Terminator 2: Judgment Day Soundtrack (NES), Geoff Follin, 1992
If you take a closer look at the history of movies and their video game adaptations, James Cameron’s 1991 Terminator 2: Judgment Day emerges as a watershed moment. At the time of its release, T2 became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time worldwide. Its futuristic, action-packed plot and revolutionary visuals made T2 an obvious candidate for a video game adaptation. What’s more, the film was released at a time when the home video game market had diversified and matured, to the point where it could support two console generations simultaneously. The result was a glut of T2-related games, followed soon by numerous titles based on The Terminator. The creators of Terminator 2: Judgment Day were certainly aware of video games’ commercial potential. After all, the film’s end credits finished with a message reading “Play the hit Nintendo game from Acclaim/LJN Entertainment.”
In the end, that game took nearly seven months to arrive, hitting the NES in 1992, with conversions to the Master System and Game Gear to follow. Coming from LJN, few contemporary reviewers were surprised to find the game a frustrating, at best middling affair – although the developers at Software Creations had at least made an effort to follow the film’s story line closely. Where the game really shone was with its soundtrack, penned by Geoff Follin on one of the few occasions where he didn’t share scoring duties with his brother Tim.