The game differentiated itself from other light gun shooters of the time by incorporating a pedal that controls when the player character takes cover to reload and avoid enemy fire.

The game's story focuses on Richard Miller, a secret agent, who is sent to rescue a kidnapped woman from a ruthless tyrant seeking to reclaim control of their former country from a new regime.

A port of the game for the PlayStation was released in 1997, as part of a bundle coinciding with the launch of the Guncon light gun controller,[6] and featured an add-on pack of additional stages that are set after the main story.

Time Crisis is a three-dimensional first-person rail shooter similar to Virtua Cop, in that the player holds a light gun and fires at on-screen enemies.

The port features an exclusive Special mode, in which the player's performance, such as how quickly they can clear an area, affects the path they take through the game, resulting in multiple possibilities and endings.

[11][12] In 1995, the V.S.S.E., an international protection agency, helps Sercian opposition leader William MacPherson engineer a coup that overthrows a century-old authoritarian regime.

As the finishing touch, Sherudo has President MacPherson's daughter Rachel abducted and imprisoned in his family's castle on a remote island, demanding vital military secrets in exchange for her life.

A desperate MacPherson contacts the V.S.S.E., who in turn dispatches veteran agent Richard Miller, the "One Man Army", to infiltrate the castle and rescue Rachel.

Meanwhile, Richard confronts Wild Dog's troops in the submarine hangar and makes his way to the main courtyard against heavy resistance, eventually reaching Rachel's location.

[9] Since the PlayStation's CPU speed is much lower than that of the System 22 arcade hardware, the team reduced demands on the PlayStation CPU by cutting the game's frame rate in half, reducing the number of polygons used, emulating the real-time lighting by coloring the polygons one-by-one, and delaying the appearance of enemies so that only a certain number of enemies could appear on-screen at any time.

[9] Three planned sequences - an outdoor restaurant, a missile room explosion, and a boat race - were left out because the team eventually realized that creating them was not practical, at least not within the time they had to complete the PlayStation version.

[9][19][22][24][26] And though GamePro questioned the accuracy of the bundled GunCon peripheral, reporting that "there are times when dead-on shots seem to miss",[29] the overwhelming majority of critics deemed it the best light gun yet released for the PlayStation.

[9][19][22][24][26] A number of critics found that despite the innovative ducking mechanic, the game is too simplistic, in particular that it lacks any powerups[19][24][26][29] or innocent bystanders that the player must avoid shooting.

[9] However, these criticisms had little impact on overall recommendations; Guise concluded that "these factors cannot stop this game from being a High Five"[9] and Next Generation stated that "when compared to other light-gun shooters for home systems, Time Crisis is as good as it gets.

While they added that this was not as much of an accomplishment as it normally would be, due to the weakness of that year's competition for the category, they also said the win was well-earned by Time Crisis's graphics, sound effects, and additional modes of play.