Reef Entertainment, the company behind the upcoming Rambo: Video Game, have acquired the gaming rights to both Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
You know these movies, so there's no point in going over them again here, but you might not know about their legacy in gaming. There was the side-scrollers for NES and SNES way back when, plus the excellent if slightly baffling Robocop vs Terminator, and a great arcade machine shooter with a massive bloody Uzi cabled to the front.
Since those though, the interactive offerings of the franchise have been fairly tame and at times actively terrible. Terminator: Salvation the game was as bad as Terminator: Salvation the film.
Things could be on the up with Reef stepping in, spinning their freshly minted rights into a game called TERMINATORS. Details are forthcoming, but one suspects it will feature story elements from both movies in one contained game.
For Rambo, Reef eschewed the recording of new dialogue specifically for the game and simply got hold of the original tape masters from the films, chopping out lines directly to give their game an authentic edge to it. They've done it before, they might do it again, and 60 year old Arnie sounds very different to 30 year old Arnie. Edward Furlong sound quite similar actually, but he's hard to pin down.
A Reef spokesperson said "Here at Reef we are huge fans of 1984 & 1991 Sci-Fi action master-pieces. It’s an incredible opportunity and an equally huge responsibility to create a game that does great justice to the motion-pictures. We are studying all aspects and influences of the Terminator universe defined in Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day."
Reef's currently available games could be fairly filed in the "what? That looks awful." bin at your local retailer, but Rambo looks pretty bloody good and if they manage to pull a decent game out of Terminators this could mean a whole new direction for the company.
No fixed release date has been confirmed for Rambo but it should be this year sometime, and they only just got the rights to Terminator. Give them a bloody chance.
Words by Gazz Wood
