Based on the smash hit film of the same name, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a one or two-player lightgun shooter developed and distributed by Midway in 1991. In this game you’re flung into the future (post-1997), after the nuclear holocaust caused by SkyNet, to fight for The Resistance against ‘The Machines‘.

The game is played from a first-person viewpoint at ground level, with the camera moving on-rails, slowly, usually from left to right. The disadvantage of this view is that the majority of attacks come from the ground, which means that the top half of the screen is mostly unused – unless an attack from a swooping Hunter Killer happens. Or a very large boss trundles into view. So the game feels very un-cinematic in its use of the camera – unlike the film. And the use of screen ‘real estate’ is wasteful, for a video game.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day also seems a little confused as to what it is, from the point of view that player one (blue) is called “Terminator One“, and player two (red) is called “Terminator Two“, yet your opponents are SkyNet constructs – Endoskeletons, T800s and Hunter Killers. So what are you? A re-programmed Arnie T800? Fighting in the future? Erm, okay…

Each player has an energy bar on the side of the screen and “Gun Power” at the bottom of the screen. To be honest: you’ll be so busy shooting stuff that you’ll probably not even look at them.

The guns on the cabinet have a trigger fire button, which shoots a plasma-based repeating weapon, and a side button that shoots your alternative weapon (usually missiles, but it can change depending on what you have equipped).

You shoot boxes to reveal special ammo and weapon enhancements (then shoot the ammo and enhancements to pick them up, or use them – in the case of the Smart Bomb); you shoot down walls to give yourself a better view of the battlefield; you shoot bombs that are thrown at you; you shoot missiles fired at you, but most of all: you shoot every damn robot that you see! Which is a LOT of robots!

One thing you must avoid shooting – if at all possible – are fighters from The Resistance, who sometimes join in the fight with you in the wasteland. If you do kill one of them you’ll be penalised with a points deduction at the end of a level.

In the first level – the Battlefield – you’re mostly up against the iconic ‘Endoskeletons’ (silver and even gold versions), which come at you in ridiculous numbers – overwhelming numbers at times. And they even jump towards you, which is comedic in its lack of scariness. You can even shoot them out in mid-air, which is also unintentionally funny in a ‘dumb video game’ kind of way. At the end of stage one you have a boss battle with a ‘Ground HK‘, which seems to go on forever. In fact, that seems to point towards the money-swallowing ethos that the majority of these arcade lightgun shooters exist upon, which is: put more money into the game to continue where you left off.

The graphics in Terminator 2: Judgment Day seem to be a mixture of digitised photographs and hand-drawn elements, and – to be honest – while they were impressive in 1991, they look a bit dated today.

Gameplay-wise, I think that this is a rather weak game overall – especially by today’s standards. Even for a 1991 arcade game the lack of dynamic camera movement and the stupid amount of stuff coming at you was probably enough to stop all but the most ardent T2 fan from putting in more than one or two plays worth of coinage.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is fun to zip through with two players in MAME today, but only because it doesn’t cost anything. And it’s probably worth playing through in single-player if you’re curious and enjoy lightgun shooters. For everyone else: it’s not going to have much appeal.

Home versions of the game were released by various publishers, including Acclaim, LJN and Virgin Games in 1992 and 1993.

More: Terminator 2: Judgment Day on Wikipedia