*days may or may not be concurrent.

Its always been an annoyance to me whenever there is a new movie tie-in game coming out people will say something along the lines about how all movie games are crap barring Goldeneye and Riddick. And yes I'll admit it does happen all to often when a game based on a movie is just a cheap little game with the movie license slapped on (see Gremlins 2 a few days ago). Yet as I've said, I've found in my experience that there are a lot of good movie games over the years. While they don't hold up as well as say a Kirby game or a Zelda game, they are still good games. Todays game is a game that could of just been another platformer. Hell with the amount of hype the movie had when it came out, anything with the name on it would of sold well.



I'm sure like most of us around, I loved Terminator 2, its just a damn good movie. Still as good as it was today as it was back in 1991. Its just a shame the legacy of the great film has been tarnished abit over the years, yes I'm looking at you Terminator 3. Having said that you ignore that abortion of a movie and the series is as a whole awesome. When it comes to games base on the series, it seems to be a little bit of a mixed bag. The arcade game was fun, I enjoyed the SNES game and I believe the PC FPS games where but I never got much of a chance to play them other then a few demos. The Game Boy game however was a good game, not a great game by any means, but an enjoyable game that still holds up to this day.



I got the game when I got my first Game Boy , it was one of the 4 games I got when I got my my Game Boy back in Christmas 1992. The game starts just before the events of the movie and adds abit of back story. You start the game as John Connor trying to fight your way into Sky Net so you can steal the T-800 and send it back in time to save yourself from the T-1000. It took me ages as to figure out how to get past the first level. See you needed to shoot these things down in the stage in a certain order to deactivate the shields. In your way are plenty of T-800 endoskeletons but they seem to die rather easily after a few shoots. Once the barrier is down its off to the first boss fight and then your into Sky Net. The game is hard, if you don't know what your doing once you run out of energy thats it, you get 1 life and then its all over and back to the title for you. Having said that as long as you know what your doing you should be fine



Once your in Sky Net get to the end of the level so you can reprogram the T-800. The level is timed as I guess you need to reach the end before the T-800 or something. Once you get there the game switches from 3rd person action game to puzzle game as you need to rewire the T-800 to make it do your bidding. This is just some simple puzzles that require you to complete the circuits before the timer reaches zero. They start of easy but damn if it didn't take me forever to figure the 3rd one out. Next level is the Truck chase scene where you have to fight off the T-1000 as he tries and rams the T-800 and John on the motorbike. This level is a pain as one hit from the T-1000 and its game over. Still I'll give it points for realism cause end of the day if you get rammed by a truck while your on a motor bike your pretty much screwed.



As I said this game is hard, 1 life thats it and game over. Making it even more harder is that once your the T-800 any damage you take in the previous stage will carry over to the next and there is no way to get your health back. Looking at it now the game is rather short and I guess doing that is a rather cheap way of extending the gameplay, but hell we are talking about 8bit era games and soo many of them are guilty of stuff like that anyway. The next stage is a run through Sky Net where everything seems to be trying to kill you. Get the parts from the original Terminator and then its onto an awesome final battle with the T-1000 at the steel mill.



I like this game in that it seems to keep rather close to the story of the movie. I mean there aren't really any stages that don't really fit in with the movie. They made a game that fits in well with the movie and doesn't insult us by just having random stages of getting from point a to point b. Each level while short does require some thought to get through. Whats even more shocking is that its a LJN game and that its somewhat good. I'm sure my love for this game comes more from Nostalgia then anything and if I had never played it when I was a kid I wouldn't care less for it. But I did ply it and its important to me, it'll always be one of my first Game Boy games and good or bad its gonna be one of the games I'll always look back on.