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Released in 1991 on Game Boy by LJN and developed by Bits
Studios, Terminator 2: Judgement Day presents a mishmash
of gameplay in an attempt to adapt the film of the same name
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1991's
Terminator 2: Judgement Day is a landmark film, but
unfortunately, its home video game adaptation rights went to LJN. Experienced
retro-gamers will know, LJN was a film adaptation crap factory, from which even a
generally playable game was hard to come by. The console games for
Judgement Day
are historically bad, with the Game Boy entry generally considered to be better,
but still bad. I concur.
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| DON'T DO IT! Turn off the Game Boy, take out the cartridge, and put in a better game! |
Hey, at least the graphics are passable. They aren't great, but passable.
The apocalyptic background of the first level is actually pretty good. The John
Connor model...not so much. I actually thought I was playing as Sarah Connor
first, until the game's cutscenes told me otherwise. There's plenty going on
onscreen, but the game slows down pretty badly. The craggy mountains outside the
window in the Skynet facility look cool. The L.A. river chase late in the
game doesn't look bad. The graphics here are a perfect illustration of the term
"mixed bag."
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| How is that John and not Sarah?! |
The music is...not great. The Game Boy has a much revered soundchip,
capable of cranking out some incredible chiptunes. Not here, though. I guess the
best I can say about the music here is that its strange clankiness
does remind
me of Terminators. The sound effects are rudimentary at best.
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| "John" Connor fights a tank |
The gameplay here is even weaker than the mixed bag production values.
The first level teases at fun, side-scrolling action. This is generally the most
satisfying gameplay for a title like this. The player takes control of John
Connor as he blasts through Terminators in the distant apocalyptic future,
attempting to blow up radio towers to gain access to a Skynet facility.
Unfortunately, blowing up all the towers the player encounters results in level failure. It turns out there's a tiny message hidden up by one of the
towers that tells the player they must blow up the towers in a certain order. Instead
of the weird mission parameters, in a level that's only a few screens long, a
more fun option could have been taking out the weird parameters and extending
the level by many more screens. Regardless, there's a boss at the end of the
level.
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| Thanks, Sarah. Even though I'm not convinced I'm not playing as you... |
Level 2 takes a more streamlined, side-scroller approach, though most of
the tiny level can be beaten by simply running and avoiding most enemies, and there's
no boss at the end. Level 3 immediately changes the pace by requiring the player to solve a grid puzzle, rerouting a (The) Terminator's circuits. The player gets two
attempts and then a game over.
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| I didn't realize the game was keeping score till I looked at this screenshot |
A lot of this simply isn't fun. But there are further
issues than that. The player only gets one life to get through the game, there
are no power-ups of any sort, and once the player's health bar is exhausted, there
are no continues or passwords. It's straight back to the beginning of the game.
This is likely because a full playthrough of this game only takes 15 minutes,
and with the lack of content, the developers thought it best to make the player
keep starting over. This could at least be alleviated by the joy of partaking in
the film's plot, but the first three short levels are essentially the events
that take place right before the movie, and there are only two quick levels after
that. The developers could have just let the player blast through ten or more
side-scroller levels with Arnie blowing away Terminators, and then call it a day. They
didn't. Instead, they made a lousy game that might not even appeal to
Terminator 2 fans. This game sucks.
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| When I play a Terminator game, the main thing I want to do is rewire circuits! |
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