Looking back at anything you loved as a kid can bring on a sense of trepidation. Books, films, games - viewed through a modern lens, decades-old efforts may not stand up to scrutiny. Tired tropes and dated dialogue that can come as a smack in our 21st-century chops. Progress is natural — we like to think we're a little more refined these days — and sometimes things just don't hold up.
Terminator 2 is not one of those things.
"I was lucky enough to go see it at the cinema last week," says Bitmap Bureau programmer and designer Quang Nguyen on a recent call. "It's the first time I've seen it at the cinema and it's incredible on a big screen."
"It just came over you like a train," remembers art director and veteran pixel artist Henk Nieborg. "When you're experiencing these new digital effects for the first time, it's just, well, mind-blowing."
And yes, we can 100% confirm that James Cameron's 1991 blockbuster remains as great as ever. It's hard to fathom that it came out nearly 34 years ago, and with 16-bit-styled revival Terminator 2D: NO FATE arriving in September, it's even easier to believe that some temporal displacement borked our timeline and the movie only came out last summer.
"It still looks great," agrees Mike Tucker, programmer and design director. "I think I saw it when I was about 15, 16. I even bought a T2 t-shirt as well. I was proper into it. It's a bit weird working on a new reinterpretation... It's been quite bizarre."
It's nothing personal
In an inbox full to the brim with cosy roguelike deckbuilding farm-simvanias, the arrival of a retro-styled, pixel-art game isn't very attention-grabbing either. But one from this team with this licence? It immediately caught this writer's attention and imagination.
It also had us reminiscing about the dreadful video games that have carried the T2 name. Anybody old enough to be playing games in the early 1990s will recall the frequent disappointment of the movie tie-in. Some of us never got over it.
"I played a lot of the Atari ST version," remembers Nguyen. "Which is horrendous. But, you know, when you're a child and you're a fan of the movie, you'll take anything they can give you... They weren't great games."
"The Midway arcade game was pretty good," counters Nieborg, and he's not wrong. T2: The Arcade Game featured cabinet-mounted plasma rifles, and the SNES and Mega Drive ports made use of the Super Scope and Menacer, respectively. That one game was a solitary ray of light in a very bleak landscape, though. Crappy movie tie-ins were ten-a-penny, but with a property this big with so much gameplay potential, how did things go so wrong?
"They had to be turned around so fast, and if you don't let them cook and let them be tested and improved, they come out bad," Nguyen suggests, citing the perennial dev demons of time and budget. Tucker mentions that a cursory glance at a script and some promo materials might have been all they had to build a game around, too.
"T2 is a tricky one because there's so much going on in that film, so many different scenes and characters... If you look back at the Ocean T2 games, where they've got a sliding block puzzle and top-down driving section, then you've got a run-and-gun section, and then there's that versus section where you're fighting against the T1000... It's a bit of a mess. I think we've hopefully done a better job!"
Same make, same model, new mission
Prototyping began in August 2021. Publisher Reef Entertainment held the licence (see also Teyon's Terminator Resistance), and Bitmap now falls under the umbrella of the Reef Creative Group. Back then, though, the devs were discussing potential projects with Reef following initial contact through Nieborg. That's when the topic of T2 cropped up.
"Immediately off-camera, we were like, 'Wow, this is amazing. Let's hope this works out!' says technical director Matthew Cope. "And sure enough, we came to agreement on it and we knew immediately we were on to something that we could really make special."
Bitmap Bureau specialises in 16-bit-flavoured software (Xeno Crisis, Final Vendetta, Battle Axe) and to properly capture the essence and scope of T2, the team realised this game would have to run the genre gamut. After all, Cameron's movie has everything, including a hefty dollop of emotion and humour alongside the big themes and bigger action. How do you go about squeezing all that into a video game built around arcade-style, pick-up-and-play interaction?
"We first had to get the feel for the game," says Nieborg, "so I designed a couple of things and Mike made a demo of that... We started [with] a very basic thing and it just grew."
Metal Slug and Contra are obvious run-and-gun influences (Nieborg has Contra 4 on his impressive CV), but we asked about less obvious inspiration. Rolling Thunder and Elevator Action Returns got namechecks — "Get them in there!" says Tucker — along with Shinobi and Sunset Riders.
"I had a good look at Bonzana Bros. on the Mega Drive and arcade, which is like a bank heist game where you have to duck in and out of the background to hide and avoid enemies and so on. We've got the driving sections, as well. The truck chase plays a bit like Battletoads."
The notoriously tough speeder-bike sections from Rare's NES game?
"It's not that hard, don't worry!" Tucker assures us. "That was brutal. But we had a good look at that. We've had to span multiple genres, so we've had a look at the best in genre and tried to bring them over to T2."
Nguyen is keen to point out that taking inspiration and acknowledging artistic influences doesn't mean copying wholesale, though, whether you're referencing the movie or another game.
"You've got to have a few nods to those [classics] throughout your game, I think... [but] if you're just copying scenes one for one, there's no point. You have to look at it and say, 'How do we make this better?'"
Changing the way it goes
The T2D announcement trailer suggests a satisfying but fairly straight adaptation of the source material. Excitingly, though, Tucker says there are "multiple routes" through the game.
"You can actually make your own choices, and that affects the storyline as well. So we had to come up with new material. That's a real challenge." As if squeezing in necessary scenes from a movie where practically every shot has become iconic wasn't challenging enough.
"We really had to get those story beats in there. Nailing the gameplay was one thing, but then we had a lot of help from Reef, who have a great team of designers and writers. We had to work with them to work out how we can tell the T2 story."
"There's certain moments in the movie that stick out in your brain and you think, 'Oh, I really need this to be in it,'" says Nguyen." And every time someone mentions one of those moments, we're like, "Yeah, we've got to put that in the game, as well!" So we find a way to shoehorn that in and make it flow. The tough part is trying to make it work as a game."
Finding that balance between gameplay opportunities and including all the plot-critical connective tissue is no small task, especially when every scene requires hundreds of hand-animated frames. Tucker emphasises the "painstaking" work and "ridiculous animations" that have gone into doing the movie justice.
"We've got the Terminator and John high-fiving in the desert. It turned into like a 300-frame animation or something that took two weeks. And you know that 99% of people are just going to skip it anyway! But that's the kind of level of detail we've had to go to. The T-1000 death scene, where it falls into the molten metal at the end of the steel mill - that was hundreds of frames again. There's so many iconic moments that, like Quang said, you just can't leave them out."
It sounds like they've been keeping Nieborg busy, then. "I have to give credit to [Bitmap artist] Jabir Grant for all of those crazy animations because he did a lot... I wasn't the only artist on the project. I was busy on my own stuff, of course, but Jabir did some incredible work on these."
Despite all the reverence for the source, Bitmap is making a game. Some filmic moments just don't translate.
You get to the point of, 'Are we creating a pixel version of the film?' Not everything has a gameplay element that can come with it.
"There's a really great scene in the mall where you've got the arcade machines, which for us is awesome," remembers Cope. "But it's not really something you can extract gameplay out of."
"We couldn't really have John Connor and the Terminator running around the mall and turn it into a two or three-minute gameplay section," Tucker agrees. "So we just kept that as a cutscene. There are times like that where you just have to say, 'You just can't turn this into a game.' But it has to be in there somehow."
"Some of [the scenes] aren't as important story-wise," says Nguyen. "I'm thinking of when they call the foster home to check if the dog's okay, and that seems iconic... That would have been lovely to put in, but there's nowhere in the game to put that."
Avoiding a 'Jack of all trades' effect while mixing genres was another challenge. Luckily, the veteran team's back catalogue gave them an advantage, not just through years of combined experience, but also repurposing code.
"We've covered just about every genre anyway," says Tucker, "so this amalgamation of styles worked pretty well for us. Our previous title was Final Vendetta, which was a side-scrolling beat-'em-up, and, sure enough we've got the biker bar level where naked Arnie fights it out with a number of bikers. So [with] that game alone, we're able to just lift the mechanics from that into T2 quite nicely."
Naked who?
"Not Arnie. The T800. Not allowed to say 'Arnie!'"
The T-800 in the room
The absence of a certain seven-time Mr. Olympia is unavoidably obvious. The iconic endoskeleton is a handy workaround when it comes to likeness rights: you don't need the face, and the 16-bit aesthetic is a big help when rendering the character we know without rendering exactly the character we know. Reef's Will Curley joined us on the call, so we asked if a successful launch could mean bringing back that familiar face via future updates or DLC.
"I'd say no, because this is one complete package," he says, adding that "cosmetic upgrading 2D is something completely different to what you can do in a 3D game with textures."
"[In] a 3D game, you could just replace the face texture," Tucker agrees. "But when it comes to spritework, as Henk will tell you, it's a process: editing every pixel, changing light, across thousands of frames..."
"There's so many animation frames in this game," says Cope. "It's like on steroids versus our previous titles, so it would be a lot of reworking there."
"Also, I think this doesn't need any downloadable content or additional content," Nieborg adds. "When somebody had an idea, when [we] mentioned it to Will and just said, "Let's go for it, that sounds cool!"... There's so much stuff in it already, you'll be surprised! It's a nostalgia ride."
There's more to T2D than a simple nostalgia trip or 16-bit retread, though. Bitmap has exercised some artistic licence with branching paths and expansions on elements only glimpsed in the movie, including the 'Future War' sequence.
When you see all the concept stuff, you realise how much Cameron had really thought about all of this [at] a high level.
"There isn't a lot of concept work which wasn't used in Terminator," says Nieborg when we ask about available reference material. "What's new in [the game], if there's anything new in there, came out of my head. And it was approved, so I probably did a good job there! I can't say too much because I would spoil some stuff."
Going beyond canon is always a tightrope walk, as you run the risk of upsetting die-hard fans who view any deviation from the source as inauthentic. We wondered if they looked to the original movie, or even T2-3D Battle Across Time — the excellent Universal theme park spin-off which similarly had to push beyond established canon for the sake of entertainment — for inspiration.
Nieborg says he "really stuck to the Terminator 2 reference that was there" for the most part, though one element he's expanded on — a Centurion boss previously featured on the side of the T2 pinball machine — wasn't actually in the film. "Maybe they ran out of budget or something," Tucker speculates. "It's really cool to see Henk animate that in 2D. It's an incredible bit of work."
Capturing the movie's atonal soundscape is another challenge. To anyone familiar with the film, the clanking anvil blows that represent the T-800 and the juxtaposition with the T-1000's reverberating drone are as iconic as Brad Fiedel's propulsive theme (which is present and correct). How has Bitmap gone about translating and integrating that into the game?
"It started with Lee [Mintram, Bitmap Bureau's composer and sound designer] having a good listen to the T2 soundtrack," says Tucker. "He realised it was pretty much entirely composed on the Fairlight CMI, which is this old-school synthesiser. It's huge.
"Back then, you would have to hire them to be able to use them, really... but these days you can just buy a virtual representation of it for maybe £50. So Lee was very familiar with the Fairlight and was very quickly able to recreate the soundtrack and also extrapolate the theme into other situations. He's done an amazing job."
What we make for ourselves
Prior to the call, we'd assumed the 'No Fate' subtitle (which Sarah Connor famously scrawls into a table with a knife) was meant to stake out some fresh SEO after three-and-a-half decades of Terminator video games, but the revelation that the game features branching paths puts a fresh perspective on things.
"It's not linear anymore," says Nguyen. "We're giving you choices, there's no fate that you make but your own. That's quite a core tenet of the movie."
The name also highlights Sarah's role in the game, as does the 'attract' sequence glimpsed in the reveal trailer (bottom of the page), which riffs on Stan Winston's iconic teaser (below) but also features Sarah locking and loading.
"We were really excited to bring that unique spin to it all," says Cope. "I can't think of many of the previous games where you had that in the Terminator franchise. We're certainly excited to have expanded her remit, and there are unique levels with some more of her backstory."
Sarah's future levels feature separately in the 'Mother of the Future' mode, but can also be played in the main campaign, according to Tucker. "It depends on the path you take. We just thought it would be pretty cool to explore the notion of Sarah surviving into the future and take on Skynet alongside John, or in place of John, depending on your choice."
[It's] just really cool to explore those different avenues.
Naturally, an older Sarah meant more work for Nieborg's art team. "We had to age her, so it meant another sprite entirely with grey hair and different cutscene imagery as well," continues Tucker. "We give her the plasma gun, which is actually based on the T2 Arcade gun. We've got a little nod to that in there."
Spotlighting both Sarah and John with their own gameplay sections better reflects the familial dynamic of the film, and stops the hulking-great cybernetic organism hogging the limelight.
"Sarah's one of the greatest female action heroes of all time, and so it's just really cool to play with her. We wanted to explore as many possibilities as we could with her."
"The game it needs to be"
Every great action hero needs a nemesis, and the T-1000 skewering Sarah in the hospital at the end of the reveal trailer was a reminder that the movie isn't a kid-friendly watch. The pixel visuals help disguise gore to an extent, but was there any point where the team had to tone things down to avoid a high age rating? It was a topic Cope broached with the publisher early on.
"The angle and response back was, 'No, it needs to be the game it needs to be.' That's really been — not just for that element — the mantra throughout. The polish and effort and quality that we weren't prepared to scrimp on. We probably could have pushed out this game sooner than we have in terms of completion... But the extra time that's been given to it to polish it up and really add these details in - that's been important."
Going by the launch state of many games, that scheduling leeway is a rarity in the industry these days, and Cope highlights the team's positive relationship with Reef. "A lot of developers are caught up with publishing arrangements where it's very much, 'It's got to go now - that's the date.' Not to say that we don't push ourselves... but it's about a quality experience."
T2D is far from the first game to tap into a beloved '80s property and press our nostalgia buttons. We asked why it often falls to smaller teams to deliver these belated wins when you'd imagine there's enough mainstream appeal in these properties to attract triple-A budgets. Where's the Back to the Future game of our dreams!?
"We're taking the movie 'as is' and expanding on it a touch, whereas you find a lot of the licensed stuff, they'll have to create something completely new," says Nguyen. "So the Spider-Man games and the Batman games, they've created their own stories for the licence and it becomes something else. It's a fine balance between getting that fan service correct and creating something of your own. When you're a smaller team, you can focus a lot more on that."
There's no shortage of '80s classics that might prove fertile gaming ground beyond this franchise, either. Does Bitmap have its sights on anything in particular?
"There are just so many iconic films in that period of time, aren't there? And they have huge emotional weight and value for us," says Cope. "We certainly have a massive shopping list that you could produce. And I don't think that the names of those titles would stand out amongst the crowd," picking out Aliens and Robocop as two examples.
"But in fairness, they'd probably be on anyone from our age group's list... Historically, I guess, the studios want to be associated with the huge, massive games. But I think that maybe consumers have been a little bit burned by some of those types of titles. So trying it from a different approach, hopefully people respect that and see something different."
"You mentioned the Back to the Future licence," says Nguyen. "That would be a wonderful thing to make because I'm sure we all love that movie. But is there really a game there? That's the question. Can you extrapolate enough scenes, enough from the franchise to make it a game? I think our expertise is generally in arcade-style games. Maybe that's better dealt with as an RPG or point-and-click, so maybe that's not us. But whatever franchise we choose to do, or can get, it'll have to fit with the sort of games that we make ourselves."
The battle for tomorrow has begun
Bitmap is surely planning its next move already, but before moving on, we wondered whether an adaptation of the original Terminator could work. It's a very different beast to the sequel.
"Whether you can do that 'omnipotent force chasing you down' in 2D, I don't know," Nguyen ponders. Casting you as the machine hunting Sarah and Kyle doesn't sound particularly satisfying, either - not when you're narratively obliged to keep missing your target. How about a roguelike that sees a production line of T-800s travelling back over and over to terminate the Connors? Throw in some cosy elements once the mission's finally over — perhaps a dash of interior design when not-Arnie settles down? — and Bob's your uncle.
Hmm. It's clear that some movies really do resist adaptation. No wonder devs struggled in the '90s.
"In my head, Predator could be a great game, it's one of the best action films ever," says Tucker. "But actually, when you think about it, you've got just one enemy. I know it works for Alien: Isolation, but yeah, translating that into 2D? I don't know."
Just because it's a great film doesn't always mean it's going to make a great game.
16-bit 'plus' is Bitmap Bureau's wheelhouse and there's a desire to bring T2D to retro platforms, as they did with Xeno Crisis using the team's incredible porting tools. "There are some key platforms we're very passionate about," says Cope on the topic of potential SNES and Mega Drive versions. "It's a case of iterating through what makes sense commercially and also technically what's achievable."
Would the team ever consider working outside the 16-bit box, moving into a 32- or 64-bit, 3D style, perhaps?
"I did some modern stuff back in the period from 2001 to 2005," remembers Nieborg, "but eventually the teams got too big and I just didn't feel acknowledged, if you know what I mean? And I just went back to 2D, because that's what I love doing."
"I really enjoyed the 32-bit era, especially the PS1," says Tucker. "I'm really big on driving games as well, going back to Daytona, Ridge Racer, Initial D, Sega Rally. I'd love to make the 3D racer at some point... For me, the '80s and '90s were the golden era of gaming and there's so many games from that era that just can't be beaten, even today. Whether it's Super Metroid or Street Fighter 2 or Link to the Past, they still stand up extremely well."
The future is not set, then, but it's the promise of the past that keeps Bitmap Bureau fired up - and in the case of T2D, the chance to go back in time and deliver a 16-bit tie-in to rival the greats: "the T2 game we should have had back in our youth," as Tucker put it in the promo video.
"I'm all about trying to match those games in terms of quality, especially Konami and Capcom's output. They were the gold standard for me. I still play those games now and I'd love to be able to create something that's recognised on the same level as a Capcom or Konami classic. That's the goal anyway!"
This interview has been edited.
A huge thanks to the chaps at Bitmap Bureau, and to Will and Natasya at Reef. Terminator 2D: No Fate launches on 5th September on PC and consoles.