Game Review: Timecop (SNES)

Timecop is a science fiction action film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and released in 1994. Like most of the martial artist’s work, it is cheesy, over the top but fun. What it didn’t need was a game based on it.

A side-scrolling action game produced by Cryo Interactive for the SNES in 1995. The events of the game take place after the film and uses digitized actors to portray the characters in the game. You know, like Mortal Kombat. Except here it just looks awful.

Which sums up the game perfectly. It is awful.

You control Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character Max Walker who is on a mission to stop the inventor of time travel, Dr. Hans Kleindast. Across 15 levels Max must defeat enemies using martial arts and weapons all while fixing the issues Kleindast has created.

A standard platformer mostly, the only time gamplay is varied is when you get to control vehicles. These offer a nice change of pace provided you can bring yourself to play it this far.

The problems are many. First the controls are stiff and unresponsive, everything just feels slow. Combat is annoying as many enemies will keep their distance & shoot you while you try to get closer to attack them. You can use a gun but it has limited bullets. In fact, the only move that carries any weight is the jump kick but that requires good timing to avoid taking damage.

The levels, while also varied are horrible to navigate and a punishing time limit will leave you feeling very frustrated.

Simply put it’s no fun to play. It also looks ugly and sounds terrible so it will come as no surprise that Van Damme wasn’t actually used to pose as protagonist Max Walker.

Check out some of our footage of the first level below.