The Terminator (NES, 1992)

 

Time for me to play a loathsome, shitty game! One that I no doubt would have tried to get if I'd ever had an NES in this era, as I was pretty obsessed with Terminator movies circa 1991-1993. T2 might have been the first movie I ever saw in a theater, not sure. That was a tough act to follow.

In any case, there's a reason why in all these years I never bothered to play any of the basic NES/SNES Terminator games. At this point I've played everything else based on those two movies (Game Boy, Genesis, Robocop Vs Terminator...) so I might as well give these others a spin and see just how terrible they are. I could be playing something good, like Castlevania or Dragon Quest. Instead I'm playing this. Official Nintendo Seal of Quality my ass!

Well here's a surprise, the game wasn't made by LJN, it was made by Radical Entertainment. Unfortunately these guys aren't very radical, or entertaining. This title screen looks like it's for a DOS game, and it's probably the high point of the visuals in this non-masterpiece.

We get our first mission objective: Fight to the Skynet base. This could be awesome. It's usually the best part of these Terminator games.

Nope, not this one, nothing awesome here. So instead of a war-torn future battlefield full of machines to blast, we've got... a sewer level where the primary antagonist is drops of acid falling from the ceiling. 

The controls are pretty terrible right out of the gate, and Kyle has "ice physics" with his movement (aka moving in one direction and turning the other way will cause him to slide a bit, and when you start moving there's a slight delay and a burst of acceleration).

Luckily they give you a nice flat plane to get used to this movement on. Wait, no they don't. They give you this tiny space, and can't even make the ground flat for that tiny space so the player can get used to the movement.

When you shoot, you automatically duck down and can't move while firing. Oh yeah, and A = shoot while B = jump.

A = Shoot, and B = Jump. WHO DOES THAT?

Finally get to fight some endos. They don't do much besides waddle towards you and fall into pits. Most of the strategy in this game seems to revolve around not picking up hearts (heals about half of your HP bar) until you have to. Leave them alone and go back to get them when needed.

Eventually I get out of the sewer and reach this...very literal interpretation of a nuclear wasteland. This doesn't really look at all like the future in the movies. Did...did they make an entirely different game and repurpose it with the Terminator license?

Time for the worst thing yet, these gun emplacements that are too low to the ground to shoot at. They can sure shoot at you though!

This part is probably the biggest run-ender for kids in 1992. Two guns that are lined up just right to totally maul your health pool. The way to get past this is with perfectly-aimed grenades. Press select to switch to the grenades and then throw 'em. Yeah, the game has multiple weapons, I'm surprised too.

This is yet another of those "go back to the beginning if you run out of lives" games. And it isn't the least bit respectful of your extra lives, so you burn through them. No codes either. No nothing!

Get past that part and we get this bizarre boss fight with an Aerial-HK. It's bizarre because you can fire back at it but your shots fly all over the place randomly, and there isn't much you can do to dodge the far-more-accurate HK, so you basically mash the fire button (which is A lol) and hope for a win.

Then it puts you right into a pursuit with this Ground-HK, which is much more playable because you can aim your shots. Holding down and fire angles the shots to pummel the HK, which ends the fight quickly. ...if you have time to realize you can do that, because you couldn't in the previous fight and as usual they give you no time to figure out or get used to the controls.

They say that every video game is a miracle of technology, but this is like amateur hour over here. Well, at least it isn't as bad as Bebe's Kids.

Next is this room full of tiny blocks that looks like something I'd come up with as an idea for a "hard" Mario level when I was 6. These spikes pop out that don't damage you, they just cause you to fall off and probably into a pit.

After jumping across lots, and lots, and lots of tiny blocks, I get through this latest sewer level and reach the Skynet Time-Displacement Center. Which is behind a normal-looking door in the sewer for some reason.

It just me or does it seem like Kyle is doing all of this by himself? He just found a time machine and set it for 1984 and off he went! If I were him I would have set it for Renaissance Italy and spent a couple decades makin' it with stereotypically fussy-yet-hot Italian women.

Kyle deserved better.

1984 involves an unarmed Kyle Reese having to punch his way through punk-rockers who take a zillion hits to beat. You can press select to switch to kicking, which...also takes a zillion hits. It's a lot like Bebe's Kids.

My God. This game actually IS as bad as Bebe's Kids.

Regardless, the key here is to just avoid everything, using the platforms to go high or go low as needed to just bypass all the foes.

Next up is the Tech-Noir, a nightclub on Pico. This is the worst level yet, with cops that shoot at you while you're STILL forced to fight back with punches. Wait, when did cops ever shoot at Kyle in the Tech-Noir? Oh yeah, and there's blue acid falling from the ceiling for some reason. So the only way to defeat the cops is to duck down, pop up and punch, duck down again...over and over and over.

Get to the rooftop and it's one of the most abysmal sections of video game I've ever seen, with unavoidable cop fights who inevitably chunk your HP. At this point it's like completely luck-based whether you get through with enough HP while having to wail on every enemy at point-blank range while they pelt you with shots. WHY COULDN'T KYLE GET A RANGED WEAPON?

Next is a level that actually has the potential to be fun, a car chase where you exchange shots with the terminator while trying to outrun him.

This level is a real cluster and sure to result in a game over until you realize the trick: Slow down as you get to every third intersection, to cause the cross-traffic to miss. Going through at full speed will cause every cross-traffic car to automatically t-bone you, which does way more damage than the terminator's attacks.

Next is the Police Station level, where a STILL weaponless Kyle has to find Sarah. Just to really fuck over the player, they put a pit in the floor right here at the beginning. Bet you didn't see it until I said something, it's camouflaged in with the background a bit. Yep, there it is, just to fuck people over. This game would have ruined video games for me in 1992.

This level is a door-maze, like that one level in Bebe's Kids. In a way, this is Proto-Bebe.

Well, that's it for me. Not because the game's too hard, or there's an impassable jump like Gremlins 2. Nope, even though I'm super close to the end I just can't be arsed anymore with this. To the Youtube!

Next up is another car chase, this time with the terminator on a motorcycle. No cross-traffic to worry about this time, so all you have to do is weave around while continuously going forward until you eventually reach the end of the level.

Last level is the factory, where the T-800 stalks our hero. No sign of Sarah anywhere. Much like the rest of the Resistance, she doesn't exist, Kyle's on his own here.

Actually, more like a whole lot of T-800s, since he constantly falls into pits and then reappears from the opposite direction two seconds later. All you can do is avoid them and run to the right to get a key, then run to the left to find the lock. It's like the most rudimentary game design over here.

Then the T-800 follows Kyle into this room where it gets hydraulic-pressed...by Kyle. Well, at least he survived! Now he can live out the rest of his days doing whatever it is that Kyle would do in this Sarah-less, empty world.

Italian chicks are still an option. He could also get into video games and play the NES and Super NES eras as they happened. Plus like a year of the N64.

Ending screen. That's the whole ending, no credits. They also got the T-800 series name wrong, though to be fair lots of people did back then.

Why does the terminator have such a big head? At least they spelled soldier right, and not "solider" or something.

This is what the average person looks like after playing this game...or trying to and then realizing they wasted their entire weekend of gaming on this thing after convincing their mom to spend $40 on it or whatever NES games cost in 1992.

You could have gotten Mega Man 4 or Dr. Mario and instead you got this. Damn. They basically took advantage of kids and adults who didn't know any better and were terminator fans, and that's pretty messed-up.