Time Gal, Full Motion Video LaserDisc Game, Ported to Commodore Amiga
If you are like me, Full Motion Video didn’t mean “crap”, or at least not completely. Sure, there were some turds. I am not exactly a fan of Night Trap myself for instance. One adventure was interesting to me, Time Gal. This game took the idea of Dragon’s Lair, the game that put LaserDisc gaming into the forefront of gaming discussion in the early 1980’s, and swapped out the fantasy world for a more science fiction based one. While I liked Dragon’s Lair back in the day, there was a period in which it was simply over saturated in the market. There were trading cards, a cartoon, comics, the game, ports of the game, etc. It was not that great of a game in the first place so why all of this “support”? Anyhow, Time Gal was more interesting for me. Was it that I was just getting into Anime when I first heard about this game? Could be as I really enjoyed Robotech and just discovered this thing called Gundam. Time Gal seemed to be more of that and that was fine with me.
I originally played Time Gal on the Sega CD in all its grainy glory. Little did I know that the arcade port was hampered a bit by censorship and missing levels. Gamefan, the #1 magazine to push Time Gal didn’t mention this stuff so I was completely floored, decades later, to find out that I had not yet truly completed the adventures of Time Gal.
Years before we got Lara Croft we had many a woman vying for the position of gaming’s leading lady. Other notable women were Annet Myer from El Viento was one, Samus Aran from Metroid was another. Time Gal was one that fell to the wayside rather quickly and I am not sure why.
Anyhow, the popular WinUAE emulator was updated with support for LaserDisc games last year. This is notable because most of the LaserDisc games, such as Time Gal, were using Commodore Amiga 500’s already. Now, we have a native version of Time Gal for Amiga (HDD) and Amiga CD32.
This version is based on the arcade version so there is no hokey censorship like we got in the Sega CD edition. This is also the full arcade game including all levels – normal and mirrored, minus the coin slot.
Source: PixelGlass
You dated me on this post, as I was born in 86. I thinly remember laser discs being used for one thing. When teachers were sick and substitutes had no idea what they were doing with the class. In came the large rolling cart, with its three tiers: one to hold the VCR, one to hold the laser disc player, and one to hold the massive CRT monitor. Those massive "CD's" changed the way I think about the physical world, laser discs paved the way for epic Blue Planet 2 in 4k. I know way off topic, but I had to share my notable laser disc memory.
Not off topic at all, at least as far as I am concerned. When I was in school that school received a donation of CD-i machines with a bunch of educational discs, and that hard to find FMV expansion cart. One teacher was cool and would let the students that had Video CD movies and stuff bring them in and we watched those. One kid, in particular, had Dragon's Lair and the teacher had each student take turns playing it.
The CD-i was easier to check out than the VCR so we had time with it more. Fun times.
FMV , now thats a name I haven't heard in a long time . A long long time.
Keep watching my content as I try to discuss FMV a lot. I personally liek the genre and where it could have gone. I have plenty more tontalk about as well. Lol
Nice tip I enjoyed reading your posts looking forward to more of your posts, thanks for sharing keep up the good work and.