Iceman's 30 for 30: Thirty Games, Characters, and Moments for my 30th Birthday

The Moment: The Heroes Hunger Strike
As this project is meant to be celebratory, Ive kept almost every aspect as positive as possible. Unfortunately, the most memorable moment in Time Stalkers is a bit of a negative one, which Im selecting anyway because its relevant to my overall thesis on the game.

It becomes obvious pretty quickly, both to the in-game characters and likely the player, that Master is the culprit of everything. He has some degree of omnipotence and created Ring World to serve as his own personal, fully controllable, living, endless story.

Sword is the first to suss this out, and after determining that he cant harm Master physically, he defaults to the next best plan of using his cleverness and bad attitude to just antagonize his enemy at every possible turn, culminating in a plan where he constantly attacks Masters invincible Ring World avatar (at great pain to himself) just so Masters attention will be diverted from watching the other heroes go on the adventures that have been crafted for them. This enrages Master to the point that he jumps to extreme measures for revenge - namely, taking away the Heroes ability to eat or drink and effectively damning them to be the Black Pearls crew from the first Pirates of the Caribbean.

Its a cool story beat that goes a long way toward defining some broader themes at play in the game, but it lasts all of two minutes. We get a fade to black immediately after Master inflicts the curse, which transitions to the Heroes laying around talking about how theyve lost track of how long theyve been suffering and how horrible its been, and in the very same scene, Sword negotiates a deal to go on one last adventure after which everyone can return to their worlds. And thats that. A big dramatic moment and turning point that appears and is resolved in fewer lines of dialogue than some RPGs would use to set up a kill these random monsters sidequest.

Its all just so disappointing. Time Stalkers creates a legitimately interesting world and builds the skeleton of a great thematic story of unwilling heroes rebelling against a creator whos bent on planning out every step of their journey. Theres a dash of Biblical spice thrown in where, for example, said creator tends toward disproportionate retribution when his Heroes get out of line to support those religious undertones that are common in a lot of JRPGs. Theres even, I think, some fascinating ideas about the nature of fiction itself - its all but acknowledged in-game that Masters adventures are trite, unimaginative, boring affairs that pale in comparison to the intrigue inherent in people just living their true lives, and that his desire to have his tales go on forever misunderstands that stories are valuable in part because they end.

The game seems to want to make a point that, while our books and movies and, of course, video games are all well and good, they can never replace the richness and fullness of actual existence. We can and should enjoy them, but they should never be used as a substitute for something thats missing from life. Its a clever structure to use to get around the fact that Climax Entertainment clearly didnt have the resources, in multiple ways, to produce a genuine epic RPG story, and I very much like the intended message, but turning the game into what is arguably a sort of meta deconstruction thing doesnt mean that theres any less of a feeling of missed potential permeating every corner of the experience. It would have been so great to feel the Heroes misery during the hunger torture. What if monsters had attacked the town during the curse and they were forced to fight through the pain, valiantly gutting it out (through tangible stat penalties, even) until they were eventually overwhelmed But then still not dying, because that was just another part of Masters revenge?

Maybe thats a little too subversive for the standards of the day, so how about just throwing in a few actual character arcs? They wouldnt have even had to be that creative. Nigel and Pyra were from the same world but different eras - give them the beginnings of a romance and see where it takes them. Lady couldve been an adventure junkie because it gave her an escape from her otherwise stifling upper-class life. Maybe Rao wouldve appreciated the paint-by-numbers journeys Master fashioned over the random senselessness of his warring home. Create some emotional inner conflict from the possibility that these characters might consider staying in Ring World for one reason or another so that you can really drive home the point of the story by the end.

This probably seems like an oddly critical writeup for a game I deemed interesting enough to include in this project, so Ill note that I do think Time Stalkers manages to be kinda fun despite all the jankiness. That said, its more important to me than it is enjoyable. Even as a kid, I think I was dimly aware that this game isnt great. But even if I couldnt articulate it, I think I was also aware that there was a lot of potential in it and that it might be smart to seek out some other games like it. Many years later, JRPGs are so comfortably my favorite genre that I can never even decide whats in second place, and Ive gotta give some credit to the beginning of that journey. Its like Time Stalkers was the video game equivalent of my first crush. In retrospect, there wasnt much special about it, but it helped me understand what I like, and I can see why Kid Iceman (Icekid?) found it attractive.