Friday From the Archives: Time Crisis II (2001)

Every Friday (or thereabouts) we celebrate the heritage of Code Redd Net by posting a retro-review from our considerable back catalogue of embarrassingly naive, but nonetheless entertaining and heartfelt, movie and game reviews. Please pardon the prose; most of these articles were written in immediately post-pubescent years. Hopefully you find them as enjoyable as we do.

I believe this weekly feature is starting to wind down. Why? Because I only have two or three more "retro-reviews" left to post. Nobody ever said we were prolific in those days. Something else (to be decided later) will likely take its place, though perhaps on a different day of the week. I have a few ideas what that something else might be. For now, though, enjoy this series while you still can. Take ChickenMan's review of Time Crisis II, for example. This was a great game, one of the best arcade-to-home translations ever, I'd wager. The light gun bundled with the game gave it that authentic arcade feel. When ChickenMan refers to me as "an enthusiastic enthusiast of pay machine gaming," I believe he is referring to that wonderfully lame op-ed piece I did. He's right, too; I love arcades (when I can find them).

"Time Crisis is definitely one of my most favorite arcade series along with Metal Slug. Yeah, it’s that good. So, if you’re not quite as an enthusiastic enthusiast of pay machine gaming as Thrasher, who judges his performance by the amount of $$ spent to finish the entire game, console is the next best and maybe even better thing. Of course you get the complete Arcade story mode, with unlimited credits with some unlocking effort, plus some bonus modes which I guarantee will challenge anybody, sharpshoota. They include clay shooting, range shooting, speed test, and a training mode. This keeps it smooth and gives you more to play, and is fun to play with a friend, one of the new features in TC2. And, as mentioned earlier, like Thrasher tests his skill through trials, you can also do the same by limiting the lives you need or getting the high score throughout the story mode. You can also unlock different guns. TC2’s replay value is up to you. Also in the console edition, as I’ve heard, has greater graphics than the arcade version. So, in short, this game in my book is a winner, but you must have a light gun for it to be the same in your book. And, this thought just came to my mind; I guess the arcade can be your brief rental/test if you need it."