Timeslaughter

Timeslaughter from 1996 is a DOS fighting game by Bloodlust Software — the crew veterans remember above all for NESticle, one of the most famous programs of the nineties emulation scene. Timeslaughter is their calling card as game makers: a 2D fighter that takes nothing seriously and deliberately pushes both violence and humour past the boundary of good taste.

The concept is simple and effective: fighters torn from different eras of history batter each other in one on one duels. The gore, in the fashion of the era's bloody fighting games, is exaggerated to the point of parody — the game was made outside official publishing structures and could therefore get away with things no publisher would have signed off.

That independent origin is the most interesting thing about it. In the mid nineties a full featured fighting game for PC from a tiny team was a rarity; the genre belonged to arcades and consoles, and DOS versions of famous brands tended to be careless ports. Here was a fighter built for DOS from the ground up, written by people who understood the machine deeply.

The record notes support for more than one player, which is a fighting game's natural element — against a living opponent at the same keyboard, the genre comes alive in a way no computer opponent can match.

Being a DOS title, Timeslaughter runs straight in your browser on OldGame.cz — open the game's page and see for yourself just how far the independent scene of the day was willing to go.