Timeslaughter Remembered
Posted on November 9, 2008
The year was 1996. There had already been three popular releases of Mortal Kombat, proving that not only did kids love fighting games, but they loved to tear people’s ribcages out and dance on their spinal cords. The gory stage was set for Bloodlust Software to release their finest work, Timeslaughter. I can’t remember exactly where I first heard about Bloodlust (potentially from Portal of Evil, one of the best websites of the mid 90′s), but after playing the earlier released Noggin Knockers 2 I knew that these were people after my own adolescent heart. Ridiculous violence, over the top stereotypes and tard jokes as far as the eye could see.
Timeslaughter’s story revolves around a group of “time worshiping demons” called the Takar who don’t approve of a time machine created by William Spade, a mild mannered scientist. After an encounter with the Takar that leaves him a mutilated shell of a man (shown in glorious detail by the opening cinematic), he creates a robotic exoskeleton and goes insane, attacking anyone who may stumble through his time portal which has now completely destroyed the normal flow of time and space, causing people from different times to meet on the field of bloody battle. It provides as good an excuse as any to get a variety characters brawling, and adds in time period variations to the traditional ethnic diversity of fighting games.
Considering the indie (and freeware) nature of the game, the quality is really impressive. Even now (thanks to DosBox) I find it to be both visually pleasing and fun, with large animated characters, infinitely quotable voice clips and blood that soaks the entire screen by the end of every match. Each character has a set of special moves, including the mandatory fatalities to put a violent exclamation point on the end of a match. There were even secret characters and unique endings for every character to complete the package.
As a service to the modern Internet, and to honor the past, I decided to upload the game opening and all the character endings to my Youtube account:
You can watch these videos, my LSD dream journal videos and more on my Youtube profile. Play Timeslaughter. It’s fun.
BONUS INFO: In 1998 a company called Paradox Development almost released a game called Thrill Kill. A violent Playstation 4 player 3D fighting game, Thrill Kill was never officially released, (although a basically complete disc image was circulated online) and was eventually re-purposed as the engine for Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style in 1999. I don’t want to point any accusatory fingers, but Thrill Kill featured a straight-jacketed psychotic who looks sliiiightly familiar…
