Past meets present: Time Gal

This column is “Past meets present,” the aim of which is to look back at game franchises and games that are in the news and topical again thanks to a sequel, a remaster, a re-release, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

The mid-80s were a time of rapid change in video games, with the Atari crash of 1983, arcade juggernauts Namco and Sega continuously trading blows, the release of Nintendo’s Famicom and NES in their respective regions, and oh yeah, video game developers remembering that women exist. The short-lived studio Apollo kicked things off in 1982 with Wabbit on the Atari VCS, starring the playable Billy Sue who would shoo rabbits from the vegetables in her garden, and more would follow. Women, I mean, not rabbits.

It took a little bit longer before Japanese studios would follow the trend, but not that by that much. Before the days of Samus Aran and Metroid, there was Becky from the MSX title Otenba Becky no Daibouken in ‘83, Kissy from Namco’s Baraduke in ‘85, Papri from Girl’s Garden in ‘84, Princess Kurumi from Ninja Princess in ‘85, and the eponymous Flashgal, who is definitely not Wonder Woman, in ‘85, as well — those last three were all from Sega. That’s not an exhaustive list, but you get the idea there: Japanese developers were starting to use more and more woman and young girls as playable characters, resulting in the mainstream trio of Samus, Valkyrie, and Ki all showing up in 1986. In Japan, anyway — just Metroid released internationally.

Taito also got in on the action in 1985, but they took a different approach. Rather than pixels and sprites (or an endgame reveal explaining that you were a woman the whole time, actually), they went the LaserDisc route, following up 1984’s Ninja Hayate and the partnership it was created by with another FMV arcade game, Time Gal. Time Gal would be made with Taito handling the gameplay aspects and Toei on the animation side, making it a wholly original LaserDisc title rather than one of those that stitched preexisting footage from known properties together with timed button presses to capitalize on the popularity of Dragon’s Lair. Meaning the kinds of games that made people tire of the quarter-munching genre in the first place.

Taito was the studio responsible for the megahit arcade title that changed everything for video games, Space Invaders, as well as the likes of Elevator Action, and were a year shy of their next major milestone release, Bubble Bobble. Toei Animation, meanwhile, had been around for decades already, and produced series like Cutie Honey, Mazinger G, and Dr. Slump, with the likes of Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon still to come. This partnership worked wonderfully for Time Gal, as this is a LaserDisc game that’s still enjoyable to play for its game aspects to this day — assuming you aren’t against quick-time events, anyway, as that’s the gameplay — and one that stands out in part due to the quality and content of its animation.

The protagonist, Reika Kirishima — the titular Time Gal — is a joy to watch whether it’s in motion as she runs away from the latest disaster firing off her pistol, or because she’s about to get torn apart by a plane’s propeller and has shrunken into an adorable chibified version of herself to make the horrors of what’s about to happen that much easier to handle for the player. There’s a real heft to the animation — explosions and mountainsides collapsing and in the way characters land from up high and so on — and Reika’s movements are such that you wouldn’t know this was a video game until the button prompts show up. Which was the point, of course — Space Invaders released over half-a-decade before this, and it wasn’t even in color when it did. Video game graphics had improved in the time since, but not by the degree that LaserDisc suggested. Still, what a showcase for the technology, and an opportunity to make a fully animated woman protagonist who looked the same on the box, as it were, as she did in-game. A true rarity of the era, considering: think of how impressive it was when adventure games and such just a few years later had large, highly detailed sprites that were representative of their box and promotional art! And here was Time Gal, fully animated, looking the same on the side of the arcade cabinet as what you’d find in-game.

Here are the problems with Time Gal: it was going to cost you a ton of money to play and play well, because it required exact timing with a very small window for a button press in order to succeed, and, while this is more an unofficial problem, emulating it could be an issue for similar reasons. The amount of time you had to press a button in Time Gal was so short that, by introducing even the smallest amount of input lag via emulation (exacerbated, in some cases, if also played with a wireless controller), you’d lost before you’d even begun. That emulation was even necessary was another problem, but that’s the kind of one introduced to the proceedings when the game sees exactly one (1) international port in nearly 40 years.

Time Gal was ported to the MSX in 1986, the Sega CD in 1993, Macintosh computers in ‘94, the Panasonic LaserActive in ‘95, Playstation in ‘96, Saturn in ‘97, and then iOS and Android in 2017. Just the Sega CD version released internationally, and that system didn’t move many units in the first place. A short, QTE LaserDisc game was the kind of thing that the Sega CD was criticized for having on the platform in the first place, so even though Time Gal was a good way to spend an afternoon, it was considered a waste of the CD-based technology and potential of the system by some critics, an opinion that held long after the end of the short-lived era of the platform itself.

So, we didn’t see anymore Time Gal in North America for decades. Until 2025, when Taito released an HD remaster of the LaserDisc classic internationally for its 40th anniversary. It’s still Time Gal, just like in the arcades, without any of the resolution compromises of some of its past ports. And without any of the issues that could have arisen from emulating them, either, with a bonus of not having to insert an actual quarter again every time you get squashed by a dinosaur or killed by pirates. Which is going to happen to you, just to be clear. I don’t care how good your reaction time is, Taito accounted for it 40 years ago because they wanted your money.

The gameplay is simple: you watch a bit of animation unfold to set a scene, and then, at a pivotal moment — sometimes moments strung together — you press either the indicated button on screen, or have to choose from among a few directional options. Say, a ship is on fire, and you have to decide, almost instantaneously, whether you should go up and away from the flames, or jump to the left. Or you’re being chased by some goons on futuristic motorcycles, and need to figure out whether swerving left or right on your own bike makes the most sense, either to avoid an obstacle or to cause at least one of the bikers to, well, not avoid it. On occasion, you reach a “Time Stop” moment where Reika has temporarily frozen time to give you a moment to think about what it is you need to do — you’ll get a little time to use your head here instinct of just instinct, but not that much time.

When you successfully press the button in time — or choose the correct button press in time — you’ll move on to the next bit of animation, and the story will progress. After a few of these moments, you’ll hit a very welcome checkpoint, and eventually you’ll find your way to the very end of a stage, which will send Reika off to the next one. You’ve got a few lives per credit, and each death is met not just with a humorous animation meant to make light of whatever matter of death Reika is about to face, but also a cut to Luda, in the time device, maniacally laughing at your end. You are going to learn to hate this dude. On the plus side, however, the death animations have to be brought up again: when you can play Time Gal without it costing you any additional money to continue, it’s worth it to be wrong on purpose, even, just to see what happens when you are.

One thing that works well for the game even if you don’t love the gameplay itself — and makes Reika such a charming protagonist — is that it’s unclear if she’s actually any good at her job. Is she following Luda around directly, has he been to all of these places? Or is she just kind of hop-skipping around through time, constantly narrowly being crushed by dinosaurs or sliced open with a sword or crashed into by an airplane or being eaten by a sea creature or drowning? How much of history has she ruined by jumping around like this?? Reika what have you done???

As implied, those stages are all different eras — she is the Time Gal, after all. Reika is from the year 3,001, where a device that allows for time travel has been stolen by the criminal with aspirations of global domination, Luda. She gives chase while wearing a much tinier time-travel device on her person, and will visit the age of dinosaurs, World War II, and even the future beyond her own time across 16 stages. It cannot be stressed enough how much you will either love or hate this game entirely dependent on your tolerance for quick-time events, emphasis on the quick. If you’re fine with them and want to see some OVA-quality animation — now in HD! — then Time Gal is worth your… well, you know. If not? Well, thanks for reading, at least.

Despite Reika being fully developed visually in-game beyond concept and promotional art or images in a manual, Taito never got around to making her anything but the star of Time Gal. Though, she did end up as a primary character in a non-Taito series, thanks to their publishing it in Japanese arcades: Reika is not just a playable character in Alfa System’s Castle of Shikigami III, but is the game’s mascot for the Wii edition of the game, even though that wasn’t published by Taito. She’s front-and-center on the North American box art for the Wii game, and is one of just two characters featured on the Japanese cover.

How? Why? She’s the Time Gal, everyone, she can be everywhere and anything she wants. And she wanted to be in a vertical shooting game while wearing a jaunty little hat.

While Castle of Shikigami III is still stuck in the past at present, Castle of Shikigami II received a worldwide re-release in 2021 on Windows and 2023 on Switch, so maybe we’ll get to see Reika in her other job in the not-too-distant future, too.

She finally got a spot in another Taito game in recent years, as a sequel to Time Gal — Time Gal Re:birth — released in Japan in 2023. That game has a new protagonist, but Reika is still involved. It’s available on the Switch’s eshop, though, again, only on the Japanese storefront. There are workarounds for that even if you aren’t in Japan, of course.

Maybe $25 is too much for you for a LaserDisc game, as charming and funny as it can be, but that’s what sales are for. (And hey, Time Gal was once one of the most expensive games you could find in Japan, owing to its rarity.) Keep Time Gal in mind, if you aren’t going to be bothered by a game made entirely out of quick-time events before they were even called that. It’s too charming to ignore, and its re-release long overdue.

This newsletter is free for anyone to read, but if you’d like to support my ability to continue writing, you can become a Patreon supporter, or donate to my Ko-fi to fund future game coverage at Retro XP.