The Terminator franchise, at least, at the time of the early 90’s, was pretty amazing. With “The Terminator” in 1984 and “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” in 1992, the struggle for humanities survival from an apocalypse of its own creation was well established in popular consciousness and with the rise in popularity of game consoles, it was natural that several titles based on the film series would come about, and in this episode, The Nerd takes a look a few games based on the first film.
I have to say, as this begins, just how great the intro is. The re-created Terminator into, the effect applied as James looks through the games, and the shot where he talks about the film in brief, these are some of the subtle things which make AVGN Season 4 one of my favorites!
Let’s get to the game though. As you can imagine, the game is pretty bad. It’s bleak, which I guess is understandable for the fact that the game is set in a post-apocalyptic future (at least early on) but as James says, the NES is capable of more than this. The music is “unacceptable” and the controls are clearly poorly thought out. Or, I may want to say overly thought out. They seem too intricate.
This is where the comparison to Contra comes in — a game which is considered the standard for this kind of platforming shooter. It would seem you don’t really have control of the character, and this makes falling to your death incredibly easy.
So, the Nerd has an idea — you get an extra life every 50,000 points and enemies re-spawn, so why not just constantly kill enemies and build up lives. The end result is something I’ve done before, albeit with electrical tape. He uses a wrench to hold down the fire button on the controller to act as an auto-fire, goes to sleep, and the next morning awakens to discover he has all of 6 lives. Not even 9, 6. Needless to say, this is infuriating, and by the time he gets tot he next section of the game, these lives are already gone. With no continues, one mistake in jumping leads to a game over, and the Nerd is pissed.
Naturally, he “terminates” the game, being surprised the game was released as late as it was, 1992, and into the life of the Super NES. This seagues into Terminator on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
It’s better than its NES counterpart, but not by much. It’s just as difficult, and the controls, while better, still aren’t like they should be — when you have enemies on the ground or up above you that you simply can’t hit, well, that’s not a fun time.
Compounding the difficulty, the first level seems to go on forever, and once the Nerd loses the 5 lives the game gives him that’s it — it’s Game Over, and he is done.
Lastly he takes a look at the Terminator for Sega CD. Aside from making a comment about the film clips put into the game (typical for the Sega CD) he has some good to say about it, especially in the music department (it really is good stuff.) but the game still has some flaws. Much better than the NES Terminator, for sure, regardless.
The video ends with the Nerd rather optimistic about Terminator 2 games, figuring that since the second film was better than the first that the games based on the second film must be equally better, until he sees that company logo which has become infamous — the LJN Rainbow.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
This is an all around solid episode. The anger factor is there, but it’s balanced with some real criticism of actual flaws with the games. The “wrench on controller” section was pretty hilarious when this episode was new and still makes me laugh, since I had done similar as a kid for other games. The cinematography, for what it’s worth in this series, has also improved and I really enjoy the “feel” of this episode, and others to come.