We’re a lot closer to living in the future that RoboCop predicted than we are to the one in The Terminator. Sure, some smart, rich people say that we have to watch out for AI killing us all, but I’m pretty sure they’re just trying to make their new tech seem more impressive. All we’ve seen it do is put together some bad prose, resurrect dead celebrities, and give us pictures that invariably look uncomfortably off. Humans can’t build a printer that can reliably put ink on a page, and we don’t need a machine’s help to wipe ourselves out of existence. We’ve got that covered.
RoboCop basically thought we’d flush ourselves down the toilet with our own greed. We’d gradually become less and less human the more we pursue our own hedonism. Profit and status before people were one of its big themes. It was extrapolating on a trend, and 35 years later, it’s only gotten more accurate.
Speaking of profit, in 1992, Dark Horse published a comic book miniseries that combined the two extremely marketable cyborgs above. RoboCop Versus The Terminator was a concept every kid in the schoolyard dreamed about, bringing together two protagonists from their favorite R-Rated movies. While a movie based on the concept never materialized, there was a game released for popular consoles at the time. Three games, actually, as the SNES, Game Boy, and Genesis/Mega Drive versions were all different. You lucky duck, I’m going to look at all of them.
The Comics
But first, let’s talk about the comics. If the stories I’ve heard are accurate, Dark Horse was about to lose the RoboCop license, so they decided to go out with a bang by creating a dream crossover. They tapped Frank Miller to write it.
While Miller is perhaps best known for The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City, he actually had a hand in writing the screenplay for RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3. Unfortunately for him, the studio and director made significant changes to his scripts, to the point that the experience was so sour for him that he stopped working with Hollywood. However, he also dipped his toes into RoboCop comics, which resulted in a nine-issue adaptation of his original RoboCop 2 screenplay and RoboCop Versus The Terminator.
I’m pretty ambivalent toward Frank Miller. I could take or leave him. I enjoyed Sin City, but I haven’t found anything else by him that I appreciate quite as much. However, RoboCop Versus The Terminator isn’t great. Alex Murphy is turned into Miller’s favorite type of protagonist – a violently efficient hero with an overt death wish – and the whole time paradox card gets pulled in some of the worst ways. Like, once the timeline is altered, everything really slowly begins to change, and everyone is completely aware of it. So, there’s this really awful back-and-forth between the good guy team and Skynet.
When the plot was selected to be adapted into a game, most of that was swept aside. The idea is the same: RoboCop is used to give self-awareness to Skynet. He’s not exactly happy with that, so he, uh… Well, he tries to stop it, but it’s more complicated than that.
Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
The Genesis version of RoboCop Versus The Terminator was done in-house by Virgin Games. It sure is a RoboCop game. It’s a pretty basic sidescroller, with a bit of run-and-gun mixed in. You can hold the shoot button down and just keep firing, which is a pretty good strategy. Beyond the obligatory appearances of ED-209 and, you know, Terminators, RoboCain shows up for some reason.
There are ten levels, five in the near future and five in the future of the future. Some of them have objectives like destroying all the things or rescuing some people, but I’m not sure how necessary those are. In stage 3, I’m pretty sure I didn’t destroy all the cameras but was still able to fight the boss. I lost, so maybe they’re stronger if you don’t destroy everything? But during the rematch, it didn’t seem weaker. I just came packing a bigger gun.
There isn’t a lot to say about RoboCop Versus The Terminator on Genesis. It’s an extremely routine game that I have no strong feelings about. It’s not terrible, but it isn’t good, either. In fact, that’s exactly why I’m covering the three versions here, since otherwise, I’d quickly run out of things to say.
I will say this, though: the soundtrack sucks. Most of the tracks just seem like directionless Genesis noodling, and it all blended together for me. This is probably because it’s focused on one track that has the word “Terminator” repeated in it for some reason.
Super Nintendo
This one’s my favorite of the bunch for a number of reasons, but it’s still pretty mundane. The Super Nintendo version is the closest to the comics, with its cutscenes being presented in panel-style facsimiles of what’s in the comics. The comic has a woman from the future initially trying to kill RoboCop before he can be plugged into Skynet, and unlike the other versions, this is actually reflected in the gameplay, with Flo taking shots at you as a silhouette from the background.
The first level is visually strong, in general, and it includes an actual lighting effect where Murphy’s sprite is gradually illuminated as he approaches light sources. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in a 16-bit game. I also give this one props for being the only version that has RoboCop making a “thud thud” sound as he walks. I feel that’s key to his “forklift on legs” persona.
Beyond that, however, this is another routine sidescroller. Well, that is aside from a first-person vehicular Mode-7 section. It’s also really easy for most of the game, then when you go to the future’s future, someone realized that kids shouldn’t be able to beat this during a rental period. Then, the enemy placement goes from bad to malicious, and the levels get confusing.
Still, it’s not awful. I even would have thought that this version was the flagship of the group if it weren’t for the fact that Interplay developed it while Virgin just used their own studio for the Genesis one. That version even got ported to the Game Gear and Sega Master System.
GameBoy
I thought the Game Boy version would be funnier to cover since I expected it would be a completely slapdash port. It is, but it’s also a fairly capable slapdash port. I’m not saying it’s good. It just doesn’t have any of those specific issues that are fun to rant about or bang on.
It’s short, sure. Definitely. The level design is weak, it looks kind of dumb, I can’t tell what some of the enemies are, it’s extremely easy, and it has no narrative exposition at all. A lot of the mechanics, such as the weapon switching and pole hanging, are still present, they’re just scaled back. If I played it as a kid, I wouldn’t be angry that I got tricked into buying it, I’d mostly just be annoyed that I completed it before the car trip was over.
Oh, and spoiler alert, but the end boss is, like, a flying brain. It doesn’t make sense, but at least it’s memorable. I don’t even remember what Skynet was depicted as in the comic, which is concerning because I just finished reading it this morning. I think it was just a… input slot or something.
Which failed the hardest?
Out of all the adaptations of RoboCop Versus The Terminator, the one that was most fun to analyze was the comic. Considering my profession and what this column is even about, that’s pretty disappointing. Going into this project, I figured that the comic would be surprisingly good, while the games would be complete butt. Instead, all of them are just kind of mediocre, with the comic failing in the most interesting ways.
There were supposedly talks of bringing the concept of RoboCop Versus The Terminator to film but nothing ever came of it. Really, if it did happen, I’d hope that a different plot was developed, which would be a funny way to piss off Frank Miller again. Really, though, RoboCop Versus The Terminator happened at the height of both franchises’ popularity and is one of the most ‘90s concepts imaginable. If they did something like it now, it would probably be more kitschy than impressive. I’d be okay with that.
