Whoa, it's good to play a game that doesn't make me feel like drinking. So this legendarily started out as a Terminator game. Sunsoft lost the license midway through development and quickly converted it into...well, a non-Terminator game. They changed a bunch of sprites to avoid a lawsuit, but you can clearly see the Terminator influence regardless. You can also pretty much see the moment where it steers away from a Terminator game in the development process.
This game can be found easily enough on Switch Online, and made it onto IGN's "top 100 games of all time" list. So I've got some hope for this one.
There was a big nuclear war...but also, Jay's Father died! And the evening news reported it was an accident.
I don't know who the hell Jay is or what happened to his dad, but suffice to say they changed the plot of the game real quick.
The key to beating Journey to Silius: On the title screen, press the B button 33 times and then press start. This lets you begin the game with 9 continues instead of the normal 3. Gives you way more of a fighting chance to learn the game. You still have to clear each level inside of one continue, but at least you won't get sent back to the very beginning so soon. It still took me two runs at the game to get through it.
Next we're in the future battlefield of post Judgment Day. I think this game was originally supposed to have you playing as Kyle Reese and good ol' Johnny C. This guy Jay doesn't look like either of them so chances are they changed the hair color. Plzdon'tsue.
The starting weapon is...the NES Zapper??
You can also switch to the Shotgun, which is more of a spread gun. However it's got limited ammo. You get five other weapons over the course of this five-level game (one from a miniboss in each of the first four levels) and they all share ammo. It's a lot like Mega Man, outside of the shared aspect. This also means that collecting weapon energy will restore a general weapon energy meter rather than being limited to the one you have equipped, so that's cool.
Some of the enemy models look really rudimentary compared to everything around them, visually. You can really see how they rushed to change things late in development.
I'll say this, it's very unfortunate that this game lost the Terminator license, because it's SO MUCH BETTER than any of the Terminator games of this timeframe. This game isn't perfect or anything, and it's got some issues, but it just being an above-average action game puts it on a different planet than the licensed garbage I've been playing.
First boss is an attack helicopter. You can't fire upwards in this game and that really becomes an issue in large portions of this fight. Would have been perfect with Contra controls.
Stage 2 is a bunker/sewer. Here, Jay comes face-to-face with The T-200. I wonder if he's gotten any closer to finding out who murdered his pops.
We've got flying mechanical facehuggers, with flicking tails. Once they moved away from the Terminator series, they started tapping into the Alien series. Nobody'll sue over that, everyone steals from Alien.
But watch out! Next up is noted miniboss, The T-300. These were short-lived because they weren't exactly fooling anybody on the battlefield, outside of a few football fans. "Is that William 'The Refrigerator' Perry??"
Level 2 boss is a Ground-HK...that got altered quite a bit, obviously. Would have been awesome to see this in its original form.
Level 3 is the Skynet Interior, and here we just get straight-up Terminator endos. Why is your character so damn short, anyway? ...is he supposed to be a little kid? Checks out for the NES era, I guess.
This is the first time the game starts to get difficult, as these spider-mechs that crawl on the walls can be a real nuisance. They fire from weird angles, and often hit you before you even have a chance to move.
Another nuisance are these things that zip down from the ceiling as soon as you get close. You have to get RIGHT next to them to trigger them to fall, then run under when they go up. There's like no wiggle room here. It's a problem with a few of the level traps in this game, you need to basically be on top of them to get them to trigger.
Intermittent lasers are yet another nuisance. This feels more like a final level than the midway level of the game...and I suspect it originally was supposed to be.
The final guardian before Skynet's mainframe is... The T-400! I'm just glad to see a Terminator game actually getting creative with the machine designs. Nearly all of them just use the same ol' T-800s and HKs for everything, maybe T-600s too if you're lucky.
It's good to stay close to what's canon, but we had an entire history of unexplored machine models to go into and no creators ever did. Hell, Terminator Salvation was supposed to have T-700s in it but they thought that would confuse their numbnut audience, so they omitted it and called them all T-600s instead (along with the actual T-600s... originally the 600's were the more decrepit proto-terminators in the movie while the 700's, as the latest models, were the shorter and non-decrepit ones)
It took a while but I finally get a plasma beam.
The next boss is (presumably) Skynet's core, and it feels like a final boss. It's the hardest fight in the game by a mile, as well. You have to blast that little core in the wall while avoiding the five laser cannons that are constantly shooting.
It's nearly impossible until you work out the one half-second in the barrage where you can jump/shoot, and then follow that rhythm. Check out that laser beam, very nice. This is the only Terminator game out of the few I've played lately that actually nailed the look of the plasma rifle's shots.
The mainframe explodes in a massive boom, and that's it for Skynet. The game also veers away from Terminator for most of the remainder.
Stage 4 contains XENOMORPH ROBOTS.
And also design missteps like enemies positioned in spots where it's nearly impossible to avoid taking a hit from them when you jump down.
Another issue is that the screen scroll lags a bit at times and has you right up against the side, with little to no time to react to incoming enemies. Like I said, the game has some issues, and isn't perfect at all. I think it even gets overrated a bit due to the bonkers soundtrack. More on that in a bit.
Next, and final weapon: Ripley's grenade launcher from Aliens. This fires slow shots that do a lot of damage, and is pretty much your go-to for the last part of the game.
Level 4 boss...is the Space Jockey from Alien. This thing was pretty much the most mysterious entity in sci-fi for a long time. Prometheus of course tries to explain it but not really in a very satisfactory way according to most critics.
Very simple fight there, just leap over the big beams it fires and launch grenades. The bosses in this game really aren't bad at all outside of the Skynet core.
Level 5 is the last one, and they went real hard in the paint for this. It's an auto-scrolling level that doesn't give you any real time to breathe.
What's worse is these damaging pee-traps that don't trigger until you're next to them, like all the other traps. This is a problem when you're rapidly autoscrolling.
NOOOO! THE PEE! GET ME OUTTA THE PEEEEE!
There's one final section with falling blocks and conveyor belts that I bet ended some runs back in the day.
Level 5 has two bosses. First is this giant ship. It's one of the weirdest bosses I've ever seen, because you have to essentially duck under it while it passes overhead and then try to take out the sides of it while you have a short window to attack.
The final boss is... The Terminator. For some reason it's the size of a small building.
Jay: "Are you the one who killed my father?"
Mech: "Your father? You mean your dad?"
The key here is to blast his head until he gets close, then when he crouches to punch, leap over and run to the other side.
YEAH! Very fulfilling explosion here. This game is doneski.
We get an oddball ending. There's a satellite. And uh...
..that's it. So what happened to Jay? Did he get the proof he needed that his dad was murdered? We'll never know.
I think the ending here was actually supposed to imply that Skynet's control center had actually been moved to a satellite, to set up a sequel. And it got revised to just be this kinda nonsensical ending implying that you rescued some satellite. I base this on the way several other Terminator properties over the years have shown Skynet to be a satellite-based system at the very end, as a way to open the door for sequels that never get made.
Time to mention the best thing about this game, the music. There are some real bangers in this soundtrack, and most of them sound like they're from a completely different system. Who knew the NES could sound this good?
Stage 4 theme - This one's noteworthy because the beginning rings a bell. Sounds a bit like...
...Zero's theme from Mega Man X. Thought this was a coincidence, but wait!
The boss theme also bears a bit of a resemblance to something from the X series. Namely...
...the Doppler fortress boss theme from Mega Man X3.
Maybe it's all in my head, or maybe Capcom's sound designers got a bunch of inspiration from this game.
Lastly, the title screen music is a real banger.
Good game here, elevated by its music. Most of all, it isn't awful. The bar is very, very low for any sort of Terminator-inspired games or properties currently.
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