Many games contain time travel elements. This list includes computer and video games, board games, Pen and Paper role-playing games and play by mail games which strongly feature time travel.
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Although the concept of time travel has been used and explored by both film and literature, video games have used the idea considerably less. Unlike films and literature, video games allow the player to interact directly, opening up different forms of gameplay.[1] Time travel as a plot device has been employed in video games since early arcade games.[2] The manipulation of time as an aspect of gameplay entered the mainstream following the release of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time in 2003, though earlier titles such as 2000's The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask have employed it.[1]
| Name | Year | Platform(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Achron | 2011 | Linux, Mac OS X, Windows | A real-time strategy game with single-player and multi-player free-form time travel. Players can play at different points in time simultaneously and can stop, slow, and fast forward through the flow of time. Players can also send units through time. |
| Ape Escape | 1999 | PlayStation, PSP | A 3D Platform game, when a curious ape tries on a special helmet his intelligence is boosted. This ape, Specter, uses a time machine to conquer different time periods and establish the apes as the most dominant race. The player must travel through time and recapture the apes.[3] |
| Back to the Future: The Game | 2010 | Windows, iPad, PS3 | Set six months after Back to the Future III, Doc Gets trapped in 1931 and needs Marty McFly's help. |
| Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure | 1990 | Amiga, Commodore 64, MS-DOS | |
| Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure | 1991 | Atari Lynx | Action adventure game with an overhead perspective, when Bill & Ted's girlfriends are kidnapped they are forced to travel through time collecting musical notes in order to locate them.[4] |
| Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure | 1991 | NES | Action adventure with an isometric perspective, related to the film's plot, the duo must restore historical figures to their correct time periods by exploring the game world and collecting objects.[5] |
| Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space | 2004 | Xbox | |
| Blinx: The Time Sweeper | 2002 | Xbox | |
| Bugs Bunny and Taz: Time Busters | 2000 | PlayStation, Windows | |
| Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time | 1999 | PlayStation, Windows | |
| Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth | 2005 | Windows, Xbox | |
| Chibi-Robo! | 2005 | GameCube, Wii | |
| Chrono Trigger | 1995 | Nintendo DS, PlayStation, SNES | A group of heroes from different eras travel back and forth through time in an attempt to prevent the end of the world in the year 1999. |
| Chronomaster | 1995 | MS-DOS | |
| Chronos Twin | 2007 | Nintendo DS | |
| City of Heroes | 2004 | Mac OS X, Windows | |
| Clive Barker's Jericho | 2007 | PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 | |
| Clock Tower 3 | 2003 | PlayStation 2 | A schoolgirl travels through time to destroy supernatural killers after their final murders. |
| Command & Conquer: Red Alert series | 1996–present | Various | Albert Einstein travels back in time to kill Hitler, causing an alternative world war in the 1950s between the USSR and Allies. Time travel would later be used in the Campaigns of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and its expansion pack, "Yuri's Revenge". Later, in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 the events are furtherly changed when the Soviets utilize their own time machine to kill Einstein in the past and erase him from history, which would cause that the Soviet Union would not be defeated in war against the Allies and, unintentionally, creating an expansionistic superpower out of Japan: The Empire of the Rising Sun. |
| Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped | 1998 | PlayStation, PlayStation Network | The series' traditional wormholes to the various levels now transport Crash to different points in history. |
| Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason | 2008 | Windows | The main protagonist has the ability to penetrate other character's memories and change the actions taken by that character in the past. |
| Daikatana | 2000 | Game Boy Color, Nintendo 64, Windows | |
| Dark Chronicle | 2002 | PlayStation 2 | |
| Darkest of Days | 2009 | Windows, Xbox 360 | Darkest of Days takes the player through time into historic battles in an effort to save key individuals from certain death. The battles range from Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 to fighting in Pompeii as ash and fire rain down from an erupting Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. Other locations include the battles of Antietam and Tannenberg, and a German World War II P.O.W. camp. |
| Dino Eggs | 1983 | Apple II, Commodore 64 | Time Master Tim must be guided through prehistoric landscapes in order to collect dinosaur eggs and transport them through time to the present. |
| Dragon Warrior VII | 2000 | PlayStation | |
| EarthBound | 1994 | Game Boy Advance, SNES | The journey of main character Ness begins after a time traveler, Buzz Buzz, tells him about a future apocalypse which only him and his friends can stop. In the last part of the game, the protagonists travel to the past, when the villain Giygas is most vulnerable. One of Giygas' minions, Porky, escapes to another time period and becomes the main antagonist of Mother 3. |
| Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future | 2000 | Dreamcast, PlayStation 2 | The player must travel through different times and time lines in order to restore history. |
| Empire Earth | 2001 | Windows | During the game's Russian Campaign, Sergei Molotov/Molly Ryan must build a time machine to come back to the year 2018 and destroy Grigor Illyanich Stoyanovich's Empire, Novaya Russia. |
| EverQuest: Seeds of Destruction | 2008 | Windows | Players must travel back in time to prevent the forces of Discord from altering the history of Norrath. |
| Exile | 1988 | PC-88, PC-98, MSX2, Genesis, Turbo CD | |
| Final Fantasy | 1987 | Various | The villain Garland travels 2,000 years into the past with the help of the Four Fiends. Garland then sends the Four Fiends 2,000 years into the future to cause global destruction and send his present-day body into the past. |
| Final Fantasy V | 1992 | Game Boy Advance, PlayStation, SNES | |
| Final Fantasy VIII | 1999 | PlayStation, Windows | The character Ellone has the ability to send the consciousness of a person she knows back in time and junction it to another person she knows in the past. The plot in Final Fantasy VIII also deals with a sorceress from the future and "Time Compression" in which past, present, and future would all be mixed together. |
| Final Fantasy XI | 2002 | PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox 360 | Once the Wings of the Goddess expansion has been applied, players can travel between the present and past during play. |
| Final Fantasy XIII-2 | 2011 | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | The character Noel Kreiss comes from the distant future where he is the last human who travels back in time to change the future. |
| Final Fantasy Legend III | 1991 | Game Boy | |
| Freedom Force | 2002 | Mac OS X, Windows | Both this game and its sequel, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, feature a villainous character named Time Master who has absolute power over time. |
| Futurama | 2003 | PlayStation 2, Xbox | The crew must travel back to prevent the sale of Planet Express. They fail in doing so and get themselves killed which provides an infinite loop as the game starts all over again. |
| Future Wars | 1989 | Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS | A window cleaner is transported through time. |
| God of War II | 2007 | PlayStation 2 | The main character, Kratos, travels back in time to avoid being killed by Zeus. Additionally, in a later portion of the game, the titan Kronos transports Kratos to a time before the Olympian Gods held power over the world. |
| Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective | 2011 | Nintendo DS | The main character has the ability change fate by traveling back in time to four minutes before a person's death. |
| Half-Life 2 | 2004 | Mac OS X, PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox, Xbox 360 | First-person Shooter. A slow teleporter is used and this holds protagonists Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance back one week in real-time but for them the trip was instantaneous. This resembles time travel. Similarly, no time passed from Gordon's perspective between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, despite more than a decade passing in real-time. The G-Man slows and stops time at key points in Half-life 2 and its episodes. |
| InFamous | 2009 | PlayStation 3 | The superpowered main character, Cole MacGrath, finds out that the main antagonist, Dr. Kessler, is actually a future version of himself from an alternate timeline, who, after his family was killed by an entity known as "The Beast", travelled back in time to prevent his past self from making the same mistakes he did. |
| Jak II | 2003 | PlayStation 2 | The plot begins with the protagonist Jak being taken through the "precursor rift gate" to the same location 200 years in the future. Near the end of the game it is revealed that a young kid in this future is actually Jak while he was young, and that he was sent back in time to learn the skills necessary to defeat the antagonist, Kor. |
| Jazz Jackrabbit 2 | 1998 | Mac OS, Windows | The protagonists must chase the villainous Devan Shell through various points in time. |
| Jazz Jackrabbit 3 | 2000 | Windows | Cancelled sequel, would have seen Jazz traveling to a future ruled by Devan Shell. |
| The Journeyman Project series | 1992–1999 | Windows | The player controls Gage Blackwood, Agent 5 of the Temporal Security Agency (TSA), a secret organization in charge of guarding the timestream from being altered. Players have to bounce back and forth in time to solve puzzles and find clues, visiting real historical places (Leonardo da Vinci's workshop) or places of legend (Atlantis). Players were also encouraged to not be seen either by avoiding contact with citizens of that time period, appearing as another inhabitant or becoming invisible altogether. |
| JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade: Mystery Mountain | 1996 | Mac OS, Windows | The goal of the game is to prevent a bratty girl from altering history so that her answers to a history quiz she failed will be correct. |
| Kingdom Hearts II | 2005 | PlayStation 2 | Sora, Donald and Goofy travel to a past time period (called the Timeless River) when Disney Castle is being built. Black Pete tries to take the Cornerstone of Light that protects the castle from evil, but is stopped by Sora and company, along with Pete's past version. |
| Kokotoni Wilf | 1984 | ZX Spectrum | The eponymous protagonist must travel through various time periods to recover the pieces of the Dragon Amulet. |
| Legacy of Kain series | 1996–2003 | Various | The game series states that "History Abhors a Paradox". In the Kain series, the timeline, referred to as the "Timestream", is immutable. Changes made by individuals have no effect on the general flow of time, but major changes can be made by introducing a paradox. When a paradox is introduced, the Timestream is forced to reshuffle itself to accommodate the change in history. |
| Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal | 2007 | PlayStation 2, Wii, Xbox 360 | |
| The Lost Vikings | 1992 | Amiga, CD32, Game Boy Advance, Mega Drive, MS-DOS, SNES | |
| Lost in Time | 1993 | MS-DOS | |
| The Magic of Scheherazade | 1987 | NES | |
| Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle | 1993 | Mac OS, MS-DOS | The player switches freely between three characters, each trapped in a different era (past, present and future). Gameplay requires sending items back and forth through time and altering historic events in one era to affect another. One humorous example involves altering Betsy Ross' plans for the American Flag in order to turn the flag into a costume to disguise the player in a future controlled by sentient tentacles. |
| Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time | 2005 | Nintendo DS | Mario and Luigi travel to the past to help their younger selves fight off an alien invasion. |
| Mario's Time Machine | 1993 | NES, SNES | This educational video game involves Bowser stealing precious artifacts from history, such as Shakespeare's pen and Magellan's ship's steering wheel, and displaying them in his museum. Mario must go back in time to stop Bowser's plan. |
| Ōkami | 2006 | PlayStation 2, Wii | |
| Onimusha 3: Demon Siege | 2004 | PlayStation 2, Windows | Features two playable characters switched in time due to the instability of an antagonist's time machine. A feudal Samurai was sent to modern day Paris, while a modern day French officer was transported to feudal Japan. |
| Outcast | 1999 | Win | |
| Pac-In-Time | 1994 | Game Boy, Mac OS, MS-DOS, SNES | |
| Pepper's Adventures in Time | 1993 | MS-DOS, Windows 3.x | A girl, Pepper, and her dog, Lockjaw, travel back in time to Philadelphia in 1764. Pepper is responsible for ensuring that history unfolds the way it should, as well as first locating and subsequently reuniting with Lockjaw. |
| Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness | 2007 | Nintendo DS | Time travel is most likely the second most important storyline element next to friendship. It is the source of many of the ingame actions. |
| Prisoner of Ice | 1995 | MS-DOS, Playstation | The player travels back in time to reveal crucial information to the player, and to prevent his own death. |
| Professor Layton and the Unwound Future | 2008 | Nintendo DS | The story is set in motion by a letter from ten years in the future and a failed time machine demonstration. |
| Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack In Time | 2009 | Playstation 3 | Throughout the game, the protagonists make use of various time travel elements, using a gigantic mechanism known as the Great Clock, which regulates time across the universe. In one instance, Ratchet goes back in time 2 years to find out what happened to Clank's father, and in another the duo travel back 10 years to alter the outcome of a large battle on planet Morklon. |
| Rift | 2011 | Windows | As part of the tutorial area of the Defiant faction. |
| Rock of Ages | 2011 | Xbox Live Arcade | Follows the story of Sisyphus as he travels through time from ancient Greece through the middle ages, renaissance, and more, ending up in the romantic era. |
| Sam & Max Season Two | 2008, 2009, 2010 | Windows, Wii, XBox Live Arcade | Chariots of the Dogs (and to a lesser extent What's New, Beelzebub? & Ice Station Santa) all have time travel in them. |
| Serious Sam series | 2001–present | Various | The games First Encounter, Second Encounter, and Next Encounter involve a hero from the future sent back in time by means of ancient Sirian alien technology in order to find a means to reach the homeworld of the alien overlord Mental, who has ravaged Earth in the future. Sam visits such places as ancient Egypt, Incan ruins, English villages, Chinese cities and Roman temples, albeit sometime after the respective civilizations have died off. Serious Sam 2 abandons the time travel theme in favor of various planets. |
| Shadow of Memories | 2001 | PlayStation 2, PSP, Windows, Xbox | The main character has to travel back in time to prevent his own death and discover his assailant's identity and motive. |
| Singularity | 2010 | Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Windows | In the game, the main character (Captain Nathaniel Renko) acquires the TMD (Time Manipulation Device), created by Dr. Viktor Barisov. Using various time rifts around the island of Katorga-12, the player travels between 1955 and 2010 to save the timeline from the evils of Dr. Demichev. |
| Sonic Generations | 2011 | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS | |
| Sonic the Hedgehog | 2006 | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | The main villain is Solaris, a sun god with absolute control of time. In addition, one of its split forms, Mephiles, is capable of time travelling and has the additional ability of creating time portals when used by two users simultaneously. |
| Sonic the Hedgehog CD | 1993 | GameCube, PlayStation 2, Sega Mega-CD, Windows | Sonic can travel to the past and future of each Zone in the game by running at top speed for a set amount of time. The past dimension is much leafier and 'happy' whilst the future dimension has obviously been conquered and left in ruin by the antagonist, Robotnik. |
| Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers | 1991 | Amiga, Mac OS, MS-DOS, NEC PC-9801, Windows | An unusual example, the titular protagonist is sent to past and future iterations of his own game series, including Space Quests I, III, X and XII. The game treats each 'time period' as a separate location, and Roger is never in any danger of creating a paradox, though this changes in the next game, in which he has to ensure the safety of his future wife so that his yet-unborn son can travel back in time to save him at the start of Space Quest IV. |
| Star Ocean | 1996 | SNES | |
| Tales of Phantasia | 1995 | Game Boy Advance, PlayStation, PSP, SNES | Features time travel both to the past and the future, using ancient technology |
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time | 1991 | Arcade, Super Nintendo | The Turtles must battle their way through time before confronting Krang and Shredder. |
| Thief: Deadly Shadows | 2004 | Windows, Xbox | Features time travel to the past in the mission Shalebridge Craddle |
| Time Commando | 1996 | PlayStation, Windows | The game takes place in the near future, and the military, with the help of a private corporation has created a computer capable of simulating any form of combat from any point in history. However, a programmer from a rival corporation infects the system with a virus that creates a time-distortion vortex, which threatens to swallow the world if it is not destroyed. The player controls Stanley Opar, a S.A.V.E (Special Action for Virus Elimination) operative at the center who enters the vortex to try and stop the virus. In order to accomplish this, the player must combat various real-life enemies throughout different time periods. |
| Time Lord | 1991 | NES | |
| Time Machine | 1990 | Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum | A professor is lost in the depths of time as terrorists ransack his laboratory, blowing up his time machine. The professor must help out the fledgling mankind to evolve and grow civilized. |
| Time Pilot | 1982 | Arcade | The player assumes the role of a pilot of a futuristic fighter jet, trying to rescue fellow pilots trapped in different time eras. |
| Time Slip | 1993 | Super NES | A scientist has to go back in time to stop an alien invasion, when aliens invade Earth. |
| Time Soldiers | 1987 | Arcade, Sega Master System | Two soldiers must travel through various time periods to rescue their comrades. |
| Time Traveler | 1991 | Arcade | |
| Time Hollow | 2008 | Nintendo DS | Using his "Hollow Pen" the main character can draw holes in time to reach through to place or remove objects which effect past events, causing paradox. People who pass through these holes become displaced in time and suffer ill effects. |
| Time Twist: Rekishi no Katasumi de... | 1991 | Family Computer Disk System | |
| Time-Gate | 1983 | ZX Spectrum | The protagonist must travel back through the time-gates to the year before the Squarm invaded, then destroy them to retroactively prevent the invasion. |
| Timequest | 1991 | MS-DOS | The player must travel to various times and places to fix ten key historical events that have been altered by a rogue agent of the Temporal Corps, a branch of the military circa 2090 AD that is dedicated to preventing misuse of time travel technology. Events span from Babylon circa 1361 BC to World War II-era Rome, with several quests involving multiple trips to several different eras (e.g. using fireworks from 9th century China to convince Attila the Hun not to attack Rome in 452 AD). |
| TimeSplitters (series) | 2000 | Various | The player must travel to the past and the future to destroy an evil race of beings called 'TimeSplitters'. The most notable game in the series is TimeSplitters: Future Perfect in which the player must help both their past and future selves solve puzzles and defeat enemies. |
| Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? | 1989 | Various | The game and its two derivative television series (Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? and Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?) feature time travel extensively. |
| World of Warcraft and its subsequent expansion sets | 2004-present | Windows, Mac OS X | An MMORPG, in which players can visit the Caverns of Time where they can travel in time to key historical periods of the world of Azeroth. |
| Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II | 1994 | NES, Virtual Console | |
| XZR: Idols of Apostate | 1988 | PC-88, PC-98, MSX/MSX2 |
| Name | Year | Platform(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Achron | 2011 | Linux, Mac OS X, Windows | Single-player and multi-player free-form time travel. Players can play at different points in time simultaneously and can stop, slow, and fast forward through the flow of time. Players can also send units through time. |
| Braid | 2008 | Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Xbox 360 | The protagonist uses many time traveling elements incorporated into gameplay. Each chapter explores a different time travel gameplay effect. |
| Chrono Trigger | 1995? | SNES, Nintendo DS, | The epoch is a timeship which allows the player's party to visit and play in different times. |
| Chronotron | 2008 | Browser | The player uses a time machine which can go back to a certain point in time to cooperate with himself to complete puzzles. |
| Cursor*10 | 2008 | Browser | Cooperate with your (past) self to click triangles to advance to each level, within a time limit. |
| Day of the Tentacle | 1993 | Amiga, Mac OS, MS-DOS | Player is in simultaneous control of three separate characters in the same location, initially at the same point in time. For the majority of the game though, they are at three different points in time. Actions in one time period affect the circumstances in proceeding time periods. |
| Final Fantasy XIII-2 | 2011 | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | Player can move across different timelines and reverse them to redo them by the Historia Crux system. |
| Forza Motorsport 3 | 2009 | Xbox 360 | During races, if a player's vehicle is involved in a normally race-ending crash, they are able to use the Flashback feature to effectively reverse time in order to rectify the mistake. |
| The Magic of Scheherazade | 1987 | NES | The game allows time travel between five different time periods. |
| The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask | 2000 | GameCube, Nintendo 64 | Playable character Link has only three days in order to avoid a moon crash into the country of Termina. In order to return to the first day, he uses the Ocarina of Time, which also allows him to slow the flow of time (or restore if it was slowed) or advance half a day. |
| The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time | 1998 | GameCube, iQue Player, Nintendo 64, Virtual Console | Link can travel back and forth through time via the Master Sword and the Temple of Time, but only his mind is truly traveling through time. |
| Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time series | 2003–2005 | Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Mobile phone, PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox | A sub-series of Prince of Persia, consisting of Sands of Time, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones. The Prince continuously travels back through times to repair his errors, each time causing a disaster. In the first game, the prince travels back through time to prevent himself from unleashing the sands, therefore causing the Dahaka to pursue him, as seen in Warrior Within, he travels through time to prevent the Sands of Time from being created. In The Two Thrones, his stopping the creation of the Sands of Time resurrected the evil Vizier. |
| The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom | 2010 | Xbox 360, Windows | A puzzle platform game where Winterbottom has the ability to record himself to make multiple replaying clones (which can be used as platforms, grab things before falling to their doom, etc.) and to rewind the events since he started the level. |
| Race Driver: Grid | 2008 | Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 | During races, if a player's vehicle is involved in a normally race-ending crash, they are able to use the Flashback feature to effectively reverse time in order to rectify the mistake. |
| TimeShift | 2007 | PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 | Players can stop, slow, and reverse the flow of time during few seconds to aid them during firefights or in order to circumnavigate environmental hazards such as fire and electrified water. |
| Singularity (video game) | 2010 | PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 | |
| The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages | 2001 | Game Boy Color | A time travelling plot in which Link must rescue the oracle Nayru. Like in Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past, Link travels through two different eras, though unlike Ocarina of Time he travels physically and his age doesn't change. |
Various kinds of family and simulation games exist, where people play face-to-face or around a table, or within earshot of each other, or passing written notes around, and the topic of the game occasionally includes time travel.
Play-by-mail games are games in which the moves and reports are sent by postal mail. Those which contained time travel include: