Back in Time

1982 was a year of beginnings and endings. Legends were born. Michael Jackson released his Thriller album. Cats opened on Broadway, and the space shuttle Columbia launched on its first mission. Legends also died. Grace Kelly, Leonid I, Brezhnev, and John Belushi all passed away. In that same year, Konami released its time-traveling air combat arcade game, Time Pilot. The went on to become a legend as well.

Don't forget to rescue your parachuting allies.

Designed by Yoshiki Okamoto, the game hit the arcades during the height of the quarter-crunching arcade popularity and Time Pilot is thus considered one of the great arcade classics of all time. In this latest incarnation of the game, Konami and Digital Eclipse have upgraded the artwork, sound effects, and music. They've added Xbox 360™ achievements to build up your gamerscore, and have even inserted extra unlockables as rewards for playing well.

Save the Day
In Time Pilot, you visit a handful of important dates throughout history and take on the fighter planes of that era. As you're fighting off the enemy planes, you must also rescue parachuting ally pilots. Time Pilot is a multi-directional shooter. Your plane stays in the middle of the screen, and the background scrolls as you maneuver your plane around.

Take down the mothership to destroy all the other
fighters and progress to the next level.

Enemy planes come at you from all directions, sometimes shooting, sometimes attempting to ram you, kamikaze-style. Fire with the A button and maneuver with the left thumbstick. The original arcade game used only an 8-way joystick and a single button as well.

Fight off the waves of regular fighters, and here comes the mothership. After you've fought off the regular fighters, the mothership appears. Each level has its own mothership, but you'll recognize it immediately. They shoot more often and attack more aggressively. Take down the mothership to destroy all the other fighters and progress to the next level. It pays to focus primarily on the mothership once it appears.

Make My Day
In single-player mode you advance through a handful of levels, each with its own time period and style of enemy fighter in your trusty, time traveling fighter plane. Travel from the past to the future, starting in 1911. You combat biplanes in this first level, and first mothership challenge is against a zeppelin.

Take to the skies in the past and the future.

After you complete the 1911 level, you dive into World War II combat with fighter planes and a B-52 mothership. In the 1970 level, you start fighting helicopters, and in the eighties level, you face jet fighters. Finally, in the last level, set in the future, you find yourself under attack by UFOs. If you make it through all these levels, you start over again, facing a greater challenge and more aggressive enemies.

Seize the Day
One of the coolest additions to the Xbox Live Arcade version of Time Pilot is the fact that you can play it in both co-op mode and online. In regular player matches, you can play either co-op or versus. Following the standard Xbox Live® model, you can also choose between Quick Match and Custom Match. Host a match for any player who wants to join you, or for only those other players you hand-pick. Ranked matches work the same way, except that they impact your ranking on the leaderboards, and you cannot play co-op ranked matches.

Travel back in time with Time Pilot and see for yourself why this is such a beloved arcade classic. Time flies when you're having fun, and you may find the hours disappearing as you settle in to tackle this game.

Article by Angel Leigh McCoy