Terminator 2: The Arcade Game

If I was ever going to make fun of Arnold Schwarzenegger or his silly little catch phrases then now would be the time for me to say them. But I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to bore you with stupid movie quotes and bonehead quotes. I am aware that by doing so this might be the only review to ever purposefully not say "I'll be back" or "Hasta la vista, baby" ... oh crap, I guess I can't make that claim anymore. Well, maybe it's time we just review this killer!

So this is Terminator 2: the Arcade Game, which should not be confused with Judgment Day, a 2D side scroller that was pretty lame. Oh don't get me wrong, this game is also very lame, but it's a whole step up from Judgment Day ... you're just going to have to take my word on this one.

Terminator 2: the Arcade Game is a 3D shooter you play with a light gun. Well, you play it with a light gun in the arcade, for whatever reason developer Probe decided to map everything to the control pad. If you've never tried playing a light gun game with a standard control then you don't know the type of frustrating you're missing. This is by far the hardest way to play a game like this, and considering that this is a difficult game to begin with (cheap, too) you'll learn to hate the control.

I suppose Terminator 2 the movie had enough action to warrant a game of this type, but the presentation here is just atrocious. Each level is essentially the same thing, the screen moves from left to right and you shoot anything that pops up on the screen (unless it's a human, leave them alone). The enemies include a lot of futuristic baddies, robots, flying machines, and much more. If you're a fan of non-stop action, then Terminator 2 might be worth checking out ... if you can get past the terrible, terrible control.

The levels themselves come straight from the movie, and you'll be fighting just about every place Ahnuld did in the movie. You'll be visiting the distant future, office buildings, and even that cool warehouse that is so pivotal to the end of the movie. As you would expect from the 8-Bit architecture, T2: the Arcade Game suffers a bit when it comes to the graphics; all kinds of details and backgrounds are missing, and your special weapons aren't all that special looking. Couple that with the fact that you aren't using a light gun and it's hard to recommend this to anybody but the most die hard Terminator 2 fan.

At the end of the day one has to wonder if the Sega Master System was the right place for this arcade port. Would it have been that bad if Acclaim had let it on the Genesis, a system that actually had support for a light gun? This was never my favorite arcade game and just doesn't do anything for me on this 8-Bit system. I'm sure there are people that would enjoy this type of game, but I'm not one of those people. With bad graphics, terrible control, and a lot of frustrating moments under its belt I find it difficult to recommend a game like Terminator 2: the Arcade Game. This is just too messy to be worth adding to your collection.