Time Twist: Rekishi no Katasumi de...

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2008)

Time Twist: Rekishi no Katasumi de...
Disc 1 box art (left) and Disc 2 box art (right).
Developer(s)	Pax Softnica
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Designer(s)	Tatsuya Hishida (producer)^[1] Keiji Terui (director)^[1] Hajime Hirasawa (music composer)^[1] Tomoshige Hashishita (chief programmer)^[1]
Platform(s)	Famicom Disk System
Release date	^JPN July 26, 1991
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player
Media	Floppy disk

Time Twist: Rekishi no Katasumi de... (タイムツイスト歴史のかたすみで…, Time Twist: On the Outskirts of History...^?) is a text-based adventure game developed by Pax Softnica and published by Nintendo for the Famicom Disk System in 1991. The game was never released outside of Japan.

Time Twist was sold separately in two discs released on the same day, and completion of the first disc is required to activate the second. Many members of the Shin Onigashima and Yuyuki staff also participated in the development of this game, and Time Twist is often viewed as the successor of the series, though not technically part of Famicom Mukashibanashi. The game was directed by Keiji Terui; director of Yuyuki and producer of countless television anime scripts.

1 Gameplay
2 Plot
3 History
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Gameplay

Screenshot of Time Twist: Rekishi no Katasumi de....

The game is played by choosing text commands and choices given on the screen. Unlike other adventure games, the player is never given an opportunity to choose a name for the protagonist; he remains nameless throughout the game. The nameless protagonist is a young boy whose soul becomes separated from his body. This allows him to enter the minds of other humans or animals, and temporarily take control of their bodies. He must use this ability to thwart the evil plans of the time-traveling devil and return to his own body.

The game's story-line revolves around real historical events and serious historical themes such as religion, war, and racism. Despite this overall dark, grim setting, the game still has its share of comic relief. Logic puzzles or historical trivia questions are frequently presented over the course of the game, and the player must solve these correctly in order to move on. Difficult puzzles may discourage younger players from enjoying the game, but there are no choices that can lead to a "game over" screen. If the player chooses a wrong answer or command, they will either be unable to move on until they find the correct choice, or will be sent back to a prior scene to try again. The results of each command are related to the player from the point of view of the protagonist. This differs from Famicom Mukashibanashi where the narrator was the sole source of all descriptions.

Like the two Famicom Mukashibanashi games, all text in Time Twist is presented in hiragana, including names of non-Japanese objects, people, and countries, which would normally be written in katakana. The only sections of the game that contain katakana and kanji are the title screen and staff roll. This peculiar presentation fit the two previous games because they were set in imaginary locations, and therefore did not require katakana to be used in the first place. However, Time Twist takes place in Europe and modern Japan, where the use of katakana is required in writing the names of various countries and historical personages. The complete lack of katakana gives in-game text a bizarre appearance.

[edit] Plot

The game delves into actual historical occurrences, but does not attempt to make realistic statements or descriptions of any of them. Various science fiction and fantasy elements including time travel and demons are mixed into each setting.

[edit] Introduction

The year is 1995, and the impending turn of the century is instilling great fear and uncertainty in the people of Earth. On September 25, 1995, a young boy living in Tokyo visits the "Devil Museum" after hearing on a television fortune-telling show that he "would have a chance to meet the girl of his dreams" in a museum located outside the city limits. Sure enough, he meets a young girl of around the same age inside the museum. They begin to converse, but a sudden earthquake cuts their meeting short. In fear, the young boy recites the incantation from the fortune-telling show said to "capture the heart of the girl of his dreams," not knowing that it was actually the incantation that would destroy the seal of a vase containing the spirit of the devil. The devil tricked the boy into reciting it at the museum by manipulating the television broadcast through telepathy. The reanimated devil takes control of the young boy's body, and steals a small time machine called the "Time Belt" from its inventor, Dr. Simon, a physics scientist hiding from the media. The young boy's soul, which has now taken the appearance of a decaying demon, pursues the devil, but is caught in a warp field which sends him to the past.

[edit] Settings and characters

Below is a table listing the various events and historical personages that appear throughout the game. Joan of Arc, Alexander the Great, Abraham Lincoln and Jesus of Nazareth are described as the "Children of God," who have been sent to quell the disturbances caused by the devil.

Disc	Year	Location	Historical occurrences	Historical personages	Important items
One	1995	Tokyo, Japan	Fortune telling has become popular due to growing uncertainty towards the end of the century	none	Devil's portrait
	1428	A castle town in Medieval France	A witch hunt conducted by the church is targeting societal misfits	Joan of Arc	Box of sabbath
	1944	A concentration camp in Southern Germany	World War II and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany	Adolf Hitler	Gypsy charm
Two	Around 400 B.C.	Athens in Ancient Greece	Expansion of the Macedonian Empire	Alexander the Great, Aristotle	Bell of admonition
	1864	A cotton plantation in Atlanta, Georgia	The American Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation	Abraham Lincoln	Devil's claw
	Around 100 B.C.	Nazareth and Bethlehem	Annunciation, The Nativity, and the Adoration of the Magi	Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, Jesus of Nazareth	Demon sealing vase
	1995	Tokyo, Japan	The world has been destroyed by nuclear warfare	none	Devil's portrait

[edit] Important items

Certain items appear in each age which play a key role in completing the game. All of these items (excluding the Devil's portrait) were collected by the museum owner, and were displayed at the museum as historical artifacts.

Devil's portrait: A portrait drawn by the owner of the museum using artistic techniques developed in all different parts of the world. It was not displayed in the museum because it was never completed; it hangs on the wall of the museum owner's home. The depiction of the devil closely resembles that of the protagonist.
Box of sabbath: A weighty box engraved with unsettling patterns. The religion that made a covenant with the devil hid their contract within this box.
Gypsy charm: An ancient good-luck charm placed within a pendant. An incantation that dispels the devil is engraved on its star-shaped metal plate. It was given to an American soldier by a prisoner of war.
Bell of admonition: A small hand bell used by the Egyptian pharaoh to repel the devil. An Athenian doctor received it from a Spartan soldier as payment for his services.
Devil's claw: A statue in the likeness of the sharp, claw-like hand of the devil. Was used as a religious icon by worshipers of the devil.
Demon sealing vase: A beautifully engraved droplet vase presented to the infant Jesus of Nazareth by the three magi. Jesus seals the devil into this vase later during his life.

[edit] History

Over 8 months had passed since the appearance of the Super Famicom when Time Twist was released in July, 1991. The Famicom was already beginning to be regarded as a console of the past, but its sheer prevalence still allowed basic puzzle and adventure games to be released for the console on ROM cassettes. It was during this generation shift that Time Twist was released on the Famicom Disk System (FDS); a console long forgotten by many gamers, and (unlike the Famicom) with very few new games being released each year. Nintendo did not create any television commercials promoting the game; a rare decision at the time. Because of these circumstances, the game's popularity remained extremely low, and many people were not even aware of its existence.^{[citation needed]}

This game was the last packaged release of any FDS game^{[citation needed]}, and one of the last games to be offered on Nintendo's disk-rewriting service (see Nintendo Power).^{[citation needed]} A retrogaming boom in the late 1990s brought renewed interest in the game, and its lack of availability made it a highly sought after product on internet auction sites.^{[citation needed]} The packaged version was often exchanged at prices far higher than the original 2,600 yen price. Its position as the successor of the more popular Famicom Mukashibanashi series and its contrastingly darker storyline also helped to fan renewed interest.^{[citation needed]} The heightening price of the packaged release made the disk re-writing service a cheaper (500 yen) alternative to buying the game^{[citation needed]}, but Nintendo ended re-writing of Time Twist without explanation in Autumn of 2002; a year earlier than the official end of all re-writing in September, 2003.^{[citation needed]}