That's the thinking behind the PlayStation Portable title Half-Minute Hero - sort of. It's a little more complicated than that but intriguing enough for me to dive right in and waste no more time.
Fun Times
For all my talk about the PSP, I actually own its PC release from a few years later, Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy, which comes with some extras, including a new style of graphics, but I'm running things in the retro 8-bit look that was intended.
Half-Minute Hero is a throwback to those RPGs of old, their top-down world maps and sprite-based characters, as well as their paper-thin plot that doesn't mean too much, but its gameplay is a little more modern.
Combat in Half-Minute Hero is automatic. If the King wants you to swat away some enemies, you walk out into the field, find a random encounter, sit back and watch the numbers decrease until one of you dies. There are no attacks to choose from, no spells to cast, your hero, who I called 'Hero', does it all for you.
Not much of a fun game, you might be thinking. Just you wait one second...
An evil lord has made his presence known and has cast a spell that destroys the world in 30 seconds unless we stop him before it finishes. Luckily, his castle isn't too far away. Unfortunately, we're woefully unprepared for saving the world right now.
Buying a sword in town makes sense, as does healing up and then buying a herb to heal up in the middle of combat later on. We only have one item slot, so we might as well make use of it with a healing item - I don't think we'll have much time to run back to town if we need some more healing...
It'd be nice if that timer was 1 minute 30 seconds, but it's actually a smidge over 1 second, and as automatic as combat is in Half-Minute Hero, it's not likely to resolve one way or the other in such a short amount of time.
There is a button to flee the fight, but we've come so far, we can't turn back now.
Someone rather important was watching us try (and fail) to help save the world. The Time Goddess herself. Of all the deities to have on your side in a game about saving the world in 30 seconds, we've probably got the best - even if she demands payment for her services.
Resetting time to the moment the evil lord cast his spell and freezing the countdown timer while we are in the safety of a town, allowing us to purchase equipment and chat to the locals at our leisure, the Time Goddess has given us a second chance to get things right, and we're going to take it.
Final Word
With that, the world is saved, the credits roll, and Half-Minute Hero has done its job of cramming in all that is great about an RPG, without having to put up with all the other rubbish that gets in the way. Probably an ideal game for a porta- wait a moment, there's more.
Forget About That
Of course there's more to Half-Minute Hero than that, but nice touch with the credits. Knowledge of how to destroy the world in 30 seconds has spread out across the land, and various monsters and bad guys are all too happy to learn and put into practice the spell that will finally spell doom for this world.
Each level is therefore a little mini-RPG where you have to ultimately defeat the villain in 30 seconds, but will first have to almost puzzle your way through the environment in search of a solution.
The Time Goddess prompts us to fix the bridge that leads to the castle where our final showdown will take place, and that the nearby village will probably have some more info, which it does in the form of the bridge builder and his wife, hanging out with nothing to do because their tools were stolen.
East we go then, into a cave to defeat whatever enemy it was that stole the tools. The action often takes place so quickly you - and the text display - can't even keep up with events. So long as you're still moving and the clock is still ticking, you're good to go.
And no, you can't. That's why you need to keep track of where on the map are some shrines to the Time Goddess, so that you can drop a few (quite a few) gold pieces into her hand and rewind the clock back to the start.
Frustrations
Everything is swift in Half-Minute Hero, especially your almost inevitable death and many failures to get things done within the strict time limit. Luckily, restarting is a breeze, but this is a game where a little bit of trial and error will go a long way, and I'm not the biggest fan of trial and error in video games.
The good news is that this isn't a game designed to be completed in 30 seconds, though having said that I'm worried there are plenty of YouTube videos showing otherwise. It's a game about working within your limitations to get just as far as you need to get on this part of the run before asking for a favour from the Time Goddess, stumping off ever-increasing amounts of cash in the process, and carrying on to the next step of your plan.
You will get there easily enough, at least you will in the early levels, and will be rewarded with a quest screen and the opportunity to gather your senses and dress for the occasion on the world map.
Further Fun Times
Everything you've bought or found on your travels, or have been gifted by the locals thankful for your efforts, can be swapped in and out before you dive into the next stage of your global quest to rid the world of everyone who knows this one particular spell.
Humorously, the first reward we got for saving the world was some tatty clothing. We haven't saved it well enough, it seems, but a selection of swords and shields will give us various buffs to our stats, and I'm sure fancy footwear and hats will give us some additional benefits as well.
There's a dedicated dash button, for example, which whizzes you around a level but will drain your HP. What's more important? Getting somewhere on time, or getting there in one piece? You probably won't ever know until you're in a situation where you need to answer that question, but if some boots give you a bit of a speed boost, I'd be on the lookout for a pair of them for sure.
Here, a mercenary is offering his services for 1000gp, far too much money, especially when each instance of using the Time Goddess costs at least 100gp more than the last. The alternate way to get his services is to find something that he could give to his girlfriend, so off we run to see what may lay nearby.
In a cave to the south, behind some monsters, is a sizeable ruby, and the mercenary is more than pleased with it, joining us on our quest and making our trip across some bridges much, much easier. Could this giant crab-like thing have been beaten by us alone? How many attempts to defeat it could we have afforded? Would its health have been reset each time we encountered it? Not to mention how many random encounters would we have needed to find and win to get the money we need to pay for healing items and clock resets?
Half-Minute Hero probably then has a clear route through each level, and you've just got to find it, and find out quickly to get through it.
A tower on an island? That's where the weapon will be then. We need a boat. 200gp for unlimited boat usage. Sure. Grind a few encounters out to pay the Time Goddess once more as well and by this stage in our quest we're level 13, have a mercenary by our side, and possess the one weapon which our foe is weak to. What are we waiting for?
It's a one-hit kill. Quest complete. Roll credits, again. What's that? Another evil lord knows how to cast the spell? Be right with you...
Final Word
I may have only actually spent a minute or two on a level, but thirty minutes easily went by and Half-Minute Hero had gone from an idea that I might have dreaded to one that I might actually enjoy.
I was apprehensive in that I thought it'd be a game where trial and error would utterly dominate the gameplay, and that you'd be learning through so much failure that it would, in effect, be a bit of a chore and a grind to play, something clearly at odds with the idea of an entire questline taking place in a matter of seconds.
The next level after this says we can go the long way around the map to reach the castle, or take a shortcut through the caves. What do I find in the first town? A horse to make for speedier travel. What did I initially buy instead of the horse, and therefore not leave myself with enough money to buy the horse and make my life that little bit easier? A hat. And I don't even remember what the hat does.
In a bad game, this would be a little tedious. One wrong purchase effectively ruined my run. How can an RPG go wrong in the safety of a shop menu? But Half-Minute Hero isn't a bad game. It's a clever one. A really rather clever one.
I don't know how many levels there are or what absurd puzzles we'll have to work out on the fly to get the job done, but with its simple controls and straight to the point gameplay, Half-Minute Hero will have players engaged for a lot longer than that, including myself.
How long will I make it before I find myself too stupid to know how to advance? I don't know, but the charming retro visuals will be a joy to look at on the journey there. Speaking of which, what does the fancy upgraded art style in Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy look like?
Ew, no, go back to the good stuff, please.
Give it thirty seconds, at least.
Fun Facts
All of this was just one mode of the single-player. Other modes have you be the bad guy spawning minions into the world, the princess trying to escape her curfew, or giving you 300 seconds but no Time Goddess, or 3 seconds. I've no idea how that one is even possible.
Half-Minute Hero, developed by Marvelous Entertainment, first released in 2009.
Version played: Half-Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Climax Ultimate Boy, PC, 2012.