Innovations in video-gaming are often few and far between. In an industry where immitation is no longer flattery but common practice, new game ideas are more often than not welcome with open arms. Some of these innovations set the foundation for a whole new way of enjoying a game, while others live their life like a flash in the pan; rising to amazing popularity before plunging into a quick and painless obscurity. Time Traveler, although a great idea, was the latter.

Perhaps it should have stayed that way.

Introduced in the arcades a number of years ago, Time Traveler was touted as being the first actual 3D game; meaning that the projected image (when viewed through a layer of glass that is); actually appeared as though you were controlling small real characters. There were no screens, only a virtual stage area on which the action was set. Because this was the first of its kind, Time Traveler became the 'in' game to play in arcades and for a brief period it drew in crowds as the best of them. However, and to the indifferance of many, Time Traveler was soon bested by newer more practical technologies and the cumbersome white '3D' machines dissapeared from the arcade floor - left to be remembered. Until now.

Hologram Games, the company which has produced a series of children and obscure titles not common to the casual PC has re-released Time Traveler for both DVD and Playstation 2 platforms. Using your remote control as your game-pad, your mission is to direct cowboy time-traveler Marshal Gram through various time periods in search of Vulcor , the evil mad scientist responsible for the kidnapping of Kyi-La from the Galactic Federation. Sound less than original? Well it is. Without the 3D technology (TT's only attractive feature), all that is left to be experienced is poor acting and an amazingly shallow game experience.

Played like the equally popular Dragon Lair games, TT relies on inputting the right movements at the right time according to on-screen cues which pop up during the pre-taped action. Depending on your reaction time, you will either progress through the movie or experience a horribly graphic death (which, to TT's credit, are done quite well). For the most part, 'playing' Marshal is a monotonous regime of pressing two buttons in quick succession. Sometimes, however, the game will throw an occasional 'duck' or 'jump' obstacles to liven things up. With an accessable tutorial, this highly complicated method of play can be practiced on. Then again, if you need the tutorial to survive, then maybe you shouldn't be using complicated devices such as 'DVD's' or 'Televisions'.

Since most of the in-game visuals are pre-recorded live sequences, graphics are really a non-issue. Naturally, being on the DVD medium, the image is crisp and nice to look at - so much so, that the never changing 'outer-space' background is close to forgivable. The rest, regrettably, isn't. Common sense would dictate that while promoting one of the world's first '3D Live action games', some forsight would have gone to avoiding poor acting. Sadly, though, I've seen grade 6 christmas plays which were more believable than this. With such a weak plot to work on, Time Traveler would at least have benefitted from believable character perfomances, but yet again this area seems to have been rushed. However, If they were going for the whole 'low-budget-cable-access-show' feel then Hologram arts got things dead on.

On the whole, Time Traveler does not stand along as a decent game without the 3D technology which made it so popular in its first arcade release. At best, the DVD version is entertaining to fiddle around with until you realize that (being DVD) you can simply skip forwards through the scenes until the end.
 
 
 
 

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