"Aww, it's not the T2 arcade game. Shucks."

I remember playing the GBC version of this game and can't really remember much about it other than it seemed like it would be a pretty decent side-scroller shooter game, just that it was kind of ruined by puzzle mechanics that were so esoteric that they would only make sense to the developer and not the player. Classic game development fault right there.

It was a bit surreal seeing an obscure game that AVGN reviewed back in the day that I had actually played, honestly.

Every single review here is going to be talking about an entirely different game though depending on what version it is, lol. The GBC, NES and SNES T2: Judgment Days are all entirely different games from each other, but they must have managed to dupe people because of movie tie-in and the actually well-received arcade game (which none of these actually are!)

This is the NES one btw.

Another terrible Arnold game. This game is so fucking lame man.

The game has 5 levels, and they seem to hit the key moments of the film, but yeah idk man, level design is pretty lame here.

The entire combat is just walking up to an enemy, mashing punch, backing away, repeat. That is the game. It isn't satisfying or fun at all, just super tedious and boring. The boss at the bar is fucking annoying man. Also why is Arnold just a normal sized guy that dies from punches?

The biking level looks cool but it's really just a nightmare to play, controls like hell. Whole game is just rough man.

I will say the game looks pretty cool, and the death screen is actually awesome. The terminator theme is absent though. I feel like if ljn actually put more care into this is could have been a good one, but this just sucks. Feels like a cash grab.

Not worth playing really at all!

What frustrates me the most about T2 for NES is how much of a vast improvement it is over the first NES Terminator game. The graphics definitely fit the tone of the film more and the character portraits are awesome. The music is also in the upper tier of NES soundtracks for me, really sets the mood nicely. This is all ultimately undermined by the gameplay which, while not as atrocious as the first game, leaves much to be desired. Combat can get monotonous which is frustrating for a game based on an action flick, and some sequences are way too difficult than they should be, especially for a game that gives you 4 lives and no(?) continues (I think at some point I managed to get a continue of some sort but that's it). I ended up finishing the game using save states but unlike the original I would play this again and try to beat it without save states. T2 is one of my all time favorite films so it sucks that this game had so much potential but ended up being just shy of decent.

I watched Terminator 2 tonight and enjoyed it even more than the first one and because I hate myself, I thought I’d give the Japanese releases of Terminator 2 a look. It’s one of two games that LJN published to get a Famicom version, though they’re not credited in this version. There’s also a Game Gear version I’ll be looking at too so hope you enjoy both.

Famicom version

You go through five stages as the T-800 that are for the most part based on important parts of the movie. It skims through a lot of it but it makes sense to do so especially for the short length. The story also follows the movie pretty well which is nice though the way it portrays the story could be better. My only gripe with it is it doesn’t start with the T-800 naked, like what the heck devs? You can’t just say clothes obtained when he is clearly already wearing the ones he stole from in the movie!

The game starts out as a rather poor beat em up with only two attacks. A punch and if you can jump on enemies if you do it off a platform. You’ll want to do the jump if there is more than one enemy ready to beat you up and do punches when it’s just one enemy. It’s simple and easy and it should be easy to do a no damage run of it. You’ll eventually go inside to fight more enemies and then a boss. The boss is annoying because you want to hit and run away each time but sometimes he immediately attacks and I can’t really predict it well and you don’t wanna hit him as he’s attacking. You’ll know you’re doing damage if you see him flinch far back. Hit him enough and the stage is over.

The second stage is a bike driving level where you must avoid walls and the vehicle the T-1000 is trying to kill you with. This level seems rather notorious for the instant deaths but I personally found the level easy once I realized how to get through the doors and shoot the vehicle behind me. I think being in the middle helps a lot? I can’t really say. Though with how easy it is to die and only having four lives and no continues is rather mean.

Sarah Connor has to be saved in stage 3 and you’ll be going through rooms trying to find a card for the elevator and it’s pretty simple enough. The next level is similar as you’ll be going through multiple floors trying to find explosions to put into a dispenser at the top floor and then placing them all on the top floor once you find all 10. It can be a bit tedious but you shouldn’t have too many struggles. Though I don’t get why there’s even a limit to the amount you can hold. The time limit for setting the explosives is also really tight so don’t be slow! A tip I can give is that running from the enemies is easier than always engaging, especially with the T-1000. This is due to only being able to shoot them in the knees (due to a plot point of John Connor saying to not kill humans) and also just having ammo you may wanna conserve. I didn’t even mention how there’s this rating system that seems to give you better guns the better your rating is.

We’re finally here at the factor level and it’s rough. There’s so many things that can hurt you, tough platforming, and so much instant death. It’s not too long of a level but you better hope you had a few lives going into this. Have I mentioned yet you don’t get health back for beating a level? It’s also a pain in the ass to tell what’s foreground and background in this level. You’ll face the T-1000 a few times and at the very end you’ll have to constantly jump on him to push him off the platform and he’s done for. Just get to the end to talk to the Connors and the game is over and you get to see the ending!

Now despite everything the game might have going against it, it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played? I found the game more mediocre than anything. I can tell the team did try to make it a good experience, sure I don’t know their skills and talent but I like to think with more time and money, they could’ve ironed out some issues. I also didn’t really understand some of the criticism like “maze-like level design.” Come on guys, it wasn’t that miserable. I don’t even think the game is good, far from it. It’s just surprising Japanese players think this is like bottom 20 material. I’d easily take this over something like a Micronics game.

The presentation is nothing special but I do appreciate it, sometimes trying to feel more like the movie, like with the red vision of the T-800 with text displayed on the screen. The game’s cutscenes don’t really look all that good, especially John Connor seriously where is half his face? I’m also disappointed the game doesn’t end with the T-800 giving the thumbs up! Where is it?! How do you fumble the bag so bad on that one? The music by Geoff Follin is kind of bland. I don’t feel any positivity about this OST. I swear a lot of it just sounds like noise or just sounds like most Euro composed NES music. I’m not sure if it’s a hot take but was not feeling it at all.

This was a surprise feeling to have. I feel like I should be more negative but guess not. It’s close to being a bad game but ehh I just think it’s mediocre. I don’t think anyone should really play Terminator 2 for the Famicom but it’s not something like Outlanders bad. The game is a little pricey nowadays so good luck trying to get a copy if you want a full collection. At least watching the movie was fun but damnit this movie deserved better.

Game Gear version

This game is just a port of the NES/Famicom version. It was developed by Arc Developments and there’s not much to say besides good god there’s some issues. First off right off the bat, no stage 2. It’s just gone in this version and I assume it’s due to the screen size would probably make it impossible to see stuff coming. Now it’s just a four stage romp which feels lazy. Sadly it gets worse when you get to stage 3 and 4. (3 and 4 as in the ones from the console game)

The enemies can just shoot at you from so far away and it’s so unfair especially in stage four when countless shooters are in rooms. You can’t even shoot back at them unless they’re close to you which is just unfair! It’s no wonder the game has a lot of 1-ups in stage 3 because they probably knew you would suffer. At least you don’t take much damage but expect to take a couple of deaths. They also got rid of any of the parts where the red vision thing displays text to tell you the mission. I’m not even sure if the rating or non lethal shots are even in this port but I still tried to only shoot at the knees. There’s not even any Japanese in the JP version, it’s that lazy!

Another big issue was the bomb placing, the arrow is just bugged and sometimes tells you to place bombs in a place you already set one. The timer is already tight, why have a programming error like this?? The crane hooks in the final stage are also now just generic platforms for zero reason. At least the final boss is easier as you just shoot him a bunch and he falls off the platform, makes me wonder if that was also an option in the console version if I had kept my ammo. You don’t even get to see the ending animated before and still no thumbs up and then the game just goes back to the Sega splash screen.

Not even the presentation can save it as the in-game graphics are about the same and some of the story graphics are the same though for some reason Schwarzenegger looks way worse here then he did on the console version. The music is actually even worse here as while I thought it was bland on the console, it’s repetitive and feels like nothing on the Game Gear, what were they even thinking with this?

This port is just a mess, it’s still somewhat playable but wow is it really not worth playing. Avoid this one like you already have. I can’t believe Acclaim just let Japan have this version and thought that was okay to do. They should be ashamed of themselves. While it’s not the worst Game Gear game I’ve ever played, I can’t imagine this having any fans ever. At least it’s not the 16 bit version but in the end, I just want my 30 minutes back.

It seems that much like The Terminator on SNES, Terminator 2 on SNES is also lumped in with a different game on IGDB. This review is for the Bits Studios game, whereas the SNES port of the arcade version was released as T2: The Arcade Game.

This is probably one of the worst to ever do it. One of those games so half-assed and obscenely unfun that it makes you wonder how it got released in the state it's in, but unfortunately as we've previously learned from Bits Studios' other titles such as Wolverine: Adamantium Rage and GunForce, this is kind of just a thing they had a knack for.

Gameplay alternates between sidescrolling kinda-sorta-run-and-gun levels and driving segments in between. The driving in particular is just hateful, even with a grasp of how it works (which I only gained about a minute before I was ready to ditch the game entirely) it is still dreadfully unresponsive and unintuitive. Sometimes the directions provided aren't even helpful, so I had to follow a video verbatim each time a driving segment began, constantly tabbing in and out of the game. Sidescrolling sections really don't fare much better, with the T-800's leisurely pace and near inability to jump combined with unending swarms of enemies and a couple of escort missions.

Up until the final level, there are merely two indistinguishable songs during the whole game. I can't even begin to understand this. Maybe you'd expect a gripe of the same sort with a basic puzzle game, but an action game with 8 stages? Did they run out of time? Were they too lazy to compose more songs?

Despite joking around about it in the previous review, I figured from the start that this would be a weaker effort than Gray Matter's Terminator game on the console. I did not figure it would be this much weaker. Very plausibly in the bottom 5 of all games I've completed, though I've never taken the time to rank them like that. Despite what my profile and rating curve on here might indicate, I do in fact prefer to ruminate more on things that are cool and things that are good.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a platformer developed by Software Creations, based on the film of the same name. Terminator 2 is filled with exciting set pieces, so it feels like a no-brainer to turn into a game. This game is a major improvement over Radical Entertainment's adaptation of the first film, but still doesn't quite hit the mark for many reasons.

Like the majority of movie-based games, Terminator 2 is a platformer, but not a particularly good one. You play as the T-800 and the first level consists of beating up bikers at the bar from the beginning of the film. You have to defeat every single enemy on screen to progress, but the game will let you move beyond where the enemies are, meaning you'll often just be wandering around thinking you can advance but be missing one or two enemies. The T-800 has these tiny arms which can barely reach anyone without being directly in front of him and this can lead to enemies ganging up on you. Level two depicts the motorcycle canal scene and it's frustrating as hell. You have to avoid fast-moving obstacles that you are barely given enough time to react to, while also shooting the T-1000's oncoming truck by mashing the button over and over before he leaves. It's frustrating and took way too many attempts to complete. Level three has you explore the Pescadero hospital in pursuit of Sarah Connor, avoiding security guards and the T-1000. This level isn't too bad, actually, and I can see it being part of a better game, but it's too repetitive. Most of the rooms have nothing in them and they're all the same thing so it's just a matter of chance whether you find what you're looking for or not. You're also supposed to only shoot the guards in the kneecaps, like in the film, but to my knowledge, there isn't any punishment for just killing them. From what I played of the next few levels, they're mostly the same, so I just dropped the game as I wasn't having fun. The game also gives you only four lives and zero continues, so if you die, it's back to the first level. Sure, you can collect extra lives, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. It's a below-average platformer that, while not intolerable, doesn't do anything to stand out from an already flooded market of platformers on NES.

The presentation is somewhat mixed. The visuals aren't too bad but they're fairly average as far as the NES goes, and this late into the console's lifespan I expect a little more. Mega Man 5 was released the same year and looks miles more detailed and expressive in its sprite work and backgrounds. Granted, one is going for relative realism and the other stylization, but on the NES the difference isn't as large as with other platforms. The T-800 himself doesn't resemble Arnold Schwarzenegger at all and looks pretty small and wimpy, with many enemies being larger than him for some reason. I do like how the game actually tries to fill the player in on the film's story if they hadn't seen it before, but I do think the traced character portraits look a little bit off-model. If there's any bright spot though, it would be the soundtrack composed by Geoff Follin, which is very experimental and sounds more like something from a Commodore 64 game than the NES. He channels some musical elements from Brad Fidel's film score, such as the emphasis on repetitive percussion, it's atmospheric and kicks up exactly when it needs to. It's a surprisingly solid score for a relatively bad game.

Terminator 2 on NES isn't an awful game by any means but it's not good either. It's below-average, oftentimes bad, and while there are some interesting elements in isolation, none of them form a cohesive whole. Not recommended to anyone really, even if it improves heavily on the first game.

PSA: contrary to the blurb at the top, this page is not for the on-the-rails light gun game (released in 1991). This page is for an entirely different beast: the 1992 console release.

I played the Genesis version and it might be the worst game I've ever touched. The graphics look like an 8-bit game, the game has one track of music, and the controls are abysmal. The Terminator can attack, jump, crouch and move, but only one at a time. That's right: no jumping attacks, no crouching attacks, no punching while walking. In addition, he has T-rex arms which makes hitting anyone impossible. This was the only game I quit within five minutes of playing it, and the fact that it was allowed to be released is criminal.

(I'm told the SNES port is very different, and actually playable. I sure hope so!)