The Terminator review - Sega Megadrive

By the year 2029, man's war with machines is almost at an end. This grim holocaust was caused in the first place by the super defence mainframe Skynet, an artificially intelligent system which thought the easiest way to protect the planet was to wipe out the entire human race and replace them with robots.

Thus a nuclear war was initiated which killed billions, and machines everywhere declared war on the survivors - even people's Megadrives and electric toothbrushes turned against them. Luckily for us humans the man John Connor was on hand to lead the human race to victory. In a last ditch attempt to ensure victory, Skynet decided to send a super-hard Terminator cyborg back in time to kill John's mother, Sarah, thus preventing the lad from ever being born! John got wind of this insidious plot, however, and sent one of his crack soldiers back to protect his mummy.

In this long-awaited game of the film you play the part of Kyle Reese - hard person extraordinaire. It is your job to destroy that nasty Terminator and thereby save Sarah Connor from a sticky end. There are four levels of platform-based shoot 'em up thrills, each one loosely based on a scene from the movie - including the climactic showdown in an empty machine shop.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

One of my all time-favourite films finally arrives on the Megadrive, and while it looks and sounds absolutely brilliant, it sadly lacks substance. The program is that there are only four levels to conquer, and it takes very little time to get through them all - half an hour on the easiest level is enough to see you through to the disappointing end screen, and even on the top difficulty setting, a few hours practice is all it takes to defeat the game! While it lasts, the game is great fun. The graphics and sound are both outstanding and generate a superb atmosphere and the shoot 'em up action is thoroughly enjoyable, but in the end it's all over far too quickly and you're left with the distinct impression that the game should have been bigger and tougher. Only complete novices and wimps will get their money's worth here...

Terminator makes an excellent first impression, with digitised scenes from the movie and an accurate rendition of the theme tune! The in-game graphics are spectacular, sombre, atmospheric, very detailed and beautifully animated. The sound is so-so, some of the effects and tunes are of a very high standard, whereas others are distinctly lacklustre. Sadly, no matter how fab the graphics look they cannot save the Terminator from mediocrity. On the top difficulty setting the first level seems pretty challenging. Unfortunately, it's downhill all the way from where Kyle picks up his gun. This makes braving the Terminator hordes stupidly easy, and the difficulty level gets no harder from this point. Completing the Terminator should take no more than a few hours, even on the top difficulty level. Once the game is completed the fairly standard mix of platforming and blasting (mostly the latter) is unlikely to draw you back as it's pretty dull. Given more levels, a higher difficulty setting and a bit more to do in some places the Terminator could have been a classic. As it stands it's just a waste of good money, even for diehard Terminator fans.