You Must Find the Future Tech

We come to the last of the LJN Terminator 2: Judgment Day games (although technically it was only published by LJN on the SNES; the Genesis version was published by Flying Edge) and, woof, it’s a doozy. I don’t mean that in a good way, either, as this is one of the most inept adaptations of this movie we’ve seen yet. It’s amazing how LJN has so many teams working on so many versions of adaptations of this sequel and while each one is different they’re all massive disappointments in various ways.

The SNES and Genesis versions, like all the other games we’ve covered, feel like cheap cash grabs to make money off the kids that loved the film. The movie was a monster hit and it only makes sense that game companies would want to cash in on the license. We could even expect that some of the games would feel rushed, like the third party production teams did what they could to meet a hurried deadline and get a game out to waiting fans soon after the film was released. But in the case of the 16-bit titles, in September (SNES) and November (Genesis) of 1993, over two years after the movie hit theaters. Considering the time, a real game should have been produced. Two years that could have been used on development and this is the game they released. It’s just pathetic.

Credit where it’s due, the 16-bit version of Terminator 2: Judgment Day hews the closest to the plot of the movie. We follow, from an opening cut-scene, the T-800 as he pops into the past, at a biker bar, ready to steal gear and fight for the future. Once you can start playing as the T-800, you clear out the bar, collecting weapons and gathering lost future tech. Then you head off to find John Conner, 10-year-old future leader of the resistance, first by checking at his house and then at the mall he frequents.

John acquired, You next head to the mental hospital where Sarah Connor has been held for years. You have to break her free while avoiding the T-1000, all before heading off on a mission to help her defeat Cyberdyne and stop Sky net. That requires heading to Mexico to gather explosives, then to the residence of Miles Dyson to grab his keycard. You’ll move on to Cyberdyne to damage the facilities equipment and plant explosives, all before finally ending up at the iron works for a final battle against the T-1000 for the future. Mission accomplished, the T-800 warps back out of time, saving the future for all mankind.

In some respects, the 16-bit version of Terminator 2: Judgment Day is interesting. The game balances between platforming run-and-gun stages and overhead driving sections. I thought the mix of these two sections had some merit as it let you feel like you were on one contiguous mission, protecting John Connor for the couple of days that span the meat of the movie’s story. In concept this should allow the game to recreate many of the set-pieces from throughout the movie, giving a richer and fuller adaptation experience.

In practice, though, there just isn’t enough meat on this game to actually support these two play modes. The driving sections are empty and airy, with little going on in them beyond following a compass and dodging traffic. Meanwhile the platforming sections are all basic and lifeless, leading to a game that feels like it was waiting for another pass from the programmers to actually flesh out all the levels and play experiences. It’s empty when it should be full, and the game never achieves that.

The platforming levels are, let’s face it, bad. The shooting mechanics are lousy, with a variety of guns that all function the same, just with some that shoot faster than others. There’s actually a number of guns in the game, but you don’t generally have to pay attention to them as your basic pistol will get you through the early game just fine, and once you get the chain gun, you won’t need anything else for the rest of the experience. Meanwhile, actually dodging damage from most enemies is pointless; as a terminator you have plenty of health, and most things barely damage you at all, so it’s easier and faster just to take everything, shooting at enemies as you go, while working on your objectives.

The objectives, meanwhile, are pretty bland. They all amount to: go into a building, find the randomly dropped future tech, then perform whatever task, from rescuing a person to finding a keycard or planting an explosive. None of them are interesting or deep, it’s all just makework to add time to a game that would otherwise be over in fifteen minutes. Length for a game is great when the play mechanics actually earn it, but being forced to wander random halls of maze-like stages, collecting loot for no reason, all before actually being allowed to perform the real task at hand, is just boring.

The driving sections are also awful. I wanted to like them as I liked the idea of driving around L.A. county, going through the events of the movie, but barely anything happens in these sections. There’s traffic to avoid, and sometimes cops will chase you for brief seconds, or they’ll set up a roadblock to force you to go a different route, but it never feels exciting or interesting. Like with the platforming stages, everything you encounter is makework, including all the driving itself. Considering barely anything actually happens in these sections, they could have been excised from the game entirely without losing any real meat.

What’s weird is that this game, despite this game following all the basics of the story from the film, adapting most of the key scenes in the process, the game omits the L.A. River chase and the later helicopter chase from the film. These were two major action set-pieces in the movie and you’d expect them to be in every game (the L.A. River chase is in almost all of them) and yet this game doesn’t have either. It strikes me as so strange to omit these scenes when driving is a key mechanic of the game. If you’re going to make driving an emphasis, then the two driving sections of the movie should be included here.

Of course, then we have to acknowledge all the issues that plague LJN games in general. Due to their loose and shoddy programming standards and rushed production schedules, this game plays terribly. Controls are loose and unresponsive, the characters are sluggish to move around, and hit collision and detection seems to fail a good portion of the time. On top of that, the graphics are sloppy and repetitive, and the soundtrack is mind numbingly tedious, with only three tracks repeated over and over again until the game ends.

Seriously, this is an awful game. It’s slapdash and poorly designed, and you know the only reason it exists is because LJN had a license. There was already a better Terminator 2: Judgment Day game on the SNES and Genesis, the one adapting Midway’s arcade game, so we absolutely didn’t need this game. It’s so bad that it makes you wish LJN simply hadn’t bothered at all.