Reese, the Hope for Humanity Lies with You

The first The Terminator game, based on the 1984 film of the same name, wasn’t exactly good. I appreciated what Bethesda Softworks tried to do in their title, but the fact is that the computers of the era weren’t up for an ambitious, open-world, first-person shooter. The game could do all the things it purported, but it didn’t do them well, and in all its ambitions for the game Bethesda forgot to include one very important element: the fun. Their game was technically ambitious but a total snooze on every other level.

A year later, Virgin Games had their own take on the material. Developed by Probe Software, this version of The Terminator wasn’t anywhere near as technically ambitious as what Bethesda put out, but it also played better and was much better suited to the needs of consoles at the time. Released for Sega’s machines (the Genesis, Master System, and Game Gear), this version of The Terminator took the form of a basic run-and-gun shooter, and it was all the better for its scaled back ambitions and far more basic focus.

Like the movie, the Genesis version of The Terminator (which is the one I played for review although all three versions of the game play technically the same) follows Kyle Reese as he goes from the future to the past to find and protect Sarah Connor. She’s the hope for the future, with her as yet to be conceived son destined to become the leader of the human resistance against the machines that want to wipe them out. Once Kyle finds Sarah, it’s up to him to keep her safe while a machine sent from the future tries to track her down and kill her. It’s man against machine for the fate of humanity.

The Terminator on Genesis is a basic game. Nothing ambitious or out there, but a very solid little title that looks and sounds the part. As Kyle you run and shoot your way through four stages set in various parts of the film. You begin in the future, working to take down sections of a machine factory to deal a crippling blow to their ability to fight the humans. With grenades, and then later a gun, you mow through seemingly endless waves of Terminators, all set to kill you, while you place bombs and fight against them.

Once the factory is dealt with, you then bounce to the future, on the streets of L.A., where you have to track your way to Sarah’s location at the club, Tech Noir, before the Terminator gets there. You’ll have to battle the machine in the end before saving Sarah. Then you’ll end up at the police station, arrested for all the chaos you just caused. You break free just as the Terminator shows up again, and now you have to track through the building to get to Sarah and save her. FInally, at the Cyberdyne factory, you have to break apart the Terminator and lure it into a machine press to destroy it once and for all. Only then is the threat dealt with.

One the one hand I like how direct the game is. It focuses on the action set pieces of the movie and gives you nothing but adaptations of those moments. It even does a little bit in the future, the frequently unexplored section of the timeline that doesn’t get as much development as it could. All of these levels are fun, direct and simple but effective, and they don’t overstay their welcome. The big issue, on the other hand, is that there just isn’t enough of them. The Terminator, on the Genesis, is tragically short.

A standard playthrough of the game, not a speedrun but just casually playing the game, lasts about 15 minutes. It takes me longer to finish up in Yoshi’s Island in Super Mario World and this game is already done, roll credits and pack the cartridge away. That’s mind bogglingly short for a game, and almost criminal for what was, at one point, a full-priced, retail release. I get that the developers wanted to focus the game and keep it to its core elements, giving what was there a solid level of spit and polish, but they could have done just a little more, honestly.

While I’m not a fan of splitting focus too much, there were sections of the film that could have been adapted into stages to add some length to this experience. A driving section in L.A. could have been added before the heroes were captured by the cops, letting us get a little more story and action there. A second driving sequence after the police station could have worked as well, using the same engine and letting us experience the heroes desperately fleeing from the Terminator. And, hell, if we really wanted to add to things, why not cut in occasional stages from the perspective of the Terminator as he goes around, blasting people, on his quest to kill Sarah. All of that would have added length without necessarily needing more development. In most cases the Terminator could get his own versions of the same stages Kyle was already in, so all that would be needed would be some slightly different level layouts and a few more enemies.

But the biggest change I think the game needed was at the end. Sarah in this game is a prop, but the end sequence of the movie has her defending herself, on her own, after Kyle gets killed. The last stage of the game should have been hers, not Kyle’s (who you play as here), and we should have gotten needed story development for the sequence of the game. Instead you save the day as Kyle and then, suddenly, text says, “oh yeah, and Kyle died. Oops.” It’s anticlimactic for the game, especially if you were a little kid that had never seen the movie before. It’s just… weird.

Despite this, there were aspects of the game I liked a lot. I think the presentation on the game is really great. The sprites are detailed and richly colored, with a ton of animation that feels fluid and graceful. This game also boasts one of the few Sega Genesis soundtracks I really liked. Normally I find the sound chip in Sega systems to be too hard and electronic, without much beauty to its noises. But The Terminator had a very chunky, metal soundtrack that was perfectly suited for emulation on the Genesis. It feels like a proper match, one that gives us music perfectly suited to the story being told on screen.

And while the stages are short, they were fun. Even in higher difficulties I never felt frustrated or angry. The game is fair, hard but fair, and it’s easy to get lost in the running and shooting, just enjoying the experience of the game as you go blasting. I wish it were longer, yes, but what experience there is here feels refined and well put together. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a version of this game with more stages that could easily fit with the style and design of what we have here. My best guess is that this was a license-for-hire game that Virgin wanted out the door, and this was all Probe could fit in before release.

I like The Terminator on Genesis, but I do think it could have been even better. Its greatest flaw is that it just doesn’t do enough to be a full, fleshed out experience. Everything here is great, but we really could have had something truly special with just a few more stages to make this feel like a complete experience.