Terminator 2D: No Fate – Retroactive Fun

As we near the end of 2025, I think that everyone is feeling like we are closer to doomsday than ever before. With the rise of AI in the world, people are turning back to movies like Terminator 2: Judgement Day as a point of where our future could be headed. With that in mind, Terminator 2D: No Fate takes the beloved Sci-Fi Action movie and brings it back from the past with a retro game style that not only captures what treatment this movie got back when it was released on consoles like the SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, and Arcade, but shows us just how well this movie holds up after 34 years.

Name: Terminator 2D: No Fate
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows (Reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Developer: Bitmap Bureau
Publisher: Reef Entertainment
Game Type: Action
Mode(s): Single-Player
Release Date: December 12, 2025

Terminator 2D: No Fate But What We Make It (Story)

If you don’t know the story behind Terminator 2D: No Fate, or the movie that it is based on, I’m going to tell you right now to stop reading and go watch one of the best movies ever made. For those of you who already know, there is nothing really new for you to know when you are playing Terminator 2D: No Fate.

Terminator 2D: No Fate follows the events of Terminator 2: Judgement Day almost beat for beat, letting you relive a lot of the key moments from the film, while adding in some extra levels based on Terminator, and some created to flesh out John Connor’s future as the leader of the resistance. During these sections, you will probably not find anything new for the most part, but instead be amazed that they are fleshing out moments from a film that is well over 2.5 hours long at this point, which is something since there are so many version fo this movie out there that Blade Runner is looking at it to say “damn, you have too many versions”.

For those of you still reading, Terminator 2D: No Fate is the story of Sarah and John Conner, with Sarah trying to teach John how to defend himself and also instill in him the skills he will need to take on Skynet, an AI-driven system that takes over the world and wipes out more than 90% of the human race.

Sarah starts out with her attempt to stop Skynet before it even happens, going to the facility where the first Terminator, T-61, is being built. She is caught and sent to a mental facility to keep her quiet about what Cyberdyne, the company behind Skynet, is doing. This leads to John, her son, being left with foster families as he tries to avoid what fate has in store for him.

Meanwhile, in the future, John captures a T-800 series Terminator, reprograms it, and sends it back to 1995 as his protector from Skynet, who has sent a T-1000 back in time to kill John. There is a lot that goes on from here, deep thoughts about changing fate, sparing people who should die, and the preservation of human life in general. All of this happens while Sarah, John, and the T-800 are trying to escape the relentless T-1000, a liquid-metal Terminator that seems to be unstoppable.

A Reminder of the Game We Used to Play (Graphics)

For those of you who are too young to remember, when Terminator 2: Judgement Day hit the gaming world, it did so in many forms. Some of us older gamers would remember playing the shooter version in Arcades, which had some of the best graphics at the time that would make you feel like you were in a warzone against the forces of Skynet.

Those of us who were lucky enough to get the home console ports of this movie were driven nuts by the SNES or Genesis version, which had one of the most annoying driving sequences since Battletoads on the NES. Genesis owners also got a port of the Arcade version, but it wasn’t as good as being in the actual arcade at the time.

Terminator 2D: No Fate attempts to replicate the style of both the arcade and home console versions of the older games while maintaining a visually appealing appearance. Many of the screenshots used in this review feature the game’s default look, a retro-16-bit style that captures the home console ports’ aesthetic really well. The arcade side comes in with the digitised versions of moments between the levels, showing things like the T-1000 standing in the flames, John and Sarah in action, and all the boring talking bits that come between explosions.

You can also add a CRT filter over the game to make it look even more like it was something that was created during the 1990s, completely capturing the look and feel of playing a 1990s-style arcade game or PC port from that era.

Contra, Terminator 2D: No Fate Style (Gameplay)

Terminator 2D: No Fate could have gone for any style that it wanted when it came to gameplay, but the developers picked the one style that would fit this movie the best: The Contra run-and-gun style. You get to control your character, who can run, slide/roll, shoot via straight from the hip or aimed styles, leading to fast and furious gameplay that makes you want to keep going, leading to my only gripe with Terminator 2D: No Fate, that the levels are too short.

Not many levels in Terminator 2D: No Fate give you enough freedom to explore, nor do they give you a reason to. The only reason to go off the beaten path is to find little Terminator head tokens for extra points. This is a shame because I would have liked to have seen more levels or even challenge modes inside the game itself.

While I would recommend you play Terminator 2D: No Fate via the story mode first, as I’ll describe below as to why, you do have the option to play without all the story beats included, going for things like highest score or fastest time via the arcade mode. This would be enticing if the levels were longer and more involved, but ultimately, Terminator 2D: No Fate suffers too much from needing to stick to the source material when it comes to how the levels are designed in order to make the story flow as intended.

More Than One Fate (Replayability)

Since Terminator 2D: No Fate is based on the Terminator 2: Judgement Day movie, you would think that once you are done with the story mode, then there is nothing left to do with the game… But it’s not.

The good thing about Terminator 2D: No Fate is that you get a few moments in the game where you can change the fate of characters and moments to play out differently than they did in the movie, altering things like levels and other moments.

Not long after the T-800 rescues Sarah from the mental facility, you are given your first choice in the game: You can either reset the T-800’s chip, like in the movie, allowing him to learn the value of preserving human life, or you can not reset the chip, leading events to play out differently.

The second choice comes in the moment that is seen in the screenshot above, where Sarah can either kill Miles Dyson as she intended, leading to a different outcome from the film, or you can spare him, which is how the movie played out. There are more choices available, and the game encourages you to try them all out yourself, which is what I will do too.

These might not look like dramatic decisions in the eyes of gamers who will go for the quickest route or anything, but it’s good to see a company that is not afraid to play around with a game that comes from a very well-known source and see what new things they can add to the game. Terminator 2D: No Fate might not give you a million choices, but it makes those choices matter.

Terminator 2D: No Fate: Fun Cannot Be Terminated (Closing)

Terminator 2D: No Fate might be a short game, with the average playthrough being around 45 minutes, but it’s fun enough that you’ll want to give the game a shot more than once. The idea of alternate paths, thanks to the few choices you are given in the game sound like they are worth exploring, especially if you have seen the movie a million times, as I have.

The only downside to Terminator 2D: No Fate is that the levels could be longer or have more added. The biggest omission from the game is the moment where the T-800 mows down all the Police cars outside Cyberdyne, which is shown only in a cutscene instead of giving us a chance at doing it ourselves. But if that’s what I’m complaining about, then I’m just nitpicking.

Terminator 2D: No Fate is a great retro game that is worth picking up, probably during a sale, but it’s worth picking up nonetheless.

Review Disclosure Statement: Terminator 2D: No Fate was provided to us by Reef Entertainment for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more details.