With James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day set to return to cinemas this summer with a brand-new 3D remastering, we look back at the PC, handheld, console and online games it’s inspired over the past 26 years.
Arcade Game
Made by arcade game legends Midway, this first-person shooter followed the general plot of the film, putting the player in the role of a T-800 Terminator cyborg sent back in time to save to John Connor, and his mother Sarah, and ended with an assault on Cyberdyne.
The arcade version featured a pair of Uzi-like light guns mounted on the cabinet, allowing two friends to play side by side.
Cast members Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick, and Eddie Furlong all reprised their roles from the film, although Debbie Evans replaced Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor.
The game was a big hit and both 8 and 18-bit versions were subsequently released for home console platforms, including the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis SNES, Sega Master System and Nintendo Game Boy.
There was also a MS-DOS port which could be a pain to run because of the high amount of free memory needed to run it. Boot discs were almost always essential to get the game up and going.
Owners of Commodore’s Amiga computer were also able to get into the action, with several magazines of the time scoring it well and reviewers rating it better than…
Platform Game
Before the arcade game hit home computers, Ocean released a top-down platform game for the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, and ZX Spectrum.
By the time of the game’s release, both the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum were pretty old platforms and games, including this one, commonly featured far lower quality graphics than seen on their replacement models.
Mind, ‘good’ graphics were never going to be enough to save this title which was only loosely based on the film and which, thanks to its top-down approach, never really captured the look or feel of the franchise.
Pinball
Released in 1991 to cash in on the film’s marketing budget, The Terminator 2: Judgment Day pinball game was the first from Williams to feature a dot-matrix display which was used to display a mini video game.
Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared prominently on the game’s artwork and also recorded some bespoke audio for the game.
Digital versions of the table were later released for The Pinball Arcade, a cross-platform collection of officially licensed tables from Gottlieb, Williams, Bally, Alvin G. and Company, and Stern Pinball.
Side-scroller
Again, closely following the plot of the film, this 1993 title was released for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Super NES and features a mix of sideways-scrolling and driving scenes.
Chess Wars
Published by Capstone Software for DOS in 1993, this quirky entry in our list saw characters from the film reimagined as chess pieces with humans shown as the white side and the Skynet forces in black.
Arnie’s T-800 was the human’s king with Sarah Connor as queen. John Connor took the role of bishop, with Miles Dysons as knights, and generic soldiers in green uniforms as rooks and pawns.
The machines featured grey-coloured robots with metal skeletons, but not the T-1000.
Instead of the pieces being taken on the chess board, action moved to futuristic battlefield settings resembling the movie’s man-machine war scenes.
Slots Game (2014)
The most recent officially licensed game based on the film is a slots title available through various online casino providers such as Energy Casino Firestarter Online Slot.
Developed by Isle of Man based betting software developer Microgaming and released in June 2014, the title features a 5 reel online slot machine with a feature free spins bonus with a T-1000 theme.
The 3D remaster of James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day 3D will be released on August 25th 2017. STUDIOCANAL will be releasing in the UK, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, and Distrib Films will be releasing in the US.