This is the Worst Timeline

Well, we’ve officially found the worst version of RoboCop versus the Terminator, and it may in fact take the prize for the worst TerminatorIs it a series about a future nuclear war and the survivors of the aftermath? Is it a series of chase movies set in the present day? Is it a series about time travel? That fact is that the Terminator series is all of those concepts. The mash-up of genres and ideas shouldn't work, but the films have proven adept at mixing into a heady series unlike any other. game overall (the vote is still out on if it’s also the worst RoboCop game, as I haven’t played many of those yet, but my bet is on “yes”). Developed (you would think ironically) by Unexpected Development, this version of the game isn’t a port of any of the others but is a full-designed one-version created specifically for the Game Boy. But having played through it and suffered the many atrocities to good gaming that this title commits, I can say, whole heartedly, I wish I hadn’t.

Look, licensed games on the Game Boy were almost universally bad. I doubt there are many people out there clutching their Game Boy carts of Superman or Jurassic Park, desperate to prove to me that somehow the Game Boy version was the best version. Game Boy titles could be good, some of them even brilliantly great, but that almost never happened for licensed titles. Especially not by 1994 when the NES was reaching its end of life and any game developed for the 16-bit consoles would get compromised coming down to the lowly Game Boy. This was not the hardware for that kind of down-conversion.

It would take a special kind of care to make a Game Boy version of a game meant for bigger, better consoles. It could be done, but you had to have a lot of time and money to throw at the problem, and licensed titles rarely got either. Unexpected Development worked under a deadline as set by publisher Interplay, and they had to get a game out the door for Summer 1994. Their game is technically playable, if we stretch the definition of the term, and it technically adapts the storyline of RoboCop versus the Terminator, yes. But in all the ways that count, this is a licensed failure, through and through.

The basics of the game at this point should be familiar to everyone. RoboCop is working in Detroit, going on about his day as he commits mass murder on the gangs of the city. He gets a message to head to the OCP facilities, though, and once there he encounters a terminator. A (not very pitched) battle ensues, and RoboCop walks away the victor. Realizing something is going on, the cyborg delves deeper into the facility until he comes across the central control units as planted by SkyNet.

Suddenly we’re whisked away to the future where RoboCop has to explore the wastes, battling against the terminators. He works from the ruined city of L.A. down into the tunnels controlled by SkyNet’s machines, and then works his way into the SkyNet central processing core. There he battles against the brain inside the machine, blasting it apart until there’s nothing left. Only then are SkyNet’s plans ruined, saving the fate of humanity in this war against the machines.

At base level, the Game Boy version of RoboCop versus the Terminator follows the design notes of all the other games. You have the hero, RoboCop, who has to walk, jump, climb, and shoot his way through a selection of stages. He begins in Detroit, works his way through OCP, and then battles his way to the SkyNet compound. And it all takes about an hour or so to complete. Unexpected Development was given their orders and they cranked out a game that matched the description given. The devil, of course, is in the details and where the Game Boy effort falls apart is in how all these details are put together.

For starters, the gameplay feels so slow here. Everything, from RoboCop to the enemies, feels like it’s moving through molasses. The quick and breezy action of the Genesis version of the game is missing here, and while it’s foolhardy to try and compare the two games for most things, at the very least you want a run-and-gun shooter to feel like the characters are, well, running. The characters move so slow, and even their bullets slowly crawl across the screen. And that doesn’t take into account where there’s too many objects on screen and the game has literal slowdown. It’s bad.

The shooting is also incredibly basic. RoboCop can only shoot ahead, or at an upwards, 45 degree angle. He can’t shoot downwards, or straight above himself, so your choice of strategies is pretty basic. Most of the time I chose to ignore shooting when I could and just barrelled straight ahead, face-tanking small amounts of damage instead of desperately trying to aim my slow shots at the various enemies and hoping they’d hit. Shooting was not the strategy for most of this shooter.

Worse, the selection of guns in this game is lacking. That’s because there’s no selection. Unlike the other versions, where RoboCop got to pick up a variety of guns to replace his basic pistol, there are no choices here. Robo is stuck on his basic pistol for most of the game. Occasionally you’ll find a spread gun power-up, which is nice, but the second you take damage the gun goes away putting you back on your pistol. And, no doubt, you will take damage because there are a ton of environmental traps, as well as cheaply placed enemies, that will get you within seconds of grabbing the upgrade every time. Hell, one level has the gun in between to blasts of steam and you literally get hit by it the second you get the gun, removing it once again. There’s no point in trying.

Not that the spread shot is much of an upgrade. To keep sprite count low, I’m sure, RoboCop is limited to having two shots from his pistol on screen. When he has the spread shot he can fire out one blast of three shots that move out in a wide spray, but then he has to wait until those are off screen before he can fire another. So you get more of an arc for your shots, but you also get less firepower in the process, which makes it feel like a downgrade in many ways. It would have been nice to have other guns, or any other options, but no. Not in this version.

What you’re shooting at isn’t all that great either. Most of the time you’re blasting away at one kind of swooping drone or another. They can move all over the screen, while you are stuck on the ground with limited ways to hit them. Just touching the enemies, any enemies, damages you, and since you can’t easily shoot them most of the time, you’ll likely touch them. That’s why I gave up on shooting in this shooter since it felt like a losing strategy. Better that than fighting the controls further.

Touching enemies just drains a sliver of health, and there are plenty of health drops in the stages, scattered around, so it’s hard to run out of health. Plus, there’s no knockback in the game, so there really isn’t a penalty to face-tanking damage. Sure, you want to be smart about it, but that’s still better than trying to play this game the way it was intended. This game isn’t fun enough to play properly, so just find your own way through if you really want to get through this game efficiently.

Or, really, just don’t. This isn’t a fun game to play. It’s slow, it’s boring, and it’s just not fun. Unless you had to have games for your Game Boy back in the day you probably avoided playing this version then. Now, with hindsight and emulation, you’ll likely stick to the best version of the game you can find, and that will be the Genesis edition. This Game Boy effort, cheaply made and quickly shat out, doesn’t deserve your time.