Good review. I first heard about this one at The Video Game Critic and was always curious about what it was actually like. Seems worthy of checking out in a "if I find it cheap I'll pick it up" sort of way.
Man I would like to know how the laserdisc version of this compares to the Sega CD. Though I didn't even see any on ebay right know. I have had my laseractive for almost a year know and only have 1 game (Pyramid Patrol) and 1 movie (Fantasia).
Form what I've seen, the laserdisc version looks beautiful making Time Gal look exactly like any anime film produced in the mid 1980s.
The stark contrast between it and the ultra Americna cartoony Dragon's Lair and Space Ace to me makes it infinitely more appealing. It also doesn't hear that the main character is a sixteen year old scantily clad anime girl airhead who emboides the well known stereotype:
All girls with green hair are airheads.
As good as the laserdisc version looks though, As someone who happens to really appreciate pixelart, the digitalization of Time Gal form film stock to extremely fluid sprite animation is one that was never duplicated so well on the Sega CD. The effort is better than any of the other FMV games the Sega CD saw and is also better at the Dragon's Lair attempt at the same pixel animation process down on the GBC in 2000.
Many people seem to reflect back at Time Gal as a gimmicky waste of potential and some even feel its a bad game, but i think above all else it's a great time piece and even if it wasn't considered so in its day, Time Gal is among a handful of games I would truly define as art.
Thanks for the review Satoshi... The game sounds like fun and I would love to try it out. One question, did you play the MegaCD version? or the SegaCD. It is quite pricy for the English version.
Sega Genesis, Sega CD, JVC XEYE, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, Super Famicom, N64, Gamecube, Playstation 1&2, Xbox, Xbox 360, NeoGeo AES!