Illusion of Time is an Action-Adventure by Japanese game company Quintet, the game was originally released by Enix (merged with Squaresoft into Square Enix in 2003) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in Japan in 1993.

Gameplay-wise, Illusion of Time is, unfortunately, very linear, minimizing the replay-value. Untypically for an SNES-game, though, is the fairly dark atmosphere, the player is threatened to starve to death on the high sea, you meet slaves and their traders, gamblers are putting their lives at risk and a brutal headhunter traces the player.

On a technical level, though, it is a very successful game, especially nice to watch are the dungeons, which are based on real and mythological constructions (the ruins of Inka, the Nazca plane, the sunken continent Mu, the Chinese wall or the Tower of Babel).

Aside from the graphical changes listed below, numerous passages of text were altered in the translation from Japanese into English, so there are no more references to the Christian religion. Even though there is an American beta-version in which the texts are different (for example the hero is named Tim and not Will), there are still no references to Christianism there.

Title screen of the Japanese version:	Title screen of the US beta version:
Title screen of the US-version:	Title screen of the German version:

The Japanese original version has been compared to the censored German version. The US- and all the EU-versions are affected by these alterations, too.

Religious censorings

In the Japanese version, the adventure starts off in a church (as the graphic characters confirm), all the other versions start off in a school, where the crucifix on tha altar has been replaced by a sculpture that is not discernible very easily.

This is especially pointless as the teacher still looks like a monk.

International version:	Japanese Version:

Altered final boss

There is no evidence whether this is really a measure of censoring or actually a design change by the developer.

The second final boss "Viper" is a big blue bird in the Japanese version, its body has been replaced with a big stone mask for the international version.

International version:	Japanese Version: