Both released in 1992, I'm not sure if Incredible Technologies' "Time Killers" was emboldened by the overwhelming success of the at-the-time ultra-violent "Mortal Kombat," or if the games were developed in tandem and the arcade landscape was simply ripe for the gruesomeing.Thirteen at the time, I was happy to see interminable lines forming behind the MK machines because it meant that I was able to play Time Killers without having to worry about some arcade hermit elbowing in on my game, instigating a challenge battle that would effectively end my progress through the story mode.
The reason that I was so enamored of Time Killers was that, though far less "realistic" than MK (MK's use of digitized sprite technology was a large part of its enormous appeal, building on the success of 1990's "Pit Fighter"), it had more gory bang for your buck (or, in this case, for your quarter).
Mortal Kombat may have had blood throughout the matches, but decapitations and more extreme forms of violence were limited mostly to the end of the match, during the "finish him" moment, known in MK as "fatalities." But even then, a fatality could only be performed if you knew the special joystick/button combos, which, if you were only an occasional visitor to the arcade as I was, were more or less a mystery. Time Killers, on the other hand, not only was rife with the kind of darkly comical violence my young mind longed for, it also reacted quite well to button mashing, my preferred method of fighting game gaming (it's five-button configuration controlled each of your character's four limbs and his head, and hitting the two arm or leg buttons at once resulted in a stronger attack).
My favorite character to play as was named "Rancid." He was a punk-looking guy sporting a green flopped-over mohawk with an "x"-shaped scar on his forehead. The best thing about him though, without question, was the fact that his weapon (yes, every character had a weapon, standard) was a chainsaw. And, of course, these weapons could be used to inflict horrendous and wonderful damage to opponents.
And therein lies the beauty of the relatively unknown, severely under-appreciated game because if you inflicted enough damage to your opponent you could sever one or both of his arms, forcing him to fight without a weapon, using only his legs and head, which could also be lopped off, effectively ending the match. What I never would have known then (being the unsophisticated gamer that I was, as mentioned previously) that I know now (thanks only to wikipedia) is that at any time during the match, a player could have executed the "super death move," which would have removed both of the opponent's arms as well as the head in one move.
It wasn't long before the underperforming cabinet was pulled off the floor, like so many of my other favorites, probably in favor of a fourth MK machine.
