List of games containing time travel

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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.

Video games

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]

Time travel as a storyline element

Title Year Platform(s) Description
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors 2009 NDS, iOS
Achron 2011 Linux, Mac OS X, Windows This real-time strategy game offers 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 PS1, PSP In this 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 1989 NES This Nintendo game is based on the Back to the Future movie. In this game Marty Mcfly travels from 1985 to the year 1955 by mistake. Marty now has to run up the street in a Paperboy game style and collect alarm clocks in order to prevent him and his brothers and sisters from being erased from the photograph. He also has to fight bullies at the malt shop, prevent Lorraine from kissing him by breaking her heart, play the electric guitar by catching music notes and attempt to drive up to 88 MPH in his Delorean time machine car to get back to 1985.
Back to the Future II & III 1990 NES This Nintendo game is based on the Back to the Future 2 and 3 movies. In this game the old Biff Tannen steals the 1950-2000 sports almanac and takes the Delorean time machine to 1955 and gives it to his younger self. As a result, Biff alters 1985, now ruling Hill Valley as a rich man. Marty Mcfly has to time travel in three different time periods, 1955, 1985A, and 2015, to gather 30 items and solve the word puzzle for each item in order to get the sports almanac book and burn it. Later, Doc Brown and Marty are stuck in the year 1875, which should have been 1885. Marty has to gather 10 items and solve the word puzzle for each item. After the puzzles are solved, Marty and Doc can use the train to push the Delorean time machine car to get it to 88 MPH and get back to 1985.
Back to the Future: The Game 2010 Windows, iPad, PS3 This game is set seven months after Back to the Future Part III in May 1986. Doc gets trapped in 1931 and needs Marty McFly's help.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure 1990 Amiga, C64, MS-DOS
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure 1991 Atari Lynx This action-adventure game game has 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, Game Boy This action-adventure game has an isometric perspective. It is 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]
Bio Senshi Dan: Increaser to no Tatakai 1987 Family Computer
Bioshock: Infinite 2013 Xbox 360, Windows, PS3
Blinx 2: Masters of Time and Space 2004 Xbox
Blinx: The Time Sweeper 2002 Xbox
Bugs Bunny and Taz: Time Busters 2000 PS1, Windows
Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time 1999 PS1, Windows
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth 2005 Windows, Xbox
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2010 Windows, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii Continuing from the World at War Zombies map "Der Riese," Edward Richtofen, Tank Dempsy, Nikolai Belinski, and Takeo travel from 1945 to 1963 in a WWII German theater using a teleporter overcharged with a Wunderwaffe DG-2, a fictional weapon.
Chibi-Robo! 2005 GameCube, Wii
Chrono Trigger 1995 Nintendo DS, PlayStation, Android, iOS, 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 NDS
City of Heroes 2004 Mac OS X, Windows
Clive Barker's Jericho 2007 PS3, Windows, Xbox 360
Clive Barker's Undying 2001 Windows, Mac OS X
Clock Tower 3 2003 PS2 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". In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the events are further changed when the Soviets utilize their own time machine to kill Einstein in the past and erase him from history, which causes the Soviet Union to not be defeated in war against the Allies and, unintentionally creates a superpower out of Japan: The Empire of the Rising Sun.
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped 1998 PS1, PSN 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 characters' memories and change the actions taken by them in the past.
Daikatana 2000 GBC, N64, Windows
Dark Chronicle 2002 PS2
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 death. The battles range from Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of 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, C64 Time Master Tim must be guided through prehistoric landscapes in order to collect dinosaur eggs and transport them through time to the present.
Dragon Age: Inquisition 2014 Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows A quest in the main timeline transports the main character into an apocalyptic future. The circumstances of the apocalypse are a direct result of the main character's abrupt disappearance earlier in time. Completing the quest by returning to the past allows the character to prevent the apocalyptic future they experienced from occurring.
Dragon Quest VII 2000 PS1, Nintendo 3DS
EarthBound 1994 GBA, SNES The journey of main character Ness begins after a time traveler, Buzz Buzz, tells him about a future apocalypse which only he 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, PS2 The player must travel through different times and time lines in order to restore history.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall 1996 MS-DOS The end of the game results in the Agent giving the Totem of Tiber Septim to one of eight factions. Somehow, all eight factions receive the Totem at the same time, and controlling the Numidium, a giant brass golem, with the Totem, achieved whatever goals they had. This event is called "The Warp" in the West, and is thought to have happened due to a "break" in time, in which multiple timelines converged into one.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 2011 Windows, PS3, Xbox 360 The Dovahkiin uses an Elder Scroll in a "time wound" to look back into time to when the time wound was created, which was when that particular Elder Scroll was last used. This is so the Dovahkiin can learn the "Dragonrend" shout, which was used as a key component in banishing Alduin, the main antagonist of the game.
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.
Escape From Monkey Island 2000 Windows At one point in the game, the protagonist Guybrush meets his future self, who givse him a key for a gate and some other (useless) items in a certain order, and answers a random question. A few screens later, in order to progress, the player must give his past self the items in the same order and answer the question just as Guybrush in the future did.
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 VIII 1999 PS1, 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 of Final Fantasy VIII also deals with a sorceress from the future and "Time Compression", in which past, present, and future all mix together.
Final Fantasy XI 2002 PS2, 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 PS3, Xbox 360 Noel Kreiss comes from the distant future, where he is the last human who travels back in time to change the future. Gameplay heavily involves time travel, including visiting same locations in different eras and using time travel to complete quests and solve mysteries.
Final Fantasy Legend III 1991 Game Boy This game involves time traveling by boarding a Talon spaceship. To travel to the past, the player must find the past item unit in Elan Present, then use the Past Warp unit at the Talon controls to go to the past, then also find the future item in the Castle of Chaos, then use the Future Warp unit at the Talon controls to go to the future.
Fire Emblem: Awakening 2013 3DS Lucina, the daughter of the main protagonist, Chrom, travels back from a post-apocalyptic future where the dragon Grima has taken over. Lucina's friends also travel to the past with her.
First Samurai 1993 SNES This game involves time traveling with the Samurai character, who is chasing after the Demon King through time in each level.
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 PS2, 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 PS2 The main character, Kratos, travels back in time to avoid being killed by Zeus. Later in the game, Kratos uses the power of the sisters of fate to travel to a time before the Olympian gods held power over the world and bring the Titans back to his time to destroy the gods.
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 2011 NDS The main character has the ability to change fate by traveling back in time to four minutes before a person's death.
Growlanser Wayfarer of Time 2012 PSP Two angels from the future travel back in time: Achiel wants to annihilate the humankind, while Youriel, sympathizes with the humans and wants to save them.
InFamous 2009 PS3 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 PS2 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 This 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 PS2 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 "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, at which point the Timestream is forced to reshuffle itself to accommodate the change in history.
Life Is Strange 2015 Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Windows Life Is Strange is a graphic adventure game that tells the story of student Max Caulfield, a 12th grade student at Blackwell Academy, and how she has got the ability to reverse time so players can redo any action past a certain checkpoint.
Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal 2007 PS2, Wii, Xbox 360
Tasty Planet: Back for Seconds 2010 Windows, Mac A grey goo is accidentally created, time travels to 60 million years ago, and devours dinosaurs, trees, lava, and mountains until it eats the meteor. It then travels to ancient Egypt and devours people, buildings and the Pyramids, it then travels to ancient Rome to devour food, people, buildings and the coliseum; then it travels to feudal Japan to eat swords, statues, people, buildings and Godzilla. It then travels to the far future to devour bacteria, drops, ants, people, vehicles, buildings, spacecraft, asteroids, planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and the universe which sits on a time turtle, who sits on a slightly bigger turtle, and so on...
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 2011 Wii Time traveling is used in this Legend of Zelda game. The player must find the Timeshift Stone in order to make certain areas time travel, including making the robots and mine carts and thorny gates or lasers disappear. A time gate portal in the Faron area in the Forest Temple allows the player to time travel 1000 years into the past.
The Lost Vikings 1992 Amiga, CD32, GBA, Mega Drive, MS-DOS, SNES
Time Gal 1985 Arcade, Sega CD
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 it into a costume to disguise the player in a future controlled by sentient tentacles.
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time 2005 NDS 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.
MediEvil 2 2000 PS1
Millennia: Altered Destinies 1995 MS-DOS
A New Beginning 2010 Windows, Wii This point-and-click adventure game takes place in a post-apocalyptic scenario, where Earth has been destroyed by forces of nature. In the 26th century a group of people execute The Phoenix Plan, in which they travel into the past in an attempt to manipulate the fate of the future.
Ōkami 2006 PS2, Wii
Onimusha 3: Demon Siege 2004 PS2, Windows This game features two playable characters who have switched places 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.
Original War 2001 Windows In this RTS/RPG, American and Russian troops are sent 2 million years back in time in order to secure the precious mineral "siberit" for themselves. Each campaign features a different plot and several endings.
Outcast 1999 Windows
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 NDS The player travels back in time to save the future, in which time has stopped altogether. However, it travels to the future and the past with two partners as the events unfold.
Prisoner of Ice 1995 MS-DOS, PS1 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 NDS The story is set in motion by a letter from ten years in the future and a failed time machine demonstration.
Radiant Historia 2010 NDS
Rascal 1998 Playstation The player travels through time to save his father from aliens.
Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack In Time 2009 PS3 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 two years to find out what happened to Clank's father, and in another the duo travel back ten 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.
Robotrek 1994 SNES In this Super Nintendo game, after the player fights the boss Blackmore at the air base, the base blows up, sending the player to the past of Rococo, with the option to alter the past.
Rock of Ages 2011 XBLA This game 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, XBLA "Chariots of the Dogs" (and to a lesser extent "What's New, Beelzebub?" and "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 ancient Egypt, Incan ruins, English villages, Chinese cities and Roman temples, albeit sometime after their 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, PS3, 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.
Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time 2013 PS3 Sly, Bentley and Murray have to travel in time in order to save Sly's ancestors from an unknown threat.
Sonic Generations 2011 PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS With some help, Eggman sends Sonic and his friends back in time. Several main characters meet up with their past selves to get through reimaginings of older games' stages, as well as to defeat Eggman and his past counterpart.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 The main antagonist 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 goal in each stage is to destroy a machine that the antagonist, Robotnik "Eggman", has placed in the past in order to conquer the future. The future of each Zone will change from "bad" (default, ruined future) to "good" (lively and happy) if the machines are destroyed.
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.
Spider-Man: Edge of Time 2011 Beenox
(Wii, PS3, X360, 3DS)
Other Ocean Interactive
(NDS)
Set between 2011 and 2099, Peter Parker and Miguel O'Hara, the Spider-Men of their respective eras, face a foe who has changed history to ensure his own rise to power, and find themselves working across time to undo the changes to history that will result in Peter Parker dying that night. During the game, the time portal created to change history results in actions in the past immediately affecting the future, such as Parker destroying the 2011 prototype of the robot guards currently attacking O'Hara in 2099 and thus erasing them from history. The final villain is revealed to be the corrupted version of Peter Parker in 2099, attempting to rewrite history, but he is defeated when the two Spider-Men work together.
Star Ocean 1996 SNES
Steins;Gate 2009 Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, PSP, PlayStation 3, iOS The protagonist, Rintaro Okabe, and his group of friends accidentally create a microwave that can send text messages into the past. Once the messages are sent, Okabe travels between "world lines" and enters the Alpha Timeline where he meets a person using the name John Titor as an alias. Okabe learns that in the year 2036, the world is a dystopia governed by SERN (fictional representation of the actual CERN) and Okabe has to redo the messages he sent to reach the Beta Timeline. As soon as he reverses the world and enters the Beta Timeline, he must travel into the Steins;Gate Timeline in order to prevent World War III.
Tales of Phantasia 1995 Game Boy Advance, PlayStation, PSP, SNES This game 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.
The 7th Saga 1993 SNES In the SNES game one of the seven players can time travel from the present-day Ticondera to 5000 years into the past Ticondera right after defeating a resurrected Gariso and collecting all seven runes. There in the past the player must explore and walk all the way to the island of Melenam, explore the ice cave and go to Gorsia's castle to defeat Gorsia.
Thief: Deadly Shadows 2004 Windows, Xbox This game features time travel to the past in the mission "Shalebridge Craddle."
Time Commando 1996 MS-DOS, PlayStation, Windows The game takes place in the near future. 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.
Time Soldiers 1987 Arcade, Sega Master System Two soldiers must travel through various time periods to rescue their comrades.
Time Traveler 1991 Arcade
Time Traveler 1980 TRS-80, Apple II, Commodore PET In this text adventure, the player has to travel back in time to different eras and places in order to obtain 14 rings.
Time Zone 1982 Apple II
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 affect 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 c. 2090 AD that is dedicated to preventing misuse of time travel technology. Events span from Babylon c. 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 - 2005 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?) extensively feature time travel.
World of Warcraft and its subsequent expansion sets 2004–present Windows, Mac OS X In this MMORPG, 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

Time travel as a gameplay element

Name Year Platform(s) Description
Achron 2011 Linux, Mac OS X, Windows This game has 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.
Blinx 2002 Xbox This is a single-player 3D platformer with time travel. Players can exert some control over time itself; slowing, speeding up, recording, reversing or stopping its flow entirely.
Blinx 2 2004 Xbox This is a single-player 3D platformer with time travel, the sequel to Blinx. Players can exert some control over time itself; slowing, speeding up, recording, reversing or stopping its flow entirely.
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 game contains various modes of time travel transport at the player's free will, including portals called "Gates" and, later in gameplay, a flying time machine called the "Epoch".
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.
Sonic CD 1993 Sega CD Sonic is supposed to time travel into the past to destroy the robot generators to save the future from the evil schemes of Dr. Robotnik. The player is supposed to find a "past"-labeled checkpoint and gather enough momentum to travel into the past. If the player travels into the future without destroying the Robot Generators in the past, he travels to the "Bad Future", and sees the respective zone fallen in ruin and pollution. If the player goes to the past and destroy the Robot Generators (or collects the Time Stones), he saves the future and creates a "Good Future" where nature and technology are in balance and co-exist with one another.
Day of the Tentacle 1993 Amiga, Mac OS, MS-DOS The 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, 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, he can use the Flashback feature to effectively reverse time in order to rectify the mistake.
Gateways 2012 Windows Gateways is a 2D platform game set in the lab of an inventor called Ed following an outbreak of a number of his more "creative" experiments. Alongside the traditional platform elements such as jumping on enemies' heads, spikes and moving platforms are the gateway guns. The gateway guns allow the player to place two gateways on the walls, floors and ceilings of the lab so that when he passes through one, he emerges from the other. One gateway gun doesn't just connect to the other's location, but also its time, allowing Ed to travel back in time and encounter earlier versions of himself.
LittleBigPlanet Karting 2012 PlayStation 3 There is a power-up called the "Fast Forward" that sends the player to the location he would be in, in the near future.
Millennia: Altered Destinies 1995 PC The player plays as a man who is given a time traveling spaceship, and charged with the task of correcting the mass extinction of four sentient alien races.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time series 2003–2005 Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Mobile phone, PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox This is a sub-series of Prince of Persia, consisting of The Sands of Time, Warrior Within, The Two Thrones and The Forgotten Sands. The Prince continuously travels back through time 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 resurrects the evil Vizier. In The Forgotten Sands, powers of reversing time are bestowed to the Prince by Razia, Queen of the Marid.
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, he can use the Flashback feature to effectively reverse time in order to rectify the mistake.
Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf 2001 PlayStation, Windows In level 8 the player gets a magical chronometer with which he can travel back to the primordial age to plant seeds and move boulders to manipulate placement of trees and rocks to solve the puzzle.
Singularity 2010 PlayStation 3, Windows, Xbox 360 Players can use a device called the TMD to cause objects to age and revert aging, and at some points to travel back and forth through time.
Super Scribblenauts 2010 Nintendo DS Players can spawn a time machine and travel to either prehistoric, Medieval, Western, future and ancient Egyptian times.
Tales of Maj'Eyal 2010 PC This modern tiled rogue-like game allows to time travel some turns back and change the history, or some turns forward and peek the future using particular abilities of Chronomancy-related classes.
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, Virtual Console, Nintendo 3DS 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, Nintendo 3DS 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.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages 2001 Game Boy Color Link uses the Harp of Ages to travel between the distant past and the present. Actions in the past can change the present world.
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom 2010 Xbox 360, Windows A puzzle platform game in which 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.
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.
Zeit² 2011 Xbox 360 Windows Players can actively rewind time and play cooperatively with their former play, which is displayed as a black shadow. They can also fast-forward time and basically double the game speed at will.
Primary Max[6] 2012 Browser Players cooperate with past selves from a time machine, similar to Chronotron.
Time Swap[7] 2001 Browser The player goes back and forward in time in the place of his father and himself to find out what caused the father's disappearance.

Board games

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.

The following are sourced from various pages on BoardGameGeek.com:[8]

Doctor Who themed boardgames

Card games

Role-playing games

Play-by-mail games

Play-by-mail games are games in which the moves and reports are sent by postal mail. Those which contain time travel include:

  • Outtime days, designed by Freitas
  • Time Trap, designed by Richard Loomis

Game expansions

References

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  6. Primary Max
  7. Time Swap
  8. BoardGameGeek.com
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  11. DayTrippers
  12. Most notably the Chronomancer supplement for 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
  13. rpg.net.[1] Retrieved 28 January 2013.

External links