Genre: Dungeon Crawl
Developer: MichTron Corp
Publisher: MichTron Corp

Little snakes, trolls, ghosts, and even robots smoothly stroll throughout three-quarters overhead Dandy-style mazes. The amount of variety is astonishing, with ancient castles-- complete with crumbling walls and animated torches-- directly competing for the player's attention with futuristic space ships and ancient Egyption pyramids. These 1985-drawn tile sets and character designs are so detailed that at times they look like they're from a 90s "Super Nintendo" game!

Like virtually every home computer game from the early-to-mid 1980s, there is no music in Time Bandit. However, the system's PSG chip is put to use in the sound effects department, where the player's ever-present white-noise shooting sound, along with a gentle chime noise when the player is hit, lend the game a pleasantly minimalistic sensation, which lets the game's art build all of the atmosphere.

Unlike most "Dandy" clones, Time Bandit has an overworld map, which lets the player choose his next destination. To beat the game, each destination must be played several times, with the difficulty rising in each iteration. Holding the fire button pins the player to the spot, letting him fire in each direction without moving-- while pressing fire during movement enables "run and gun" options. The maps are universally well-designed, with each one providing a memorable thematic motif.

Time Bandit is the best Gauntlet-style game of all time-- and almost startlingly, it pre-dated the aforementioned "Gauntlet", in a way making it the forebear of an entire subgenre. Unlike its successors, it is also a thinking man's game, with some adventure game text-parsing elements: dedicated note takers and map makers could spend, and undoubtedly have spent, years figuring out the precise order in which to tackle the game's various-- and oftentimes humorously-themed-- stages. An Atari ST-exclusive for several years, it is one the platform's very best games.