Time Lord Scribes Excerpts
The following excerpts detailing the development of Time Lord was originally published on Rare’s Scribes letter page from 2001-2005. We’ve scoured each edition in order to provide you with every mention of the title to be found in Rare’s posted answers in chronological order below.
We’ve also included a link above each heading which will re-direct to the original letters page that the question was featured in should you wish to view it in the original context – otherwise you’ll find that the entries below only focus on answers related to Time Lord for a comprehensive listing for any fan wanting further information on pre-release content, hidden easter eggs, abandoned features and development secrets:
G’day Scribes,
This would be about my 9th letter I’ve sent to you and I don’t blame you for not publishing it or responding to it, but I thought I might as well try again and see what happens eh? Anyway.
1) Please put some more Joanna Dark and Killer Instinct, and Conker’s BFD renders on your site cause they really make me day go quicker.
2) Any plans of a Battletoads game for the Gamecube? Or maybe Time Lord? Those games really made me see games in a whole new light.
3) Have you got an Australian HQ anywhere? We don’t get any attention when it comes to games. We got one THQ HQ here in Melbourne but pfft come on!
Seeyas.
Matt S
1) There isn’t much in the way of BFD or PD promotional artwork beyond what you’ve already seen, and if we had any more KI stuff we’d have put it up ages ago…
2) Blimey, Time Lord fan mail now, is it? Mind, you didn’t specify whether this “whole new light” was a good thing or a bad thing.
3) Our only development HQ is here in Blighty, I’m afraid. Hey, you’ve got Melbourne House, they did Way of the Exploding Fist – don’t knock it.
Dear Scribes,
I’d love to say how brilliant you all are at Rare and how fun and exciting your games are. But I bet you’re stick of those crappy emails, so I’ll tell you a story instead.
Once upon a time, I was playing along on my PC when all of a sudden it exploded. To fix it, I’d have to buy a new motherboard which would take me a while since I didn’t have a job at the time. During my days of much boredom, I decided to bring down the NES for a bit of gaming time travel. After playing many classics, I found one game which stood out from the rest. It was called Time Lord. I didn’t know who it was by at the time, nor did I remember what it was about. Blowing the cart I whacked it into the NES to find that I had not played this in a very VERY long time. Playing through the first few levels I soon began to remember how frustrating it was.
After a few days of hardcore NES gaming, I soon found myself at the second level ready to fight the boss. As the evil Mexican guy approched, I thought this would be a walk in the park since he had such a simple attack pattern. However, I soon noticed my health being zapped to nothing every few minutes. So he beat me. Time to try again… He beat me again… And again… Until I was on the urge of getting the cheat device out, but I couldn’t win that way. After all, it was cheating. So it was the final showdown… Me and the Mexican guy… Seriously, I shot this guy over and over and he just WOULD NOT DIE! I was fighting the evil for a stupid amount of time to no avail.
The PC was fixed much later. Then I found your site after playing the jawsome game called Grabbed by the Ghoulies. But scrolling down the Timeline page I noticed that sinister game standing out in front of me. So here’s my questions. Did Rare REALLY make this evil game? (If so, it’s not just Cooper on the top of my list!) Is it possible to beat the Mexican guy?! AM I GOING INSANE?!?!
Mr. Grimm
That’s a lovely story. Perhaps Fate is instructing us to rerelease/remake Time Lord with the slogan “Does for Mexicans what Resident Evil 4 did for Spaniards”.
Sadly I have to break the news to you that the main man behind this 8-bit classic is no longer at Rare, but I did get hold of someone who tested it at the time, and he solemnly agrees that it was “a bit of a hit and miss affair in terms of gameplay and difficulty”. There were a few other things he said as well, but this is a family site.
To tell you the truth, comments like this make me want to crack open a copy of Time Lord and taste the raw game design evil for myself, but as my gaming skills have now degenerated to the point where I spent most of Metroid Prime’s second boss battle falling in the water and crying like a little girl, I just know nothing good would come of it.