Might not look like much today, but compared to that grainy intro, it is a very big step up!

The viewable area of the gameplay is pretty small as a border has been added around the video. Since the graphics are much better than the average FMV game on the Sega CD, I think the trade off of a smaller game area was perfectly acceptable, assuming the lower resolution helps the animation fidelity (the redrawn graphics certainly help here too, as mentioned previously). Either way, the design of the border, with a score and time zone (i.e. level) at the bottom left, addition of gems that flash at the top, bottom, left, and right to help guide the player through the quick time events of each time zone, and an adorable, chibi style graphic of our heroine (Reika, the Time Gal) at the bottom right corner of the screen all add some much appreciated style. Even better, chibi Reika's expression changes as regular Reika in the FMV portion of the screen interacts with each set of quicktime events. Chibi Reika will blink and smile when things are going well, but will grimace with her eyes x'ed out when misfortune befalls our spry heroine.

Spry? Perhaps a curious choice for the initial adjective to describe our heroic lead, in lieu of perhaps, courageous, beautiful, vivacious, or determined? After all, the player is not actually controlling the character on screen, it is all directional pad presses or the occasional A, B, or C press (all three "letter" buttons are mapped to perform the same action) for the blaster or other weapon Reika happens to possess. Yet, each animated sequence of gameplay has Time Gal leaping, dodging, swimming, bounding, and pretty much every other form of physical activity, for her success requires constant motion to avoid each dangerous encounter. Interesting obstacles, fitting for a fictionalized version of each time period abound. E.g. 70,000,000 BCE has a variety of angry dinosaurs, while 30,000 BCE has angry cavemen and falling rocks, and 44 BCE has suitably angry man and beast in a roman gladiatorial arena. Notice the emphasis on angry as not a single creature seems to be happy to see Reika. There are many such time periods to progress through before you bring the rogue time traveler, Luda, to justice.

Yes, this all boils down to the usual guessing game when it comes to what to do next and you will die a lot while you play, but the action stays frantic and the graphics are vibrant enough to avoid eye fatigue. Not joking, some of these FMV games are such a muddy mess, it can be physically painful after a while. Time Gal avoids that pitfall at the very least. I mean, there's nothing cutting edge exactly, but color use is very good and I am enough of an anime fan to appreciate the art style of the characters and environments. I have not finished the game yet, but the first few time periods (level order seems to be somewhat randomized each playthrough a la Dragon's Lair) flew by once I figured out what to do (read as died and died until memorization took hold). Also, in case you get too comfortable, Time Gal is not afraid to throw mirror imaged levels at the player. The only music track I have experienced thus far is the music in the introduction. While not amazing (Lunar: The Silver Star it is not!), the composition and quality is perfectly inoffensive. I have listened to worse theme music in a game. In regards to other sound design, I actually enjoy the voice actress's various quips as Reika leaps around (You can't catch me!") and the other sound effects are simple but effective. I can see how people could become annoyed by the chirping of the main character, but a hidden level select code allows you to play in spurts if one can not persevere through long play attempts.

Also remember, for those wanting just to view the various time periods in their entirety or the time period's various, related death sequences, that is possible too. Either play through the game enough times to "Visual Scene" mode or play through enough times to unlock all the codes for each level. As far as settings, you can adjust the amount of lives (1-4), toggle the difficulty (three options, easy, normal, and hard), listen to any of the 6 sound effects the game offers for notification (I think that's the tones used anyway), and here's where you can enter the aforementioned Visual Mode (assuming you have passwords on hand to unlock the time periods). As far as difficulty, easy gives the additional notifiers via the border gems, but not passwords for Visual Mode after time period completion. Normal gives the same notifiers for actions, but also rewards you with passwords at time period completion. Hard drops the border gem notifiers (the border persists mind you, the gems simply fail to light up), so make sure to watch the in play area flashes carefully, and you are likewise reward with passwords at time period completion. That level select code mentioned in the previous paragraph? Yeah, the passwords after each time period completion seem to work there too.