Time Tunnel is, as you may have guessed, all about travelling through time, but it has nothing to do with the American TV show from the 1960’s of the same name.
In the game originally released by US Gold way back in 1985 you control the character of a gnome who must travel back and forth in time to recover pieces of a map which when put together will explain to our gnome friend how he can become king.
There are seven time zones within the game: Stone Age (9600 BC), Magical Persia (893 BC), Mythological Greece (86BC), Colonial Salem (1692), California Gold Rush (1849), Intergalactic Spaceship (3456) and finally the Black Hole (9999).
Time Tunnel is, as you may have guessed, all about travelling through time, but it has nothing to do with the American TV show from the 1960’s of the same name.
In the game originally released by US Gold way back in 1985 you control the character of a gnome who must travel back and forth in time to recover pieces of a map which when put together will explain to our gnome friend how he can become king.
There are seven time zones within the game: Stone Age (9600 BC), Magical Persia (893 BC), Mythological Greece (86BC), Colonial Salem (1692), California Gold Rush (1849), Intergalactic Spaceship (3456) and finally the Black Hole (9999).
To recover each piece of the map you will have to solve puzzles
and use objects located within the game – some objects found in the periods of history will only work in other periods. Therefore making for quite a tricky little puzzle which kept me playing deep into the wee hours way back in the 1980’s.
The game starts with our gnome king wanna be in his living room in gnome mansion, now before you can whizz off back and forward through time, you have to get your time machine up and running. Everything you need to do this task is in the living room, a not too tricky task which builds up for the more difficult ones later in the game.
A useful idea in the game is that gnome has a closet in his mansion which he can keep up to eight items that he finds through time and keep them there until he needs them, the closet can be called upon no matter where he is in history.
The gnome character can accomplish a few moves of his own; objects can be picked up, dropped, set in motion or moved. Also a lightning bolt can be fired by him when he is facing left or right (reminds me a little of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever).
The Graphics and the audio are not that great (even back in 1985) but there is something really nice about this game which makes you want to keep on playing it until you reach the end. You feel like you have really achieved something when you complete each puzzle, and the idea of travelling through time is really good.
It isn’t the greatest of games but it is worth a download especially if like me, you played this game in the 80’s and would like to relive some of those lost hours spent in your youth.
