Day 117: Time Crisis 3

Testing a modded GCon45 for today's title from my 527 game backlog - I'm playing one every day while furloughed from work...

Time Crisis 3 for the PS2
Previous days' entries can be read HERE.

There are a lot of good reasons to play videogames on an old cathode ray tube (CRT) TV. The old 8 & 16 bit consoles look markedly better, for one, and the vast majority of games released in the previous century were designed on, and for this kind of display equipment.

What started as the desire to play games as they were intended has, for some, turned into an obsession with finding the best or most expensive types of CRT around. This is the kind of ludicrously priced ex-professional equipment that you only ever see in those pictures of games rooms that look like you’d get a stern talking to from a very serious collector if you even considered touching a controller.

For me, any CRT is better than any LCD/LED (or many variants thereof) screen for exactly one reason: Light gun games.

And when it comes to light gun games, Namco’s Time Crisis series is king of them all.

1998’s Time Crisis 2 feels to me like it was probably peak popularity for the franchise. Back in the day it was impossible to walk into a cinema, service station, or one of the few remaining dedicated arcades, without hearing ‘Action’, followed by non-stop gunfire.

Arriving 4 years later, I never saw the third installment in an arcade, and I don’t think I was even aware the series continued past 2001’s Playstation exclusive Project Titan. But, here we are, with my freshly modded GCon45 plugged into my PS2 Slim and Time Crisis 3 ready to go.

As there’s not going to be much to say about the game, allow me the indulgence of talking you through the aforementioned mod.

A friend recently gave me a spare light gun. As it was a third party product and my other PlayStation guns are official I jumped at the chance to try something I’d been thinking about for some time, adding a foot-pedal to a light gun for the true Time Crisis experience.

I ordered a cheap (£6) metal footswitch from China and it was probably about half way here when I remembered that third-party guns don’t work with Time Crisis. So I went to plan B, I would try to wire the switch up to the PS connector from an old broken controller and plug it into the Player 2 port in the console. In single player mode, pressing any button on the second controller works as the action button.

Alas, when the switch arrived, and I tried this I found that, with the circuitry removed I was unable to force the right response by connecting various wires. I got close, discovering that combining the orange and brown wires before touching the green to them absolutely mimicked a button-press - but it unfortunately also interfered with what was going on in the Player 2 port and the gun wouldn’t fire.

Plan C was to modify one of my original GCon45s. I don’t like permanently modifying any of my hardware if I can help it, but I was able to use a good old fashioned twist connect around a bare section of the two wires of the A button on the gun. I then snaked the cable back through the casing following the path for its own wire.

The result is fantastic. The switch contains a fairly decent looking microswitch and the housing is very robust. More importantly, it works a treat!

Ploughing into the arcade mode of Time Crisis 3 could not fail to bring a smile to anyone’s face. There’s just something so enjoyably cheesy about the presentation, a knowingness has evolved since the original, but it’s delivered with real affection for the genre.

The vast majority of the game is going to surprise no one who has played anything from the series before, but there’s much to enjoy nevertheless. The sound is classic, with dodgy voice acting and a cacophony of explosions that are a joy to behold. The graphics are way below what the PS2 is capable of but they’re imbued with a nostalgically arcadey style that it’s hard not to love.

The major change to the gameplay is the ability to choose one of four weapons. The standard infinite-bulleted handgun remains, but you can pick up a machine gun, a shotgun, and a grenade launcher along the way, anyof  which can then be selected while in cover and used until the ammo is depleted.

It’s a deceptive large change as it adds a little strategy and rewards replays as you learn when and where it’s best to use a particular firearm.

Besides this and some light sniping later in the story, this is Time Crisis as you know and love it (if you don’t love it, by the way, you’re wrong). As an arcade port, and one that rewards you with more lives and continues as you progress, it’s not going to be a lengthy or deep experience. But no one expects that from a light gun game, no one even wants that from a light gun game. Nope, what everyone wants from a light gun game, is Time Crisis 3.

Time Crisis 3 - It’s reignited my passion for this genre and, for now at least, I’d say it’s the best fun you can have while shooting a toy gun at an ancient TV.