Terminator 2: The Arcade Game (1992)
Platform: Sega Genesis
Region: USA
Genre: Lightgun Shooter

I'll be back. The single most famous phrase of the Terminator series, starring Arnold Schwarzeneggar. Acclaim made the arcade, and now they're bringing it to the home turf -- Sega's Genesis console. You are The Terminator, sent back in time by the humans to protect John Conner, future leader of the Resistance. You must defend him against the T-1000, an advanced liquid metal machine. Sega knew what they needed to do -- bring it to the Genesis console. They started a massive marketing campaign and finally brought it home in 1992, question is: Was it worth the wait?

First of all, let's just say this: LIGHTGUN! No way! This little device, plugged into the Sega's controller port, adds lightgun functionality to the game. Now, this is a major departure from other ports that simply let you use your controller -- you can aim and shoot the gun! Now that's smart of Arena to do. The controls are tight and polished, even if you don't have the device. It gets a little difficult to aim with the gamepad, but don't worry -- you'll hit something. If there's one thing about this game that held up, it's the controls. You can even use two lightguns if you want, or have one use the gun and the other use the controller!

Too bad the rest of the game doesn't dice up as much as the controls. Pressure was put on Sega to release the game in time and it shows in some areas. The arcade game gave you crisp visuals, photorealistic sprites, all in a scary and desolate futuristic world. The Genesis translation gives you that, but a lot of it feels watered down. This is to be expected for a home console at the time but you can't help but feel that they could've spent a little more time with it. The movie scenes are recognizable but could've had more work done to them. The Terminators in the original came up close and you had to blow them away; they make less of an impact now. Obviously they had to cut some animation scenes (ambience mostly) due to the limited hardware, and it doesn't support scaling. These features, while not too important, leave the SNES port laughing in its face. Nonetheless, the color pallete is bright and animation is fluid, and if you can forget about the resizing, missing frames, and the complete lack of scaling, you're set!

The Sounds and Music are anything that you'd expect from a Sega game. The music uses the Genesis FM synthesizer (with SOME samples), so it's not that noticable, but it does get grinding after awhile. You might even recognize a couple of the tunes from the movies. The sound is standard guns and bombs, although Arnold lended his voice for the game, we get customized lines. They are less frequent and downsampled for the Sega game but it really makes you feel "in tune" hearing him speak. Again, they could've put more than generic sounds in the game (they sound terrible on the Nomad's tiny speaker).

The gameplay is where the heart of the title hits. It's simply you versus them. You can upgrade your weapon and blow up the environment, even though it's on-rails. However, nothing beats logging on with a friend to blow the living shit out of those Terminators. Acclaim takes you throughout the prequel of T2 and through the movie, as you can battle it out through recognizable areas. The game is what it should be: long and furious. However, the saying goes: once a clone, always a clone...the game gets extremely repetitive as it was developed as a Quarter Muncher, not a long-term game. However, once beaten it gives you no sense of replayablitiy at all. No cheats, no codes, no special endings...nothing...I guess he won't be back. While the gameplay is exactly like the arcade counterpart, and might get old after awhile, just drag a friend along, bump up the sound, and enjoy mowing down tons of machines. It's perfect through those long and drunken nights, believe me. If you're playing this on the Nomad it might get difficult keeping track of your cursor, so keep the brightness turned up (unless you plugged it into a TV, then you're cherry). If you find it in a bargain bin for less than $5, don't hesitate.


All in all, this is a decent port of a superior Arcade game. It falls short in areas but if you can forgive the shortcomings and accept it what it was meant to be: an arcade title -- grab a friend, load up, and pwn those metal motherfuckers back through time.