Robocop vs. the Terminator
Ultra Cool Game #7
Type of Game
Official training manual for ICE, designed to teach them how to disperse protesters using automatic rifles and fragmentation grenades.
Release date on our machines
Well, I have no idea—I’ve read so many conflicting things. I’ve seen December 1993 for the UK and Germany, but 1994 for Europe, and 199X for France! They’re pulling our leg!
Developer
Virgin Games, Inc., a mark of quality… until 1998, when it went out of business.
Publisher
Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd. is the same thing, since we're talking about the same studio.
Robocop vs. the Terminator: Not available on any known platform at this time. I’d love to send someone back in time to fix all this.
Honestly, thanks to Nelson and Mortimer Paprika, my super-cool neighbors, for lending me this gem. A gem that’s all about violence and dystopian darkness—but the good kind of violence and darkness, of course. I don’t know how they managed to track down all that crazy stuff, like Thunder Force II or Toejam & Earl. They must have been hanging out at the stores all the time. I wasn’t old enough to go there on my own! Or with them, for that matter. In any case, I wasn’t old enough to play this either! There’s way too much blood in there. I remember my mom strictly forbidding me from watching all those “horrible Japanese cartoons, especially Dragon Ball, San Ku Kai, and all that stuff!” Okay, Krillin was getting skewered by Frieza when she happened to walk past the TV that day. Okay. And she would never have bought me a Mega Drive cartridge with the muscular silhouettes of Robocop and the Terminator on it. Yet she let me play them. Why on earth, when there was blood splattering much, much more often than in Dragon Ball? Because to her, video games were just a distant concept she didn’t deign to pay the slightest attention to. She knew her kid was obsessed with them, but she wasn’t going to monitor the content he was consuming through that medium just because of that.
Blood in the eyes
She vaguely knew there was a game with Mickey, one with Donald, one with a blue creature, and another with a bunch of clueless adventurers who fought dragons with slingshots. After that, she never once looked at what my sister Elena and I were up to on the console. Hahah! We really had you there! Well, not really, since we sometimes played right in the middle of the living room, without hiding. That’s where my mom stood on the denial scale.
Run and Gun and bleed and explode
I’ve always thought of this game as a platformer, maybe because back then, that was all I knew besides fighting games. Indeed, you jump, grab onto bars suspended in mid-air, climb ladders at surprising speeds, performing actions that would be totally impossible for our robotic cop as we already knew him from the movies. But hey, 85% of the time, you’re shooting while moving inexorably forward, most often to the right. I was discovering a hardcore version of Ghouls’n Ghosts, with Arthur’s armor replaced by Alex Murphy’s cybernetic shell, and where massive guns took the place of small knives and flaming radishes. I was immediately hooked on the premise of blowing up and dismembering everything that moves, in a festival of blood as gory as possible. My mom wasn't too strict about letting me watch movies that were a bit edgy for my age; in fact, she didn't understand how a killing scene between two humans slashing each other's bellies (in Ridley Scott's 1492) could shock me more than a fictional cartoon fighter being impaled by a demon's horn.
“So what ? You’re scared of that, but not of Dragon Ball?” she had snapped at me. This is getting a little self-psychoanalytical, isn’t it? Come on, let’s get back to our deluge of murders in Detroit. Hey, no hard feelings, Mom! Or maybe there are. So, not a platformer, but a run-and-gun. A term I didn’t learn until I was twenty—eleven or twelve years later. You never really run, but you never quite stop shooting either, no matter which level you’re on. The backgrounds come straight from a comic book series that actually tells this bizarre crossover story. Robocop may have been part of the police force, but when he learned that Skynet and the destruction of humanity had happened because of him, he quickly decided to set things right himself. How? By killing dozens of people a minute, traveling to the future, and pounding away at a massive metal skull until a thousand explosions follow.
Skynet is the skull, alright ? And yeah, I know the police are perfectly capable of acting the same way in real life. That avalanche of destruction didn’t turn me into a psychopath, though; just goes to show, video games don’t always create future mass murderers, even though people keep trying to make us believe that every now and then. Maybe I almost lost my mind anyway—who knows. In any case, given the arsenal at our disposal, I could have become an expert in all kinds of firearms—from basic handguns to shotguns that fire little rockets, to plasma cannons capable of vaporizing a T-800 in a single shot, or even a grenade launcher with projectiles. From the basic little pistol to the shotgun that fires small rockets, to the plasma cannon capable of vaporizing a T-800 in a single shot, or even a grenade launcher with projectiles that can be guided while you move. This is definitely not a platformer at all.
I’ve always regretted not being able to play the Terminator in this post-apocalyptic urban bloodbath. *udgment Day had already won my heart and become my favorite movie (thanks to my dad this time), whereas I wasn’t quite as fond of Robocop’s adventures on the big screen. But once the game started, I forgot my preferences, as the exhilarating pace prevented me from overthinking anything. The gameplay mechanics might have seemed simplistic and sometimes a bit clunky, but there was an air of ecstatic pessimism in this game that made up for everything else. The ghostly skyline of Motor City in the background of the early levels, the toxic waste plant that cheerfully reminded me of the villain’s death by liquefaction in Robocop 1, the cavern located a meter above the Earth’s magma level serving as a lair for the Terminators, the lair of Skynet itself, saturated with drones, mines, and… well, T-800s, of course.
Enough to delight the world’s naysayers for centuries to come. The dark side of the ’90s in all its glory: crystallizing the intense emotions tied to the approach of the year 2000—the future! Damn it! Not exactly a super-bright future, though. It was better to live day by day than to expect anything from the third millennium. Some critics point out how repetitive the “scenery” is, especially since you only see daylight for the duration of a single level. To them I’d say: keep your good vibes to yourselves, and let jaded nostalgics like me talk about the real deal.
SynTh-800
The music often pushes the boundaries of the improbable, challenging the console's sonic capabilities. On the other hand, that distinctive, metallic, industrial sound perfectly matched the game's intensely violent atmosphere. I wouldn't be surprised if a troubled DJ from Detroit had composed this soundtrack. But no, Mark Miller doesn’t seem to have hit the clubs of Motor City alongside Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, or Kevin Saunderson; he mostly worked on other projects, like Kid Chameleon or Earthworm Jim. Still, some tracks exude such energy that they could still be played in a club today (though you’d have to warn people well in advance, mind you). Others are a bit more painful on the ears and make you grit your teeth; but that just makes us want to tear everything apart even more, so this auditory torture will finally stop. And besides, it fits with Robocop’s almost zombie-like rigidity. The one from the first movies, anyway. Personally, I absolutely loved all these tracks. I can even say that in the present tense. They offer so much more than just a barrage of heavy, gritty beats. Most of them give off a pretty sassy vibe—not immediately obvious at first, but definitely there after a few listens. You’ve got to hear the cheerful little tune playing in the OCP offices while the security guards spill gallons of blood on the floor. Did I already use the word “ecstatic” in this article? Well, I’m using it again—what are you gonna do about it?
A bleak but steady future
My older sister Elena was just as into the idea of constantly blasting super-villains as I was. We often played together, passing the controller back and forth as soon as one of us lost a life. Meanwhile, the other one would goof around, dancing to the music. The track that plays during the first level became legendary for us, with that totally crazy voice sample we loved to imitate. Just like with Altered Beast, we’d look at each other, let our best gibberish flow, and launch into a fit of endless laughter. “Co-manèèère,” we’d say (we hadn’t made much progress in English since our first steps on the Mega Drive). I never knew what words the “singer” was actually saying. All things considered, I’d rather never find out. Despite its ultra-dark atmosphere, I found Robocop vs. Terminator to be pretty easy.
When I mentioned the hardcore version of Ghouls’N Ghosts, I was just talking about the violence—certainly not the difficulty. I’d lose a few lives to some of those bosses with tons of health, but I’d often show up with plenty of resources to take on Skynet. So I’d stand right in front of it, firing nonstop without moving; I made sure to switch weapons just before dying because you lose whatever you’re holding when you die, and it turns into a basic, beat-up gun. Then I’d grab the super-powerful weapon again—often the crazy machine gun I’d snagged from the ED-209 (or picked up even earlier in a secret passage; those in the know get it)—and I’d repeat the process until I secured the victory. Skynet tossed in the trash, the world saved, and all that jazz. Well, we’ll have to clean up all the mess left behind, like bloodstains, mangled limbs, and melted robot carcasses. Luckily, no one’s asking us to do it.
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