Terminator 2D: No Fate is a Love Letter to Terminator and Retro Games
- Antal Bokor
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
Nostalgia isn’t new, and neither is blatant nostalgia bait. I’m actually okay with it though, especially since I’m the target of this one. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was seminal to my childhood cultural appreciation. I saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day in the theater as many times as I could convince my parents to let me go, and later rented Terminator on VHS to see where it all started. Ironically, I would probably have ignored any tie-in games, because those were notoriously bad. A game based on a movie or TV show was usually an instant ignore. There were exceptions, and as later console generations came around the stigma wore off a bit. I have a feeling that if a game like Terminator 2D: No Fate came out back then, it would have gone a long way to break that stigma.
Terminator 2D: No Fate is a 2D sidescrolling action game that, despite its clever “2D” moniker, is an earnest attempt at recreating some of the very worst habits of early video game developers when creating movie tie-in games. But it adds a few modern amenities, and has some pretty great pixel art animations that put arcade games of that era to shame. Not having severe hardware limitations helped, I’m sure, but Terminator 2D: No Fate captures the type of graphics you might remember games having when you were a kid. But as someone who plays a lot of retro games, and as often as I play modern games, Terminator 2D: No Fate skirts the line between modern and retro in the best ways.
One of the issues that tie-in games had in that era was how to balance story and gameplay. A lot of the time most story beats would be glossed over in pixelated cutscenes that approximate what you would see on screen interspersed with gameplay that was often only bearing a slight resemblance to the parts of the movie it took inspiration from. Ironically, Terminator 2D: No Fate handles its version of Terminator 2: Judgment Day the exact same way, either through nostalgia or necessity, or both. But it actually works here.
Terminator 2D: No Fate hits most of the major story beats from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and manages to make some compelling gameplay sections. Most of the time you play as Sarah Connor, which is a surprise–but it makes sense. John Connor is too young to be running and gunning and the T-800 is a tank that should be nigh unkillable in most scenarios. You do get to play as an older John Connor during the future war sections. But I honestly feel like this is also, maybe, due to a lack of time and/or creative ideas. Half of the levels are based on throwaway lines or scenes flashed in the movie only briefly. Again, this is something that tie-in games were notorious for, so I’m of the mind to actually consider these faux pas as ironically clever nods to yesteryear.
It’s not unusual for video games, especially tie-in games, to change the gameplay up as you go. There are run and gun sections, driving sections, short beat ‘em up levels and even a short stealth-ish gameplay section. Each section plays slightly differently than others, and not a single section stands out as bad. The run and gun sections are easily the most fun, as the gunplay feels fun and visceral. Overall, developer Bitmap Bureau made a game that controls tight and is very fun. After you finish your first playthrough you have the ability to choose different routes, which leads to some levels being swapped out with others.
I really like the idea of having alternate routes that change the events as they happened in the movie, but I feel like that would have been more impactful if you can make the decisions from the beginning. Like most of the other content in Terminator 2D you have to unlock the different choices by playing through the game. I would have almost preferred the alternate story choices to be there from the beginning so you can find out that making a certain choice actually changes the end you expect instead of the canon ending being the first and default ending you can see.
Terminator 2D: No Fate tries very hard to seem like a retro game, but it actually has more modern game sensibilities than not. It has multiple game modes, including boss rush, endless modes, and a story mode that forces you to play through all of the Sarah Connor sections with no continues.
And of course, there is a lot of love shown for the movies–with lots of Terminator references thrown in beyond what’s in the second film. There’s even a homage to the first movie as an alternate route has you killing all of the cops in a police station à laTerminator–but this time as Sarah Connor instead of the T-800. Despite this, there’s a surprising lack of “I’ll be back.”
My biggest gripe with the game is its difficulty and length. I was able to play through the entire game in less than 4 hours. And I don’t mean a single run (which takes me only about 40 minutes.) I mean the entire game, hardest difficulty, unlocking everything. I’m not an exceptional game player, and while I do have some serious retro video game muscle memory, it feels like Terminator 2D: No Fate is just too short and too easy for the price tag. I”m hoping for some free DLC in the future
Overall, Terminator 2D: No Fate seems to be worth the added wait after all of the delays. Despite its short length, it is one of the best faux retro games I’ve played in a long time. Don’t expect anyone to be able to port its high frame high fidelity pixel art onto an SNES or Genesis cart, but then again, I’ve seen people do crazier things.Dotemu might be the premier retro style developer, but developer Bitmap Bureau comes close to dethroning them.