Enough time has passed, and enough disappointment endured, that all I can remember of the Timesplitters series is a map’s worth of landmine-throwing monkeys. It’s possible this is an actual traumatic event from my youth, warped into a harmless videogame anecdote by years of cold water therapy and hypnosis.
We’ll find out on November 23rd, when Cinder Interactive release TimeSplitters Rewind – a fan revival project that stirs together modes, maps, and story material from all three original TimeSplitters games. Oh look, they’ve published a trailer. Let’s have a watch and see if it dredges up any additional explosive, hairy, hooting memories.
Watch on YouTube
Why, I recognise that electrozapper! I recognise those Tommy guns! Oh god, it was all real. They’re coming for me! I hear them pawing and chattering at the windows. I hear them nibbling on sticks of dynamite in the pantry. I smell their hideous banana breath as I settle down to sleep. Save me! No wait, I was remembering a videogame after all.
A good videogame, even. Created by Free Radical and released back in 2000, TimeSplitters is basically GoldenEye but sillier and without the burdensome Brosnan component. It uses time travel and alternate dimensions as an excuse to slap a bunch of daft weapons, maps and characters together. The sequels changed little about this premise beyond adding extra daftness and, eventually, online multiplayer.
The fan remake has been in development since 2012, having been given the greenlight by then-license owner Crytek, and now runs on Unreal Engine. The developers were in tough straits last year, putting out a call for help as they sought to pack in material from TimeSplitters 2 and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect. I’m not sure what’s happened since, but they’ve evidently fared better than the creators of the official games.
Reporting on TimeSplitters in the years since Future Perfect has been perfectly torturous. Free Radical announced TimeSplitters 4 in 2007, but then they went into administration in 2008, after a dismal response to piss-visor FPS Haze. Crytek subsequently bought Free Radical and rebranded them as Crytek UK. In 2011, it was reported that Crytek might revive TimeSplitters 4, but the Crysis developers poured cold water on the idea in 2012, and eventually closed Crytek UK in 2014.
A number of Crytek UK staff were transferred to Homefront devs Dambuster Studios, who somehow snuck a full 4K remake of TimeSplitters 2 into their passable open world shooter Homefront: The Revolution. Then Embracer came along in 2018 and bought the rights to TimeSplitters via their Deep Silver label. In 2021, Embracer refounded Free Radical, hiring back TimeSplitters co-creators David Doak and Steve Ellis. Then they closed it again in 2023 after their entire business went sideways for want of Saudi petrodollars.
TimeSplitters Rewind will offer 28 maps, 50 arcade leagues, 32 challenges, 41 weapons (inc landmines), 20 arcade game modes, and 91 characters (inc monkeys). That’s a lot of game. Congratulations to all at Cinder for seeing it through.