Time Pilot

Each level is themed to a different time period. Home ports for the Atari 2600, MSX, and ColecoVision were released in 1983 respectively by Konami and Coleco. A top-down sequel, Time Pilot '84, was released in arcades in 1984. It eliminated the time-travel motif and instead took place over a futuristic landscape.

• Title — Time Pilot • Developer — Konami • Designer — Yoshiki Okamoto • Programmer — Hideki Ooyama • Artist — Yoshiki Okamoto • Composer — Masahiro Inoue • Platforms — Arcade, Atari 2600, MSX, ColecoVision • Genre — Multidirectional shooter • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer • Released — Arcade'ColecoVisionAugust 1983Atari 2600October 1983MSXDecember 1984

• Illustration — Gameplay screenshot Players assume the role of a pilot of a futuristic fighter jet trying to rescue fellow pilots trapped in different time eras. The player's jet remains in the center of the screen at all times, and the eight-direction joystick causes their jet to rotate to face in that direction, causing the screen to scroll in that direction to present forward motion. In each level, players battle many enemy aircraft and the occasional stronger aircraft. After a fixed number of these aircraft are destroyed, as displayed on a bar at the bottom right of the screen, a mothership appears. Once the mothership is defeated, they move onto the next time period. Parachuting pilots will occasionally appear and award players points if collected. There are five levels: 1910, 1940, 1970, 1982/1983 and 2001. After the fifth level is finished, the game repeats thereafter. Extra lives are given at 10,000 points, and per 50,000 scored up to 960,000; thereafter, the game goes to "survival of the fittest" mode. Fighters are destroyed if they collide into bullets, enemy ships, bombs or missiles. Game ends when their last fighter is destroyed.

Designer Yoshiki Okamoto's proposal for Time Pilot was initially rejected by his boss at Konami, who assigned Okamoto to work on a driving game instead. Okamoto secretly gave instructions to his programmer to work on his idea while he pretended to work on a driving game in front of his boss.

Fury is a 1983 clone from Computer Shack for the TRS-80 Color Computer. Two clones, both called Space Pilot but otherwise unrelated, were released in 1984 and 1986: from Kingsoft for the Commodore 16 and Commodore 64 and Superior Software for the BBC Micro. Vector Pilot is a 2011 hobbyist-written clone for the Vectrex console.