Time Lord, can you win this war in time? Welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Take notes. This is how you title a video. Time Lord can be anything. Could be a Souls-like. Could be a platformer. Could be a Metroidvania. But you just gotta find out what a Time Lord... Yeah, Mike, do you think so?
I mean, aren't you just intrigued? Time Lord? Time Lord sounds like a badass. Okay, as someone who, like, didn't, was not familiar with Doctor Who much until, like, you know, I don't know, the David Tennant run. Oh, I didn't even think about that.
Yeah, when the David Tennant run, I was like, oh, interesting, Doctor Who. And it's the word Time Lord in that was like, what a cool title. What a cool, like, type of, I mean, I don't know, it's like, that's like a race of people on a planet, but like, just what a cool name, Time Lord. Time Lord can either be, like, the hero or the villain, right? Lord usually means villain. But to be the Lord of Time? Like a warlord?
To be the lord of time sounds like he saves us over and over again. He's the time lord. I'm dying to find out who the time lord is. So in the year 2999, Earth is under attack. Bye. Yeah. Aliens, once again, just like every NES video game. aliens from the planet Dracon, which I swear they've attacked us before, right? Doesn't the planet Dracon sound familiar? Anyway, they're attacking us, and they're attacking us because they've used time traps.
to send their forces of aliens into four different eras of human history. Why that matters to the people of 2099, I don't know. Well, they're... They're changing history to make humans more weak in the future, right? Yeah, but, like, this is my major problem with this game already, is that, like, you have to, if you're gonna do something about time travel, you have to make it self descriptive. Like, you have to have it work. And I don't think this works.
Why not? Are you doubting the Time Lord? Yeah, I mean, just like go back in time and kill... Like, whoever decided to create the time travel entity. I didn't read too much into the lore, but just based on the four eras, I thought that there was some limitation where it's like... These are the only four eras I can get to. Yeah, that's our limitation.
What do you mean? Not the Drakon's limitation. How do you know? That's what I thought. I'm like, why would they only go to these four places? They must only be able to, like, there must only be wormholes to these four places or something. I don't know. Didn't read the story. You don't think that those are just like four interesting places for the developer to land you in? Well, yeah, if I'm thinking of why the developers chose it, but that's like saying like...
Oh, why didn't Harry Potter do this? Because there'd be no book if he did that. It's like, no, there's got to be a reason within the lore. I'm going to say that unless a game decides to put forth a primer level description of what time travel is. I don't want, I don't want it. Or, if it's going to be about something like Back to the Future, I at least want a minigame where you have a food fight. You need Doc. Doc's got to be in it, or else it doesn't make any sense.
Well, Joe was right. I guess the aliens are looking to, like... weaken the past humans to enslave us because we won't be as strong. We're going to be a mining colony. But they already have the ability of time travel and we only have guns. They can't just make us subservient now. No, they have to go to the Wild West first. Right, it seems like we were more dangerous back then than we are...
Now we have an iPad to distract ourselves. This is 2900. Who knows how much advancements we've had. Yeah, they're probably like VR porn. You're probably all just doing VR porn all the time. Nobody's even paying attention to what's going on in the real world. Yeah, exactly. So, anyway... The player takes on the role of the Time Lord. Unclear whether he became the Time Lord.
because of this moment or was already the Time Lord unclear if he's stealing the time travel ability from the aliens or if he just Sorry, Mike, I need to stop you there. The Milton Bradley Corporation has a time travel division. It's in the opening crawl, Mike. Yeah, that is where you actually start the game. You start the game in the Milton Bradley time travel research. Yeah. It's a big operation for Milton Bradley. They went from Barbie dolls to time travel. It's pretty damn good.
Anyway, Time Lord has to defeat the aliens before January 1st, 3000. Or, I don't know, or else something's going to happen. I don't know who set that deadline. I don't know if that's a self-set deadline. You have to set goals to get things done. That's when they win the war.
Yeah, but then, like, just go back in time again. That's what I'm talking about. I'm thinking that this, you know, you gotta use your imagination, but there's limitations to how much time, you can only go to the wild, you can only go through this portal once. You can't do it again. It's closed. It's destroyed. You died. Don't even get me started. I'm doing the work. I'm doing the work in my head.
If your father worked on this game, just say it now. It's totally fine. It was his life's passion with Time Lord. He wanted to shoot dogs in the 1800s. You do start in the Milton Bradley Time Travel Research Center. That's not a joke. They don't necessarily... It's just called the MB Time Travel Research Center, but, like, we all... But there's something weird going on right from the beginning.
The only way, and maybe it's like, maybe this is very clever, and I'm going to give it to them. I'm going to say that this is very clever, but... You start the game facing a normal side-scroller, walking to the right, but everything is actually behind you. You have to go to the left, which I guess is like walking in the past. Oh, my God. Get all those orbs. So you have to collect, it's five orbs to go back in time. And they're all very easy in this first level. This first level is just designed.
idea of collecting these orbs and fighting some enemies before you immediately get transported back to the year 1250 in medieval England and you're in like some castle or whatever. This is going to be a thing. Yeah, you're going to go through these four errors of human history. 1250s medieval England, 1860s western United States, 1650 Caribbeans of the Pirates.
And 1943 France, which is just like... It's not one of the iconic, generic time periods. This is just all crazy stuff. But it will lead you back to 2019. Why am I not saying that right? $29.99 where you will fight the Drakon king.
But before we talk about it again... can we talk about these four specific eras that they've chosen this is like nothing from the bc timeline like nothing at all nothing happened interesting no the only things that will ever affect causality like it all kind of washes away I guess 1280 or whatever. And that's when the last of... The elves died. And not like the D&D kind of elves. It's like kind of tall and, you know, immortal and wise.
This is just tiny, like, Keebler elves that are apparently alive in 1280. So whatever they were going for here, don't know. Don't know. They're mixing... They're mixing their fantasy with their sci-fi amount of fan. See, the reason that I think that we didn't go back any further to the BC times is because, in my head canon,
I think there's a limitation that doesn't let me have my answer to everything. God, stop. It just works. It just works. It just works. I think that even when I'm reading a book, I'm watching a movie, hey, there's probably a limitation that we don't know about. So no complaints then from you, Joe, about the four places that they chose. Those are perfect. I think of Chrono Trigger. And I think in a game like this, it's not like some historical, it's not Assassin's Creed.
I just want... I just want... The, like, iconic, like, time travel places. Like, take me to the Stone Age. Take me to medieval times. Pirate, fine. The France one, I didn't get to that one, but, like, what does it look like? It just looks like any side-scrolling World War II thing. That one is the one that really throws me off. Give me the Ice Age or something. Just something where I'm like, oh, yeah, significant shift in time.
Yeah, but who knows what the aliens were doing in France in 1943. Maybe they were trying to help him. Could be. It's not even entirely clear which side you're fighting in the World War II era. That is true, yeah. Who wore red in World War II? I guess if we're going to go into... What does interfering in these specific time periods have to do with what could happen in 2999? I just don't really think that.
anything that happened in Dead Man's Gulch in 1860 was going to have any effect on what was going on in 2999. I feel like there should have been either more modern stuff, like, you know... Maybe. like, you know, Desert Storm, if that's happened yet. Did that happen yet? Have we gone there? We have not. Shit. Alright, well, they should have gone to the future and had, like, an Iraq thing. You know? I think that would have been really...
I mean, I think we haven't. I'm trying to think. 1990? Maybe. I thought it was like 91. It's probably 91. It was close. Yeah, you're predicting the future. It was just a matter of time before we got to Desert Storm, folks. Anyway, so now we can get into the gameplay. Grenada? Did we do Grenada yet?
Well, see, but this is, again, what I'm saying. It's a very, like, it's a very American point of view, right? Like, this is covering some stuff that's, like, not particularly, like, world-encompassing. This is very, like... You know, like the wild west. And medieval England, like, even medieval England feels kind of American. The Wild West, that's the one that I'm like, what did this affect? Like, that...
you know, for, like, the rest, the whole world. Like, the other, like, that's the one where I'm really, like, that just seems so much, so isolated that I'm just like, what are they doing there? Alright, I have, I have one last thing sort of on this topic, but it does have to do with the gameplay. At no point in these situations... Actually, no. You do fight vaguely alien-looking things, but you're also fighting human beings.
They're not just going to stop fighting, Sean, just because you showed up, right? Okay, but that makes sense in, like, 1943. You got me there. But, like... Why are we killing other humans when we go to visit these areas? Are they just like, they don't like you because you're wearing a tank top? Why are we killing people? Wow, that is so brave of you to say. Look, if we're going to make our enemy aliens, then why make everybody human? I guess the aliens were the enemies we made along the way.
Or maybe reversed. The enemies were the aliens. Can't say it for certain. Now, depending on the time period that the player is in, you can have time period specific weapons, you know, like swords in medieval England or grenades in France. But you don't, you don't begin the... and you don't begin the level like dressed for the appropriate time period and I'm not trying to make this like a party thing or something but like
That could have been like another moment for this game to like shine, right? It's like, okay, in medieval England, you're going back and you're going to be dressed like a knight and you're going to fight like a knight. you know, eventually get on a horse and do some jousting or something. But instead, it's just, you're just the same guy who just wears all red, red pants, red tank, red hair. Possibly red boots. They have like a red stitching on those black boots. Black boots.
But there's no flavor specific. The enemies are fighting you as medieval knights or as pirates, but you're not fighting back in that way. And I know what Joe said. It's not Assassin's Creed, right? You're not... doing those things. then just be the awesome guy from the future too, right? Like, be the cyborg. I was going to say that. But you do get the weapons of the time, which is like, I guess, you know, if we're going to go by...
Joe's theory where there's so many limitations. Yeah, it's Terminator rules. You've got to go through naked. Well, no, he has his tank top, Joe. No, that's tattooed. Stop it. Okay, he goes, he travels,
A very narrow stretch of human history in full body paint. We'll go with that. And then when you're actually controlling as the Time Lord and fighting enemies... you know this is gonna sound really harsh but did anyone else get the feeling that like Time Lord and the rest of the game exist on separate Yeah.
Like, they don't quite, nothing quite connects with the Time Lord. He kind of, like, punches through things, and they take damage. Like, he kind of, like, swipes at them, but it doesn't feel like he's ever actually doing any damage. The enemy, like even the bosses, like stand behind him when they're like, you know, connecting. Yeah, I first noticed this in the first level, the England level, where you kind of go through this marching formation where...
It was almost like Kung Fu, where the enemies just keep coming for you, and you just have to keep punching, and sometimes they just walk right past you, because you are... shifted one or two pixels upward down on the z-axis and they can only interact with you that like flat landers whereas you as the the hero kind of have a wider swath of like your hurt box um than what your hitbox may be and i mean it makes it feel
It makes you feel a little bit more powerful, but then there'll be random times where you will get hit, and it just feels like there's not a lot of control of whether you can dodge or... Yeah, now that you mention it, I did feel like a lot of times... The hitbox was unfair in my favor.
but like that was you know like a lot of enemies would be coming at me and if it was like enemy kind of near me and i swung my sword or fired my gun it's like all the enemies that are sort of near me would just like fall off of the screen But that was, and like that, you know, annoying in the sense where it's like, this doesn't feel good. But like, I still was like having moments where I'm like, okay, well, at least I'm getting through this. But that was counteracted by.
the the problem we have sometimes of infinite enemies always coming at you so it's like yeah i can just kill these things but like eventually one was gonna hit me because like when i'm in this stretch of the level just a hundred like little coyote dog like things are just running at me non-stop so like yeah i'll get a lot of them with this unfair hitbox but i'm just gonna get hit a couple times but yeah i do appreciate that the time has the advantage.
as Joe was mentioning, he has the larger hitbox. Things can hit you and hurt you, and the game isn't necessarily easy. But it's also like, the game isn't about being a traditional action game where you're just fighting. of a stage, you do have to find these time orbs, or I don't really know
Jonos. Yeah, time orbs. Okay, great. And you have to get four of those. In the first stage, it's five because there's no boss, but you have to get four of those, and then the fifth one is... a boss so what is the process of is it like they're out in the open is it like you have to find a specific solve a specific puzzle you have to like do a weird thing how are you It's random. And it's also very... Unintuitive. Sometimes I'll just be right there.
And sometimes they will just sort of pop into existence. Sometimes you have to solve a mini puzzle that there isn't any context for. Right. Um, you'll have to like, cause like these levels are very short. Um, they're very, I guess maybe short isn't the right word. They're very small in footprint. And then you'll get to the end of the level and you'll be like, what happened?
Like, I didn't see anything. I saw one orb that was just, like, way out of range, so I'm like, obviously I can't get there yet. But then you'll just keep... It's... Very odd like that. It just feels very random. Yeah, to me, the way you get it is trial and error. It's all experimentation, and it's not context-based solve a puzzle.
Which is disappointing. There are some, like, there are, like, two categories that I, at least in my playthrough, that I've kind of, like, come up with. One is, like, categories that I could see in a world where, like...
I'm in the 90s and I only have a few video games and I only have access to these few video games where like they're not as i'm not defending it but in this world like i feel like oh this isn't as uh much of a slap in the face if it's like oh i gotta figure this out then i'm my next play tour i know how to get this one i gotta figure that one out I get how it would be less obnoxious back then. There are other categories of this where it's just like...
I don't even know what I did to get it. Like, there are some where I'm just, like, there are some where I'm just, like, this one's out of reach. I went on to the rest of the level, and I come back, like, oh, now it's there. I must have done something. Like, I don't know. There's, like... I'm not completely opposed to the idea of like, oh, you have to figure out what you got to do by trial and error. It's not as cool to me as actually solving a puzzle, but that's only if like...
Yeah, if I care enough about this game to keep playing it and, like, want to figure it out, which, like, through today's lens... I really don't. And then on top of that, there are just these other ones where I'm just like, this wasn't even a puzzle. It just...
Even though there was something I did that made it happen, I don't know what did. The game didn't do anything to indicate what that was. So to me, it's just completely random. To the player, it's completely random. Even if whoever coded this knows, like, oh, yeah, there's all these connecting tissues that, like, that... and make this happen. So I'm not exactly sure what they were going for with this.
And then the boss is at the end of each stage. It takes a bit of a weird path here, because first in medieval England, at the end, the boss is a dragon, and it's like, oh, okay, so... There's some fantasy elements here, like I guess in this reality, dragons were real.
fought them just like the knights did and we're gonna fight it no big deal sounds great then you get to the the wild west and at the end it's just a really like just a mexican dude yeah but it's pretty racist too it's pretty unsavory like it's not yeah i don't like that one bit and the worst part about it's just a it's it's a mexican man with a sombrero um obviously in a very
of it but the the sombrero man the the best way to fight him is to shoot him in the back too like that feels like it's political commentary in some way or another So you have that going on? And then in the Caribbean... It's like a giant clam. It's like, well, we already established that like dragons were possible and a giant clam. Right, right. That's what I'm saying. It's like a giant clam isn't necessarily the most.
fearsome thing like you could have had maybe they were going with like the orbs or pearls and maybe it's a time clam yeah but then they all show up stop with that. I like the time clam idea, and I do like the pearl thing. I like where you're going with that, but then they all should have been tied to that. I like the dragon. It should all have just been clams. Right, the dragon should have had like a pearl at the end of its tail.
Or they all could have been clans. I miss that. That's funny. And then in France, 1943, the boss at the end is just a big soldier. Yeah. You don't remember him? Again, what side are we inviting? Just the biggest soldier. What was the bear from Inglourious Bastards? Is that who it is? Oh yeah, it was just Eli Roth. Yeah, okay, sure.
And then, obviously, after you collect all the pieces and go back to fight the Dracon King, it's just a three-headed alien. Everybody saw it coming. Well, I mean, they... You know, they told you it's aliens, so one would assume. But I just assumed that you would be fighting aliens throughout and not people. The three-headed alien, though, is really funny because it's not like some epic, weird-looking thing.
in the future. It's not Geiger like everything else. It's just like three heads all attached to each other. It looks almost like a Venus fly track. Is it even one alien? Or is it just three aliens? I think it's one alien with three heads. Oh, yeah, okay. I'm scrubbing through. It looks like, yeah, it starts out connected, and then after your fight, they, like, disconnect. I thought you had the design Bible on you. My dad's got that locked away in the attic, so...
I wasn't able to access it. And you know what happens after you defeat the alien? The Essential Games list. No, I'm just kidding. You're greeted with a single still that just says Time Lord and then has a bunch of pictures of the Time Lord like punching or swinging a sword. It's not even, like, from all the various time periods, it's just two of them. And mostly him punching, too, which is like, yeah, you could do that whenever. Um,
So what do you think Time Lord does after this? Like, does he have a job anymore? Like, is he still a Time Lord? Because apparently that was the only time that people decided to, that some alien decided to attack. humanity in all of time. It does say at the end that he has to guard against their return. So we are thinking that he maybe didn't fight. the big bad. Maybe this was just the beginning of the sequel.
You got any sequels and spinoffs for us? Sequels and spinoffs. There is Lord of Time. No, I'm joking. There's The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. Time splitters. But there is something that we didn't talk about. And I'm sure you were itching to get to it, Joe, because you teased it last week. I sure did. There is a... You know, there is a deadline of the year 3000 in effect in this game, and you start the game on January 1st, 2,999.
So you have a whole year to do this, but you're traveling through time. And one day in present time transpires in six seconds of Game Boy. So you only have 36 minutes and 30 seconds of gameplay time to complete the game. Is that enough? I mean, I don't like time limits that are just in a level. Let alone just like a time limit for the whole game. Think about it, nobody can expand this game to be longer.
there's no way to like have any more time with this game than the 36 minutes and 30 seconds right right and like I could see if a game is really built around that, and I guess you can argue all this is because you've got to find things in time, but it's really not built around it. The gameplay doesn't really support it. this, so it just feels like a weird hindrance. I think that it does because, again, I was talking about how small the levels are.
And the fact that there's, like, randomization going on, like, it's... It's built in a way that you find these really stupid hidden puzzles, and then over time you'll know where to look, and it's sort of like an optimization game. I don't have an issue with... timed games. Like, I kind of liked... I can't even think of the name of the game. Outer Wilds. Well, yeah. But like Outer Wilds, that feels so much more built to be. Sure, it's more central.
I'm thinking of the zombie game. You know the zombie game, right? Dead Rising. That was built around a time limit. I mean, it was a lot more like you could ignore it more in this because it sort of gave you time to screw around. But I don't have an issue with the time loop as a reason to... to try and experiment. I think I just... It's not a perfect execution obviously and also I just don't like
the reasoning of it in the whole context of time travel. I will always say that it does not make any sense that the time... Where in your origin is still moving forward while you're doing stuff in these other times because time doesn't exist. And guys, can you pick up for this? I think what Sean's trying to say is that time travel is a lot like AI. It's a slippery slope. It sounds cool. It sounds like we should all do this. And then once we start implementing it, we really... That's perfect.
I don't have an argument for why time is moving forward, even though we've gone back in time. Why is the current present day moving forward? Yeah, what'd your dad have to say about that, Joe? I'll have to ask him. But as far as the actual gameplay mechanics, I get what you're saying about it. It is sort of designed around it. I guess I agree. It is designed around it. I just don't think it's designed well around it. I would like it.
If it's going to do this thing where it's like, oh, you gotta figure out a puzzle in a certain amount of time, the fact that they're not real puzzles combined with the time limit where it's like, I just gotta do trial and error, that doesn't feel like a fun way for it to, like, I would be more...
open to it if it was like oh there's an actual like escape room like puzzle like i'll figure out what to do or like a little clue and you know whatever a puzzle where i gotta figure it out using my brain not using just like random try over and over again where then i can like feel that pressure of like times ticking Can I figure this out within a half hour? Can I figure all these different little things out? So I feel like they went, I guess, there, but they didn't go all the way.
to make the time ticking feel worth it for me and not just frustrating. Well, there's only one direction in time to go. Or in a podcast, actually. In a podcast, you can hit rewind or fast forward. And if you fast forward five seconds from now, you would hear me say, The Essential Games List. No, I think I was trying to set up at the beginning of this episode that the idea of a Time Lord is really cool, but man, they went absolutely...
Holy shit. The Time Lord doesn't dress cool. He doesn't fight cool. He just punches. This guy didn't have to be a Time Lord. This game didn't have to be about time travel. This game could have been so many other things. I would have explained something, but I wouldn't have teased you as hard as...
Time Lord really made me think I was going to play something awesome. I played something that, at the end of the day, is playable, even if the orbs are kind of frustrating to find. You can play the level. But it is weird that you're like restricted in how much fun you're allowed to have because of this overall time limit. I think an overall time limit on a game is actually somehow worse than individual time limits in a level. And for that reason alone, I...
Kind of strange when I first, like, looked at, oh, what are the upcoming games I gotta play, and I saw Time Lord. I had this thought of like, wow, I better really get started on this early because I've heard of Time Lord and somewhere in the back of my head I know it's this sprawling, epic, critically acclaimed game. I don't know what I was thinking.
I, I, I, I played, I mean, then I looked at, it literally can't be longer than 36 minutes. So I don't know why I thought this was going to be like some giant RPG. I must be thinking of some other title that's similar. You were thinking of Planescape Torment. That's exactly what I was thinking of. So it really was even, it was like double.
doubly disappointing going into it with that expectation and coming in and finding this like this like really generic is a weird word because it does it is unique but it's kind of boring it doesn't really yeah it doesn't feel like
I don't want to say it doesn't feel like a ton of love was put into this game, but it doesn't feel like a ton of love was put into this game, at least from a modern perspective. But yeah, it wasn't particularly fun. I'm sorry, Dad. I know you worked really hard on it, but I can't vote this essential.
Alright, so that's one last seat at Thanksgiving dinner. Sean? So, when I when we started recording this podcast I actually... went back in time and tried to, you know, I picked 1956 when Joe's dad was born. 1321, which I believe was some... some kind of ancestor to joe first had the idea of whoa video games is gonna plug stuff in and like things will show up like and then he kind of had a stroke and died like i was trying to save him um
And I was doing all these things, but alas, it's only been like 30 minutes. So I did not have enough time to do all that. So Time Lord is still a bad game. And that's not to say that it doesn't have ideas. I don't think that a timed game is a disqualifier. I think it's at least a unique concept. I just don't like the, you know... the reasoning behind it and any of the character designs or the story or any of it. So no, not essential. All right.
I love the idea that in order for my dad to have become a video game developer, our whole family history has to be about discovering video games. It was just like a family thing. Yeah, yeah. Next week, basketball reaches its peak form when we play ultimate basketball. There will be no greater form of basketball than ultimate basketball. This is it. I think this is actually the one where Goku goes Super Saiyan 4. Wow. Yeah, all anime is the same, so basketball...
And if you're tired of, you know, some pretty bad games like Time Lord and presumably Ultimate Basketball, know that we have a whole other podcast on our Patreon. We do the nostalgia bites there where we play Famicom games. What? Yeah, that's right. Famicom games. Games in Japanese. Or whatever game that Mike decides to make us play.
That's not part of the pitch. That's not fun. Or whatever. You know, it is fun listening to those episodes. I thought you were just going to go to the song. That's a fun song.