The dastardly Vulcor has kidnapped Princess Kyi-La and escaped away through the "Strings of Time." As the evil genius threatens to marry the beautiful Princess against her will, his dangerous technology threatens to destroy time and space as we know them. What's a cowboy to do? Players take the role of Western hero Marshall Gram to save the Princess and stop the mad scientist before he tears the fabric of time and dooms the universe to oblivion. Grab your trusty six-shooter and begin a journey though the past, present, and future in this remake of the 1991 "hologram" laser disc arcade game. Time Traveler is essentially a 2D platform shooter, presented with special effects and live-action characters to give the sense of playing on a miniature three-dimensional stage. Players control the hero's basic actions, choosing the paths he will follow in his quest and making him duck and shoot when enemies stand in the way.
While the original arcade version of Time Traveler uses a system of parabolic mirrors to create an illusion of three dimensions, this home version comes packaged with 3D glasses intended to produce a similar effect (a 2D version of the game is also included on the disc, for play without the glasses). The game will run on most DVD movie players and publisher Digital Leisure packages this DVD video disc in three different ways, to remind consumers of the three main platforms on which it will work. Some packages of Time Traveler are marked "PlayStation 2 Compatible," some are marked "Xbox Compatible," and some are released for regular DVD movie players with no mention of a particular console. It should be noted that no matter how it is packaged, this disc is actually a standard DVD and not a "game disc." Since the Xbox does not play DVD movies straight out of the box, Xbox users will need to have an Xbox DVD MoviePlayback kit, sold separately, to play this DVD version of Time Traveler.