Terminator 2: Judgment Day (arcade game)

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For other games of the same name, see Terminator 2: Judgment Day (video game).
Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Cover art of Sega Mega Drive version
Developer(s) Midway
Publisher(s) Midway (arcade)
Acclaim, Virgin (ports)
Designer(s) George Petro, Jack Haeger (co-designers)
Chris Granner (music / sound effects)
Platform(s) Arcade
Ports: Amiga, DOS, Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega Master System, Super NES
Release date 1991
Genre(s) Light-gun
Mode(s) 2 players simultaneously
Input methods Light gun, 2 buttons
Cabinet Standard
Arcade system Midway Y Unit hardware
CPU TMS34010 (@ 6.25 MHz)
Sound Sound CPU: M6809 (@ 2 MHz)
Sound Chips:

YM2151 (@ 3.57958 MHz), DAC (@ 3.57958 MHz), OKI6295 (@ 8 kHz)

Display Raster, 400 x 256 pixels (Horizontal),

4096 colors

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the name of an arcade game released by WMS Industries (the owners of the Williams and Midway brands) in 1991. The game is loosely based on the film of the same name. The home console versions are called T2: The Arcade Game to avoid conflict with the platform games.

Arnold Schwarzenegger provided custom speech for this game.

Contents

[edit] Story

The story of the game falls in line with the movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day: to save the leader of the Human Resistance, John Connor, and his mother, Sarah, from the T-1000, a mimetic poly-alloy Terminator, bent on killing them both.

The first mission is actually a backstory on what happened before the T-800 and the T-1000 entered Skynet. It also showed some of Skynet's machines that didn't appear in the film (for example, the Silverfish).

[edit] Gameplay

Running on the once-popular Williams/Midway Y Unit arcade hardware, the 2 players essentially take part in controlling a T-800 model and gun down the terminators of the opposing side in a light gun style fashion, even though the controller was technically a joystick. The gameplay utilizes a first-person perspective, like the rest of the games in the genre, but what was noteworthy about T2 was the use of digitized actors from footage specially shot during the making of the film. This made for realistic 2D sprites in a Light gun game for the time. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick, and Eddie Furlong all reprised their respective roles for the making of the arcade game. Linda Hamilton does not play Sarah Connor in any footage of the game and is instead played by Debbie Evans.

In the demo sequence, the game has been rated "R" (for Righteousness) by the Motion Picture Gaming Association of America.

[edit] Ports

The game was converted to the 16-bit game consoles to the Sega Genesis and SNES. However, the Genesis version could not do scaling due to hardware limitation, and many of the images were redrawn at different sizes.

The MS-DOS port of the game was very loyal to the arcade game in terms of graphics and speed. However, it was notoriously difficult to run because of the high amount of conventional memory needed to run (580K out of 640K) and would usually need either a boot disk or memory tweaking (or both) in order to load.

The game was also retitled to T2: The Arcade Game to avoid conflict with the platform game. It was essentially sold and marketed as a non-Lightgun compatible game for home use due to the unpopularity of lightgun games in the 16-bit era. Players would mainly control the gun cursor with the control pad. Other lower graphical ports include Amiga, Gameboy and the Sega master system. The Super NES version did support the Super Scope and the Super NES Mouse. In North America it was one of the few games which supported the Genesis/Mega Drive's Menacer, but on the Master System, the Light Phaser was not supported, only a joypad.

In the original co-op version of the game, if you press the Player-1 or Player-2 'Start' buttons without any credits being available, a sample of Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice will say "No way, Jose!"

[edit] External links

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