Ever wanted to fly a biplane against futuristic UFOs? That's exactly the wild premise Konami cooked up with Time Pilot in 1982. This innovative shoot-'em-up dropped you into five different time periods, from 1910 to 2001, where you'd blast enemy aircraft while rescuing parachuting pilots. The twist? Your jet could fly in any direction across a scrolling 360-degree playfield, which was pretty mind-blowing for arcade games at the time.

What made Time Pilot stand out wasn't just its time-travel gimmick. Designer Yoshiki Okamoto, who'd later create Street Fighter II, pioneered a free-roaming control scheme that broke away from the rigid side-scrolling shooters dominating arcades. You weren't stuck moving left and right—you could spiral, loop, and weave through history however you wanted. Each era threw different enemies at you, from WWI biplanes to helicopters to those mysterious UFOs in the future levels.

Here's something most players never realized: Time Pilot was one of the first arcade games to use a continue feature, letting you keep playing after game over by pumping in more quarters. Sneaky but brilliant! The game became a modest hit, though it never reached Galaga-level fame. Still, it earned enough respect to get ported to home systems and even inspired a criminally underrated sequel, Time Pilot '84, which swapped planes for spacecraft. Sometimes the best games are the ones that dared to be delightfully weird.