Ever since the Terminator first travelled back in time to assassinate Sarah Connor, the cyborg killing machine has also appeared in video game adaptations. James Cameron’s murderous mechanoids seem tailor-made for the interactive medium, providing developers with terrifying villains perfect for horror, stealth, or action gameplay.
The most recent incarnation was Teyon’s 2019 first-person shooter, Terminator: Resistance. With publisher Reef Entertainment recently teasing that a new Terminator project is in the pipeline, it’s the perfect time to look back at the franchise’s video gaming history.
Game Adaptations Based on The Terminator and T2
The Terminator was released in 1984 and immediately became a box office hit, introducing the world to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the prospect of nuclear annihilation at the hands of a sinister neural network called Skynet. Gaming adaptations were surprisingly slow to follow after years of development problems, cancellations, and rights wrangling, with Sunsoft’s Terminator game eventually published as Journey to Silius in 1990 after it lost the license.
The first true Terminator tie-in didn’t arrive until 1991 with Bethesda’s DOS-based action-adventure game, The Terminator. This innovative title allowed players to play as either Kyle Reese, tasked as in the movie with protecting Sarah Connor, or as the Terminator itself, whose job it is to kill her. The game was broadly praised, although its complicated control system received some criticism.
That year also saw the release of a Terminator 2 game on the archaic ZX Spectrum, alongside an arcade game, a pinball machine, and a Game Boy title also based upon the second movie. 1992 saw more releases, including The Terminator, a platform shoot ’em up developed by Probe Software and released on Sega Genesis and other Sega consoles. The game received largely positive reviews despite not adhering to the lead programmer’s original vision, which once again was to have the player play as the Terminator itself.
A DOS-based game entitled The Terminator 2029 was also released in the same year, as well as The Terminator for the NES, a side-scrolling action game featuring platforming and driving segments. This game and its 1993 SNES counterpart, once again called The Terminator, both received mixed reviews, criticized for their sub-par graphics and unoriginal gameplay. 1993 also saw the release of a Sega CD incarnation of the first movie, first-person shooter Terminator: Rampage on PC, Terminator 2 on 8-bit consoles, and another Terminator 2 for Sega Genesis and SNES.
1994 brought the crossover title RoboCop Vs The Terminator, which pitted the Detroit-based cyborg lawman against legions of deadly Terminators in a side-scrolling shooter. A frantic few years for the franchise ended with Bethesda’s The Terminator: Future Shock in 1995 and Skynet in 1996. It almost seemed like developers were rushing to cram in as many games as possible before the predicted Skynet apocalypse in 1997.
The Terminator in the 2000s
Thankfully, humanity survived into the new millennium, with the Terminator IP also going strong. 2002 saw the release of third-person shooter The Terminator: Dawn Of Fate on PS2 and Xbox, but the franchise really seemed to be gathering momentum with the 2003 release of a third movie installment, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, prompting the expected slew of tie-ins.
However, a PS2 and Xbox release with the same title as the movie received negative reviews, as did Terminator 3: War of the Machines, which was another first-person shooter on PC. Fans would have to wait until 2004 for the aptly named Terminator 3: The Redemption, which released on GameCube, PS2, and Xbox, for a game that received a reasonably positive critical response. A Terminator 3 pinball machine also materialized in 2003, this time featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice talents, as well as a mobile game called simply The Terminator.
Another mobile game called The Terminator: I’m Back! was released in 2004, followed by Terminator Revenge, yet another mobile game, in 2006. By 2009 and the release of latest movie Terminator Salvation, fans’ perceptions of the films and the games seemed to be disintegrating faster than a T800 dunked in molten metal. The new movie was not well received, and neither was the game adaptation developed by Grin and Halcyon Games. Terminator Salvation also spawned a 2010 arcade light gun game, but the film went on to be a box office flop that bankrupted its production company.
2015 brought another franchise reboot, this time with Terminator Genisys. Two adaptations were released, specifically Terminator Genisys: Revolution and Terminator Genisys: Future War, both mobile games that were poorly received by critics and considered to be shallow movie cash-ins. As with Terminator Salvation, the new film was critically panned, and its two planned sequels were swiftly terminated.
The most recent movie, 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, again performed poorly at the box office, and again consigned two planned sequels to the void. This didn’t stop the movie from spawning a video game tie-in, with an MMO strategy game bearing the same title released for mobile devices. 2019 also saw the release of Teyon’s Terminator: Resistance, which has since received a PS5 upgrade, as well as a guest appearance for the Terminator in Mortal Kombat XI.
The dreadful commercial and critical performance of every Terminator movie since the original two classics, as well as the advancing age of star Arnold Schwarzenegger, rightly gives fans cause for concern. But Reef’s teaser about a new Terminator project gives them hope that they may yet see a new incarnation of their favorite franchise, even if only in video game form. Despite the struggles of the recent films, it seems that as long as the license is available, there will always be game developers willing to prove that the Terminator was right when he told us he’d be back.