Time Crystal

Sachs Enterprise

Status: Preview, Findability: 2/5

Its not often we get a new game to add to the archive which is from way back in 1985. As you can see, the game’s graphics are gorgeous, and way ahead of their time for a C64. Some lovely animations in the preview, with a really nice intro with some eerie music to go with it. Its kind of like a Paul Norman game, with very polished graphics.

Its a very small preview and it seems to be very bugged. When you die, you cannot restart (or can you?), but all in all, it looked very promising. Nothing else seems to be tucked away or hidden within the preview from what we can see.

The game was started by Jim Sachs and never finished. As you will see from the demo, he did excellent graphics work, but he quickly left the C64 for the Amiga due to its vastly superior graphic modes.

As a result, Time Crystal never progressed further than the preview here. Jim tells GTW that piracy in the C64 market made him realize that it wasn’t worth finishing the project.

Hopefully Jim will shed some more light some day on his old production. It seems that Jim was keen on the idea still for some time, and took the game over to the NES later on to try and finish it off in tandem with release of the Powerglove (which died a death early on). Sadly that never got finished either, but you can see a glimpse here (which was confirmed to be an Amiga mock up): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaPjEAGkA_Y

Case closed, this is it with Time Crystal…

Contributions: Bayban, Jim Sachs, Daniel Melendez

Supporting content

Available downloads

Update history

27/09/15 – Notes on NES edition of game being in the pipeline

Posted in: GTW64 archive | Tagged: | 6 Comments

6 Responses to Time Crystal

  1. Today remember some think Jim Sachs commented about a Saucer Attack game project whit realistic graphics and something like turret inside caterpillar moving around Washington D.C. shooting flying saucers, but not sure for Amiga or Amiga CD32 probaly in some of these interviews i watched some time ago:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7dSvqWQ68c

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmRsJ5c3Ry8

    Just for curiosity I dunno if you know the obscure Saucer Attack port for Amiga developed in the ends 80′ called “Invasion”:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZE3P8D1UP0

    https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=3013

    http://hol.abime.net/5319

    • Ah that’s interesting to see! The first clip before seems to be from Jim’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea game that was in development – though i’d imagine the Saucer Attack mockup was a test. I’ll have to ask him next time I speak to him.

  2. A few years ago, when after doing some “detective” work I found a video on youtube with the Time Crystal Power Glove mockup, I believed to be in possession of a big secret, that I intended to reveal only to a select few.
    Now you spoiled my secret :-)
    I have a copy of an interview Jim Sachs gave to a magazine where he confirms that it is just an Amiga mockup, and does not run on Nintendo hardware at all.

  3. I personally found this argument very interesting because of the “nes part” of the story.as I am a nes collector from Italy.
    If you are interested in the “demo” that is called Terror of Tech Town for the Power Glove you can check the video taken from my mattel tape (it shows only a few seconds of what Mr. Sachs had in mind) and was only a demo, not playable at all. Skip to 2:17.
    Time Crystal project was amazing and as a nes collector is really great to own a piece of c64 and mr. Sachs legacy ;)

    cheers

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