You Must Save John and Sarah

LJN had the home console rights to Terminator 2: Judgment Day and, by golly, they weren’t going to waste them. While they didn’t get to produce the arcade game (or the home ports for the game that hewed fairly closely to that title even if some compromises had to be made for hardware limitations), they could make their own versions (as Bender would say, “with Blackjack and hookers!”) and so they did. A different game for each iteration – a black and white Game Boy title, an 8-bit game for the NES, Game Gear, and Master System, and then a 16-bit title for SNES and Genesis. Each one was unique, with their own levels and gameplay styles. And none of them were very good.

In comparison to the Game Boy title (which was boring and awful), the NES game actually isn’t that bad. Note that’s still not the same as actually good as the NES title has many of the flaws you’d expect from an LJN release: a lack of creativity, sprawling levels that could have been tightened up, hit boxes that feel wonkier than they should, and a gameplay loop that mostly amounts to “memorize the whole game or just get lucky”. In comparison to some LJN releases, it’s actually not that bad. But on the whole, this is still a mediocre game rushed out to meet the obligations (and sales expectations) of a license.

Credit where it’s due, this game is a slightly better adaptation of the 1991 movie than the Game Boy and Arcade efforts. Here we play solely from the perspective of the reprogrammed T-800, sent from the future to defend John Connor. As the player, we work our way across five levels, first starting out at the truckstop near where the T-800 appears. They’ll battle through waves of bikers all so they can get clothes, a weapon, and a bike so they can carry out their mission to find John and save him from the T-1000.

Equipped and ready to go, the T-800 chases down John and the T-1000,, riding through the L.A. River canal system. Our heroic robot blasts away at the evil terminator’s truck until it’s stopped and John is found. Then, due to John’s pleading, they head to the asylum where Sarah is being held so they can rescue her and get out. It’s off to Cyberdyne from there so they can blow up the building and stop the research that would lead to the creation of Skynet (and the future war that would come after). Finally, they hit an ironworks where a final battle with the T-1000 ensues, all to stop the terminator and save the future once and for all.

The L.A. bike chase, Cyberdyne attack, and the ironworks are all major setpieces in the movie and have appeared in all the previous adaptations so far. What’s nice to see here is a bit more of the early story from the movie getting worked into the video game. Via cutscenes we get a little explanation of the plot leading to the arrival of the T-800 (without any forced in stages in the future) and then we get the fight with the biker gang that was the first major introduction to the T-800 as a character.

Sure, this section is a little weird. It feels like the build up is saying, “you must get to John Conner and save him,” but the T-800 decides to just stop and beat up a bunch of thugs simply from the thrill of it. The actual mechanics of the stage aren’t bad, basically amounting to a beat-em-up bit of combat to start off the whole play session, but from a story perspective this stage feels a little wonky. I get that the programmers didn’t want to include a naked terminator in the game, and that it was easier (especially on a rushed production schedule) to just use the same, fully dressed, terminator sprites throughout the game. A little more in the way of cutscenes just to say, “hey, go steal this bike,” would have been good.

The bike sequence through the canals is short. Not difficult, but not exactly fun. It’s the only driving section of the game and, of note, isn’t even included in the Game Gear or Master System releases. I can see why as it’s forgettable and not necessary. I think its inclusion here would have been better if we had a complimentary driving section between Cyberdyne and the ironworks, but that didn’t happen so this stage is the odd man out, weird and superfluous.

The next two stages are mechanically pretty similar. Each presents a large, maze-like stage divided into a “front” and “back” section. For the asylum, for which I really did appreciate its inclusion in the game to flesh out the plot of the story, the T-800 has to work his way through the building, finding keycards hidden on various floors so he can access higher floors and rooms. The goal is to get to Sarah and rescue her (by finding her room on the top floor) but you have to watch out for the T-1000, who is also stalking the halls and will get faster and faster the higher you get.

The Cyberdyne level is similarly built, but instead of gathering keycards you’re moving through the rooms collecting explosive barrels. These have to be placed at the top of the building in a storage container and then, once ten barrels are collected, ten explosive devices have to be placed along the top floor of the building. Escape before the (frankly very short) timer goes off to finish the mission and blow up the future home of Skynet. Not too bad, and it’s made easier by the fact the T-1000 isn’t in this stage at all.

Then we jump ahead to the ironworks stage which is more of a platforming, fighting experience. It’s just the T-800 and the T-1000 for this, with the good terminator meeting the bad one at various points in the maze-like level. Once the final battle takes place in the center of the ironworks over the molten metal, the T-1000 can be pushed into the hot iron and destroyed. This finishes the mission, and it allows the game to wrap things up by mirroring the end of the film with the willing death of the T-800.

Honestly, none of this is outstanding. The first is brief and out of place. The bike section isn’t great. The Sarah rescue goes on a bit too long, and the ironworks stage is kind of a mess. I liked the Cyberdyne stage as it had interesting mechanics, but that was one stage out of five and that’s not enough to save the game on its own. It’s a very strange, interesting mess, start to finish, but a mess all the same. It’s the kind of experience that I could see getting refined into a more interesting, more playable game, but that wasn’t LJN’s style. They had their developers make the games quick, slap the license on the box, and rush it out. Refinement and playability were never their focus.

It’s sad because I think there really could be an interesting game here. Certainly I’ve played worse NES titles, especially from LJN. But on the whole this is a cruddy, mediocre experience that wasn’t really worth the $40 or so LJN charged for the game. It’s cheap, it’s messy, and it’s just not worth your time. Still doesn’t stop it from being one of the better Terminator 2: Judgment Day games we’ve seen so far, which is just plain depressing.