Publisher Reef Entertainment and developer Bitmap Bureau have announced Terminator 2D: No Fate, a gritty sidescroller in which you must put a stop to the T-1000 and foil Skynet’s plans before the human race is destroyed.
The game will allow you to play as either Sarah Connor or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 as you fight to stop the shapeshifting android, memorably played by Robert Patrick in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (and in the upcoming Mortal Kombat 1 DLC).
Terminator 2D: No Fate‘s story will blend “iconic scenes” from the aforementioned Terminator 2 with “original scenarios and multiple endings”, which sounds like a rather unique mixture.
In the trailer, we can see Terminator 2 scenes like Sarah Connor working out in her hospital room, Arnie’s T-800 duking it out with thugs in a dingy bar, and, of course, that iconic truck chase sequence.
We also see how the gameplay will work, and it looks like Terminator 2D: No Fate will take on a sort of Contra-style run-and-gun feel; we can see Connor snap-aiming in various directions, Contra-style, as well as lots of fast-paced action rendered in crisp pixel art.
Overall, Terminator 2D: No Fate has a pretty pleasing SNES and Genesis-era feel to it, right down to the continue screen, which feels like exactly the kind of thing a licensed Terminator game would have sported back in the 90s.
You can check out the debut trailer for Terminator 2D: No Fate here. It’s even got a fun reworked version of the classic Terminator theme for you to enjoy. Good luck getting that one out of your head once it’s in there.
Terminator 2D: No Fate isn’t the only video game based on the Terminator series that’s set to launch in the (hopefully near!) future.
There’s also Nacon’s Terminator: Survivors, which, as its name suggests, is a survival game in which you must make sense of humanity’s near-extinction at the hands of Skynet, scavenging for resources and navigating an irrevocably changed world.
Unfortunately, we don’t know when that one’s coming out; it was delayed to an unspecified point in 2025 back in August, although it’s more than possible we’ll hear something about it during next week’s Nacon Connect presentation.
In the meantime, Terminator 2D: No Fate launches across PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch on September 5th. Stay tuned for more.
