Game Review: T2 – The Arcade Game (Amiga, Virgin)

The late 80s and 90s were fairly predictable when it came to gaming. Any time a major TV series or movie was released, you could almost guarantee that a game would follow, and even more so when it came to all the blockbuster movies. It was never a guarantee of quality, but certainly when it came to home releases it was usually a license to print money. It was the same in the arcades. While “normal” arcade games weren’t as common, large format cabinets – racing games, gun games etc were all the rage eager to drain players of their money. Including the one or two player light gun shooter based on the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Terminator 2…

I’ll Be Back… Again

Very loosely based on the second film, T2: The Arcade Game, puts you (and an optional second player) in control of a T-800 Terminator . Once more, a Terminator has been sent back in time from the future, and this time they’re in pursuit of John Connor. Their goal is to try to eliminate him before he grows up to become the soldier he is destined to be, and the one who saves humanity in the war against the machines.

So getting stuck into the game, you have to face off against what feels like never ending waves of Terminators, Hunter Killers, and more in an attempt to save John Connor’s life. Taking on the game via a first person viewpoint, you have to shoot everything in sight while protecting any surviving humans, throughout various future and modern day locations and defeating various end of stage bosses.

A Bit Of Artistic License

Like so many movie tie-ins, T2: The Arcade Game strays from the plot of the film quite extensively. Instead of the home games released by Ocean where you took on the role of the T-800, going head on against the superior T-1000, this plays more like a series of themed stages and as you play it feels more like a shooting gallery than anything else.

While it proclaims right from the start to have the objective of protecting John Connor, it never feels as if that’s your overall goal. Perhaps the ever shifting scenarios add to this confusion, with scenes seldom resembling the movie and each feeling repetitive. Right from the beginning stages in the future you’re there defending surviving humans against wave after wave of other Terminators and it just feels like an excuse to use them for target practice rather than tell a story.

Power Up

As you play, crates appear at the bottom of the screen and these can be shot to pick up new weapons, restore your energy, or pick up additional homing missiles that can be fired using the spacebar or right mouse button. You only have 25 of these at the start of the game so it’s vital to collect as many of these as possible for the end of level bosses or to help take out the Terminators if they get too close to you.

When they’re at a distance, your normal shots can take them out easily enough – especially with head shots – but they’re far more resistant to your firepower close up so you’ll need to use more shots or a quick missile to take them out. The missiles are also a lifesaver when you’re under attack from the Hunter Killers but you still need to use them wisely.

Stick To The Arcades

The big problem with any game like this is that they are simply meant to be something that is best experienced in the arcades. No matter how good a home conversion might be technically, or how well the game mechanics are adapted, nothing can recreate the feel of pointing a gun at a screen in a real arcade. There’s nothing tangible to hold, and even if you could play games like this using a light gun at home, there’s still the lack of feedback present in pretty much every arcade shooter of this nature.

Publishers dabbled with light gun games back in the 8-bit days – and even Mastertronic themselves did with their own gun and software pack – but frankly those games were generally pretty awful, and things didn’t really get any better with the move to 16-bit. Guns were replaced with mouse control which did improve things slightly but take away the key gimmick that made these games so popular and you’re left with something that has little long-term appeal.

If I’m completely honest, home light gun games didn’t really come close to the arcade experience until Sony released the G-Con controller for the original PlayStation alongside the likes of Time Crisis and Point Blank when they genuinely perfected the technology, but prior to that I’m afraid they just weren’t worth it.

Truthfully, when it comes to using anything other that a light gun, having to physically move a target on screen slows down your reaction time to events on screen and no game can compensate for that. Even the speed of using a mouse isn’t going to be as quick or responsive as using a gun for games like this.

Was The Amiga Version Of T2: The Arcade Game Worth Developing?

It has to be said that the development team genuinely managed to do a reasonably good job in converting T2: The Arcade Game to the Amiga… but as I’ve said, this type of game itself just doesn’t really lend itself particularly well to home platforms. In the case of the Amiga, without using a light gun, it relies on joystick or mouse control to move a target on screen and it makes the best of a bad situation here. It’s certainly not perfect and while it’s perfectly playable with the mouse, it just doesn’t feel as if you’re playing a shooter in the same way you would with the arcade original.

Even Taito’s arcade classic Operation Wolf was the same. The Commodore 64 version of that played superbly under mouse control (one of the few games that supported it), but even then it didn’t feel like a gun game and was still lacking no matter how good a conversion it was and the same has to be said here.

Come With Me If You Want To Live

I said earlier that this games takes liberties with the movie’s plot, but at times things get rather absurd and one of the early stages is a perfect example of this. We’re supposed to believe that the external look of the T-800 was fairly unique to allow it to blend in with humans, but underneath the exoskeleton of all of that particular model were identical. So far so good.

But there are stages in the game where you encounter hundreds of Terminators that look exactly like the original one seen in the first movie, including the clothes he wore. The facial resemblance could be excused at a push, but the clothing really makes you wonder whether the developers of the original arcade game actually knew anything at all about the Terminator series, or just thought it would be cool to have hundreds of Terminators running around that the player could shoot at? I know you may think that I’m nit-picking over this, but when you see the same character repeatedly on screen it really does spoil the experience when you’re expected to shoot at the character you are supposed to be controlling!

Playability

The real issue I have with T2: The Arcade Game is that it’s far too repetitive. In the arcades, this would be fun in short bursts and probably worth spending a few pounds while you wait for something else to become available, but as a home release there’s just not enough there to keep you engaged. It might look the part, but the visuals and license can’t hide the fact that it’s a bland game that you’ll tire of quickly… if you haven’t switched it off first out of frustration with the clumsy controls.

Graphics and Sound

Visually the Amiga version has recreated the look of the arcade version extremely well, with good use of parallax scrolling for the futuristic stages, reasonable sprite scaling for all of the Terminators, and quite detailed graphics overall and plenty of animation, both in the backgrounds, characters and bosses you’ll encounter.

Sound again does well, with plenty of decent effects accompanied by music from Team 17 legend Allister Brimble. There are also occasional snippets of speech from Arnold Schwarzenegger, presumably taken from the arcade game rather than the movie.

Overall

I may come across as being harsh here, but unless you’re using an accurate light gun, games like T2: The Arcade Game should really stay in the arcades. This should be about the whole experience – the visuals, sounds and the whole feeling of taking out all of the Terminators with a gun in your hand, not a joystick or mouse. Take away the key part of the game, and it becomes a shadow of the original. The original arcade game wasn’t the best light gun game and really relied on the movie license, but without the arcade hardware this really isn’t worth bothering with. Save your money until you find an arcade with one of the machines in it and play it that way instead.

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