Here is the chronological development story of Sunsoft’s The Terminator. In 1988, vice president of Sunsoft of America, Richard Robbins, acquired the license for James Cameron’s 1984 hit movie The Terminator. The license was acquired from Creative Licensing Corporation (CLC) and its founder Rand Marlis. Even though the movie was four years old at the time, they felt the license still had some life in it. Three years later in 1991 that was shown to be true when Terminator 2: Judgement Day became a hit in theaters around the world. It seems that Richard Robbins had a nose for what older licenses would become popular again. Another example of this is in 1988 Robbins also licensed the old 1960's TV show The Addams Family to make Fester’s Quest. This game was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System three years before the movie The Addams Family hit theaters to great success. Last but not least he was involved in securing the license for the upcoming Batman movie in 1989. Until that movie became a blockbuster hit Batman was another brand that had faded from the public consciousness outside of comic book fans for the most part. The development of the Terminator game was left to Sunsoft’s development staff in Japan, with no design input from the US office. The programming team was headed by veterans Masahito Nomura and Hiroaki Higashiya. Both had started at Sun Electronics in the early 1980s and been there when the company started its Family Computer development in 1985. On the sound team were sound programmers Nobuyuki Hara and Shinichi Seya, who coded most of the great Sunsoft music of the 8-bit era. The composer was Naoki Kodaka, who composed most of the company’s music between 1985 and 1996. The producers were Hiroyasu Eguchi and Sunsoft’s manager Kiharu Yoshida. The development of the game started some time in late 1988. As mentioned earlier Nomura and the team set out to make a game in the style of Cinematronics’ popular laserdisc arcade game Dragon’s Lair. In Dragon’s Lair and its spiritual sequel, Space Ace, the laserdisc medium was used to show animated cartoon clips and then at certain points allow the player to choose what to do next. Based on the choice the game would continue or the game’s hero would meet his end. The games were animated by famous American animator Don Bluth. A game of that style would obviously be hard to make on the Family Computer since it would require lots of unique graphics to make up all the animated scenes, like Sunsoft's own Freedom Force. The announcer calls it “the very first home video game to feature movie footage and interactive graphics technology” and “the most amazingly lifelike home video game you’ve ever seen.” The graphics of course would not be cartoon animations. Rather they would be like cut scenes used in other Famicom and NES games of the time, but with interactive points where the player could decide what to do next. The team had to adhere to some severe restrictions in making the game, dictated by the license holder, CLC. The Terminator could not die at any time other than at the end of the game, just like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robotic character in the movie. And there could be no enemy characters other than the Terminator in the game. The “Dragon’s Lair” style of game makes this much more feasible that an action game would, focusing on the story rather than on action that requires multiple enemies. Having the Terminator chase the player through scenes from the movie. At the Las Vegas Winter Consumers Electronics Show in January 1989, Sunsoft of America unveiled The Terminator for the NES. A cool flyer with the iconic picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 was shown along with a promotional video for the game. Artist Todd Papaleo, who worked at Sunsoft from 1988 to 1989, sent us a drawing he had been assigned to draw of T-800. It was for the promo video to be shown at CES. Todd was given less than 24 hours to come up with the pictures for the video. The promo video includes several scenes from the game that are approximations of scenes from the movie. The Police station scene. The truck chase scene. Terminator/Kyle Reese arriving from the future. As mentioned, the Dragon’s Lair style game would need a large amount of graphics. Graphics take up memory and memory was very expensive at the time. Due to the ambitious plans of putting this type of game on a cartridge, they quickly ran out of memory. Nomura says that they were not able to make a full-length game with the available memory. The managers did not want to spend any more money on memory for the game so the original plans were scrapped and the team was forced to start over. This first attempt of making Terminator into a Dragon’s Lair type game was in development for about three or four months. They started making an action game instead that would fit within the limitations of the allowed memory. But the change of genre also made it impossible to adhere to the license holder’s requirements. So, Nomura and his team set the game in the future where the player more logically could fight off other enemies before meeting the Terminator. Later that year, a finished build of the game was presented for Rand Marlis at CLC. Rand says they revoked the license because the game did not follow the plot of the original film. The movie is mainly set in the present day (1984) while the game is set in the future where the artificial intelligence Skynet has taken control of the Earth with an army of robots. Rand tells me it was unusual to not show them anything until a product is finished. It was more common to first come to CLC with a concept to show what you are going to do and to see if it is within the parameters they would accept. To be fair, in the late 80s it was a very difficult design task to make a game that could not include more than one enemy, and that enemy could not die until the end, and Nomura knew it. They were fully aware that the game was not going to pass the requirements. So they just focused on making a good action game that was at least set in the universe of the movie. Nomura is a bit disappointed that he didn’t get to finish it as a Terminator game, but glad that it is a game that is considered a classic for the NES. After losing the license, Sunsoft decided to rename the game and replace all its cut-scenes instead of scrapping the whole game. At first the game was called Operation S.S.S. for the US market. It was listed as Operation S.S.S. as late as WCES 1990, and was scheduled for a June 1990 release. The title Operation S.S.S. had been known since 2009 when the content of Sunsoft dev disks was posted on the Lost Levels forum. Among the things found on the disks was the title screen assets for Operation S.S.S. Sometime after this, the name was changed once again to Journey to Silius. Nomura recalls that it was producer Hiroyasu Eguchi who came up with that name. It was released as Rough World (Stylized as [rʌf] WORLD) in Japan, and Eguchi was responsible for this final title as well. Somehow, the Terminator rights were later picked up by Canadian developer Radical Entertainment and published by Mindscape, who would eventually make a game for the series that was released in 1992. Virgin also had plans for a Terminator NES game in between Sunsoft and Radical’s attempts, according to an interview with programmer Gregg Tavares. For some reason Radical’s game could have all sorts of enemies besides the Terminator, including several other Terminators. But one of these seemingly identical Terminators meets its end just like Arnold in the movie, and the game is set in present day 1984. Lamentably, its muddy graphics and infuriating controls dropped it into the typical licensed dreck cesspit where most tie-in games at the time were trapped. Perhaps it was an unwise move to revoke the license from Sunsoft in retrospect, the first Terminator game was Bethesda's 1991 first-person PC title. A slightly less embarrassing (albeit still terrible) title based on the then-recent T2: Judgment Day was developed by Software Creations and published by LJN a year later, in 1992. While that game at least had decent music, its level structure was awful and it was often horribly unfair. An actually okay game based on the first Terminator was released to the Genesis with a much expanded version for the Sega CD, and much later there were some genuinely good games in the franchise, even if not based on any specific film installment, like Terminator: Future Shock and Robocop vs. The Terminator. Making a rushed game that adhered more to the license holder’s requirements rather than making a good game was common with licensed games. It was the main reason why so many licensed games were bad or good. Despite this, Sunsoft would manage to develop two of the best licensed games of all time. Both Batman: The Video Game and Gremlins 2: The New Batch for NES are great games that in some fashion follow the story of the movies they are based on. But they most importantly was good games, because Sunsoft wanted to make great games more than they wanted to follow the license holders guidelines. Think of Sunsoft's own Platoon game, with the tunnel system section. Maybe Termiator would've had some distinct gameplay levels like that game, not just the Silius type stages. Still, it's interesting to imagine what would have happened had Sunsoft kept the license. The footage would resurface 32 years later. No prototype of this version has yet surfaced.
If Journey to Silius would be a Terminator Game it´s had been on of the best movie-based game on the NES. Sunsoft was a master in making these kind of games. I mean Batman, Gremlins 2 and now The Terminator. Damn, Sunsoft should done all movie-based games like Friday the 13, Jaws, Nightmare and so on.
The central theme of the franchise is the battle for survival between the nearly-extinct human race and the world-spanning synthetic intelligence that is Skynet bathwater. Drink at your own risk HUMAN. and paypal Sarah Connor your $30 bucks mmmkay.
If Sunsoft got the Terminator 2 license instead of LJN, then the SNES game would be developed by those fools at Icom Simulations and the Sega Genesis game would be developed by Ringler Studios, both with disastrous results.
If you emulate or have a flash drive, there's a fanmade romhack that replaces the Journey to Silius sprites with custom Terminator sprites. It's really well done, definitely worth trying. www.romhacking.net/hacks/3925/
Still haven’t explained what the hell is so special about being first in a video. You were so quick to respond the other day, and now after I respond back to your comment, you don’t have a response.
What do you think of a prospect of the original Terminator by Sunsoft?
Info here: bit.ly/2LJyCWx
I love Journey To Silius so I'd definitely like it. Loved the T2 arcade shooter too.
Damned shame. Sunsoft would have made a good one without a doubt. I wonder why they lost the license.
@@ericwood3709 Journey to Silius is still dirt cheap. I saw it for 5 at Game Exchange yesterday.
I've always wondered if Sunsoft's Batman started as something else. So much of it has nothing to do with Batman.
Here is the chronological development story of Sunsoft’s The Terminator.
In 1988, vice president of Sunsoft of America, Richard Robbins, acquired the license for James Cameron’s 1984 hit movie The Terminator. The license was acquired from Creative Licensing Corporation (CLC) and its founder Rand Marlis. Even though the movie was four years old at the time, they felt the license still had some life in it. Three years later in 1991 that was shown to be true when Terminator 2: Judgement Day became a hit in theaters around the world. It seems that Richard Robbins had a nose for what older licenses would become popular again. Another example of this is in 1988 Robbins also licensed the old 1960's TV show The Addams Family to make Fester’s Quest. This game was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System three years before the movie The Addams Family hit theaters to great success. Last but not least he was involved in securing the license for the upcoming Batman movie in 1989. Until that movie became a blockbuster hit Batman was another brand that had faded from the public consciousness outside of comic book fans for the most part.
The development of the Terminator game was left to Sunsoft’s development staff in Japan, with no design input from the US office. The programming team was headed by veterans Masahito Nomura and Hiroaki Higashiya. Both had started at Sun Electronics in the early 1980s and been there when the company started its Family Computer development in 1985. On the sound team were sound programmers Nobuyuki Hara and Shinichi Seya, who coded most of the great Sunsoft music of the 8-bit era. The composer was Naoki Kodaka, who composed most of the company’s music between 1985 and 1996. The producers were Hiroyasu Eguchi and Sunsoft’s manager Kiharu Yoshida.
The development of the game started some time in late 1988. As mentioned earlier Nomura and the team set out to make a game in the style of Cinematronics’ popular laserdisc arcade game Dragon’s Lair. In Dragon’s Lair and its spiritual sequel, Space Ace, the laserdisc medium was used to show animated cartoon clips and then at certain points allow the player to choose what to do next. Based on the choice the game would continue or the game’s hero would meet his end. The games were animated by famous American animator Don Bluth.
A game of that style would obviously be hard to make on the Family Computer since it would require lots of unique graphics to make up all the animated scenes, like Sunsoft's own Freedom Force. The announcer calls it “the very first home video game to feature movie footage and interactive graphics technology” and “the most amazingly lifelike home video game you’ve ever seen.” The graphics of course would not be cartoon animations. Rather they would be like cut scenes used in other Famicom and NES games of the time, but with interactive points where the player could decide what to do next.
The team had to adhere to some severe restrictions in making the game, dictated by the license holder, CLC. The Terminator could not die at any time other than at the end of the game, just like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s robotic character in the movie. And there could be no enemy characters other than the Terminator in the game. The “Dragon’s Lair” style of game makes this much more feasible that an action game would, focusing on the story rather than on action that requires multiple enemies. Having the Terminator chase the player through scenes from the movie. At the Las Vegas Winter Consumers Electronics Show in January 1989, Sunsoft of America unveiled The Terminator for the NES. A cool flyer with the iconic picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T-800 was shown along with a promotional video for the game. Artist Todd Papaleo, who worked at Sunsoft from 1988 to 1989, sent us a drawing he had been assigned to draw of T-800. It was for the promo video to be shown at CES. Todd was given less than 24 hours to come up with the pictures for the video.
The promo video includes several scenes from the game that are approximations of scenes from the movie.
The Police station scene.
The truck chase scene.
Terminator/Kyle Reese arriving from the future.
As mentioned, the Dragon’s Lair style game would need a large amount of graphics. Graphics take up memory and memory was very expensive at the time. Due to the ambitious plans of putting this type of game on a cartridge, they quickly ran out of memory. Nomura says that they were not able to make a full-length game with the available memory. The managers did not want to spend any more money on memory for the game so the original plans were scrapped and the team was forced to start over. This first attempt of making Terminator into a Dragon’s Lair type game was in development for about three or four months.
They started making an action game instead that would fit within the limitations of the allowed memory. But the change of genre also made it impossible to adhere to the license holder’s requirements. So, Nomura and his team set the game in the future where the player more logically could fight off other enemies before meeting the Terminator.
Later that year, a finished build of the game was presented for Rand Marlis at CLC. Rand says they revoked the license because the game did not follow the plot of the original film. The movie is mainly set in the present day (1984) while the game is set in the future where the artificial intelligence Skynet has taken control of the Earth with an army of robots. Rand tells me it was unusual to not show them anything until a product is finished. It was more common to first come to CLC with a concept to show what you are going to do and to see if it is within the parameters they would accept. To be fair, in the late 80s it was a very difficult design task to make a game that could not include more than one enemy, and that enemy could not die until the end, and Nomura knew it. They were fully aware that the game was not going to pass the requirements. So they just focused on making a good action game that was at least set in the universe of the movie. Nomura is a bit disappointed that he didn’t get to finish it as a Terminator game, but glad that it is a game that is considered a classic for the NES.
After losing the license, Sunsoft decided to rename the game and replace all its cut-scenes instead of scrapping the whole game. At first the game was called Operation S.S.S. for the US market. It was listed as Operation S.S.S. as late as WCES 1990, and was scheduled for a June 1990 release. The title Operation S.S.S. had been known since 2009 when the content of Sunsoft dev disks was posted on the Lost Levels forum. Among the things found on the disks was the title screen assets for Operation S.S.S.
Sometime after this, the name was changed once again to Journey to Silius. Nomura recalls that it was producer Hiroyasu Eguchi who came up with that name. It was released as Rough World (Stylized as [rʌf] WORLD) in Japan, and Eguchi was responsible for this final title as well.
Somehow, the Terminator rights were later picked up by Canadian developer Radical Entertainment and published by Mindscape, who would eventually make a game for the series that was released in 1992. Virgin also had plans for a Terminator NES game in between Sunsoft and Radical’s attempts, according to an interview with programmer Gregg Tavares. For some reason Radical’s game could have all sorts of enemies besides the Terminator, including several other Terminators. But one of these seemingly identical Terminators meets its end just like Arnold in the movie, and the game is set in present day 1984. Lamentably, its muddy graphics and infuriating controls dropped it into the typical licensed dreck cesspit where most tie-in games at the time were trapped. Perhaps it was an unwise move to revoke the license from Sunsoft in retrospect, the first Terminator game was Bethesda's 1991 first-person PC title. A slightly less embarrassing (albeit still terrible) title based on the then-recent T2: Judgment Day was developed by Software Creations and published by LJN a year later, in 1992. While that game at least had decent music, its level structure was awful and it was often horribly unfair. An actually okay game based on the first Terminator was released to the Genesis with a much expanded version for the Sega CD, and much later there were some genuinely good games in the franchise, even if not based on any specific film installment, like Terminator: Future Shock and Robocop vs. The Terminator. Making a rushed game that adhered more to the license holder’s requirements rather than making a good game was common with licensed games. It was the main reason why so many licensed games were bad or good. Despite this, Sunsoft would manage to develop two of the best licensed games of all time. Both Batman: The Video Game and Gremlins 2: The New Batch for NES are great games that in some fashion follow the story of the movies they are based on. But they most importantly was good games, because Sunsoft wanted to make great games more than they wanted to follow the license holders guidelines. Think of Sunsoft's own Platoon game, with the tunnel system section. Maybe Termiator would've had some distinct gameplay levels like that game, not just the Silius type stages. Still, it's interesting to imagine what would have happened had Sunsoft kept the license. The footage would resurface 32 years later. No prototype of this version has yet surfaced.
Best Terminator game ever made was called Journey to Silius.
The music was insane
the art isn't that bad it's kind of charming in its own way
If Journey to Silius would be a Terminator Game it´s had been on of the best movie-based game on the NES. Sunsoft was a master in making these kind of games. I mean Batman, Gremlins 2 and now The Terminator. Damn, Sunsoft should done all movie-based games like Friday the 13, Jaws, Nightmare and so on.
*If we're not talking about Terminator bathwater, then I'm not listening*
The central theme of the franchise is the battle for survival between the nearly-extinct human race and the world-spanning synthetic intelligence that is Skynet bathwater. Drink at your own risk HUMAN. and paypal Sarah Connor your $30 bucks mmmkay.
Gremilins 2 was a great Sunsoft Licensed game so they can still say they had the 2 best on the NES.
Sunsoft also did Gremlins 2, another great movie tie-in game.
Even Batman on nes
According™ to™ a™ certain™ NES© guidebook™
As of 2023, there no confirmed prototype ROMs yet for the early Terminator.
Everybody play Journey to Silius for the NES!
If only Sunsoft got the licenses instead of LJN back then
If Sunsoft got the Terminator 2 license instead of LJN, then the SNES game would be developed by those fools at Icom Simulations and the Sega Genesis game would be developed by Ringler Studios, both with disastrous results.
I'll be waiting for Rare's Nightmare on Elm Street Beta ROM Footage.
The Beta where you play as Freddy himself.
T 8 - BIT 💀
4:18 That Terminator looks like Logan in the film after he got impaled by the tree.
The 4:15 concept art looked like Michael Jackson as Thriller to me
This looks amazing
Use your GD certain guide book, it's literally right behind you! This is twice now I've comment this. Wtf Pat. Love your videos!
video starts.... EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEN!!!
Reminds me of the video of Capcom pitching their proposed Megaman cartoon for the US......before the changes we got.
I'll be back!....
Pat! What cons are you guys going to ?
Guys, check out Blazing Chrome on Steam. Just came out. Contra inspired game from JoyMasher. They make good stuff.
Damn, that looks dope AF.
I'd rather check it out on the Switch.
@@ThePreciseClimber Well it's on Steam, get a PC and level up in life.
@@Samsquamsh Please...I'm Pro PC but that amount of elitism is not necessary.
@@Warrax22 Oh it is absolutely necessary. PC MASTER RACE 4 LIFE!
Sweet NIN shirt
Well later on that company published Simpsons Hit & Run and Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction.
T-800 needed a face lift
He did say he would back.
Alright. IAN!
yes.
The 16-bit Terminator games were great however.
@wandering sword The Genesis and SNES versions are almost identical save for the cutscenes and music.
T2 on SNES was not great...it was a typical LJN game.
@@Warrax22 I'm referring only to Terminator 1 here.
Dat concept art. Lol
Are you ever gonna make videos again? Or is it always just gonna be “highlights” from this gay ass podcast
Cant be bothered to put a link on the description I see. Gonna make me actually type. Ugh.
That's cool
If you emulate or have a flash drive, there's a fanmade romhack that replaces the Journey to Silius sprites with custom Terminator sprites. It's really well done, definitely worth trying.
www.romhacking.net/hacks/3925/
Some of those Terminator graphics reminded me of the Sega CD game Snatchers
First, bitches.
Samsquamsh What purpose is there by being first in a video?
@@chicknwings You must be new to youtube...
Nice! :D
Still haven’t explained what the hell is so special about being first in a video. You were so quick to respond the other day, and now after I respond back to your comment, you don’t have a response.