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


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.

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).

Gameplay[ | ]

Running on the once-popular Williams/Midway Y-Unit arcade hardware and currently Midway X-Unit, 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 did not lend her likeness as Sarah Connor in any footage of the game; she is instead played by Debbie Evans.

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

In the original coin-op version of the game, if one presses the Player-1 or Player-2 'Start' button during attract mode without inserting a token or coin per credit, a sample of Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice will say "No way, Jose!"

Ports[ | ]

The game was converted to the 16-bit game consoles to the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and SNES. However, the Mega Drive/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. Players would mainly control the gun cursor with the control pad. Other lower graphical ports include the Amiga, the Game Boy, the Sega Game Gear 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.

External links[ | ]

Template:Terminator fr:T2: The Arcade Game

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