Something neither I, nor my seemingly rodent-amicable companion were prepared for. I lopped his head clean off, thus ending the round. My opponent was shocked, believing I cheated in order to have such a quick and easy win. I told him it was his fault for trying to play a manly game when he had girl hair. After this, I suffered my first real-life version of a fatality, as he proceeded to slam his palm against my right eye. As the week tore on, so did the skin of my well-blackened eye against the harsh ultraviolet summer light of the sun. Much like Rihanna, I wished I could hide my bruised face under an umbrella in the dreadfully harsh sun. But while I may have had more bloody tears that vacationing week than the Castlevania series combined, I never forgot the game that first made me a man. In case you weren't paying attention, suck at critical thinking, haved ignored all of the screenshots on the side of the screen, or have terrible short-term memory, that game was Time Killers. But enough with my narcissism, let's take a step onto the stage of history. THE SOUL STILL BURNS The game featured 8 playable characters, and a non-playable endboss. As one might expect, the playable characters are all from notable historical periods of time, with the exception of the characters that are from the future. Retrospectively speaking, no one reasonable thinks the future will ever be notable, so they come off as trying too hard; much like the joke I'm trying to make here.

Time Killers (Arcade) Time Killers (Arcade) Time Killers (Arcade) Time Killers (Arcade) Time Killers (Arcade)

	Rancid This guy is from the near future, but most of you will recognize him as one of the people you avoided in high school. You probably saw him wearing shirts you could only assume were from local punk bands, given that he always had such as 溺ALIGNANT RAT FETUS・and 泥ECOY TIGER LUBRICANT・emblazoned across his chest. In a surprising turn of events, he actually ended up more successful than you; able to afford not only a high-quality chainsaw, but also an X-shaped brand in his forehead. He is also regarded as humanity's most likely post-modern savior. You, on the other hand, are reading an article about a fighting game that had a really bad Genesis port.
	Orion According to the game's lore, he is a fugitive. He is also black. Apparently even in the year 2885 AD, the real final boss is The Man, and he isn't one to hesitate at keeping us all down.
	Thugg As shown by the earlier story, he is a large, powerful caveman. But, he has an undeniable weakness against 9-year olds who like to smash on buttons. This is why there are currently more 9-year-olds on earth than cavemen.
	Lord Wulf This guy is like a knight or something. According to the game guide, he wields Excalibur. I guess this means I should have played him against Lord Rat Tail, but then again that'd almost certainly create a time paradox where I'd have sent his Braid-wielding existence packing, thus invoking Jonathan Blow. But perhaps my ignorance ended up being a veiled blessing, as this means I shielded the world from overwhelming pretentiousness among independent game design for nearly 15 years after this game's mainstream release... not to mention a shallow Blinx: The Time Sweeper ripoff on a 2D plain.
	Leif Best known for his VH1 special, this character was made for dancin'. This game's ending allowed him to find (and apologize to) Roland Winkler well before his over-televised make-up session became reality. While it was programmed based on wishful thinking from the Leif superfans at Incredible Technologies, they also predicted that among all the characters they based people on, Leif was the most sure to win Celebrity Fear Factor in 2006. Thanks to furious and unpredictable button mashing, Leif was able to successfully swallow the preserved semen of King Tut and thus win a $50,000 prize.
	Musashi This character was based on a random draw of every Japanese word Incredible Technologies' staff could come up with. Other words included in the draw were Sushi, Teriyaki, Karaoke, and Bruce Lee.
	Mantazz He's a praying mantis that is basically the coolest guy on the planet. Most praying manti submit to their spouse and let themselves be decapitated; but instead of being just another dead insectoid pile, he decided to take his lady and her brood onto a very special all-insect edition of Maury. After finding out he is undeniably not the father, he did the standard dance one does when you find out you're safe from having to pay child support; this time both through the crowd and on the stage. However, he had cruelly forgotten that his blades were not only drawn, but he had forgotten to set them to stun. He walked away that day as the only survivor. What's sad is that this is actually probably better than his real story.
	Matrix At last! Breasts! Thankfully, this game remained relatively unpopular, so the internet was spared from endless 屠ack into the Matrix・puns circa 1999.

After drudging your way through the many challengers from throughout time and history, you face Death himself. According to the game's story, beating him will grant you eternal life. What really sucks is how you're still going to get cancer and die when you're 46. Time Killers was the only Incredible Technologies fighter to receive a Genesis port, and as suggested above, it's pretty much considered right awful. The original is certainly janky and awkward by today's standards from the get go, but having a home port being even moreso is exactly the kind of sign that'd make Ace of Base open up their eyes. Blood ran the streets of the arcade in the early 90s, so it was only a matter of time before it started entering our water supply. Eventually it'd start evaporating into the sky, which could only mean one thing: watch out for AIDS, it's time for a BLOOD STORM.

Time Killers (Arcade)

Comparison Screenshots

Arcade	Genesis