Although I am the cousin of my cousins, today it shall not be about me, but the cousin of my cousins. Now, before I record my family tree, I’ll just mention that the gentleman I’m talking about was a gigantic show-off. And a few years older than me. Our meetings can be counted on two hands. Still, they were crucial to my relationship with Terminator 2: Judgement Day on the Gameboy.
In elementary school, I met the blockhead during a birthday party. He owned a Gameboy just like me, but considerably more games, which he had to constantly hold against me. At least he still let me play with his games, although in his opinion they were much too difficult for me. I didn’t let his talk bother me, picked up Terminator 2: Judgement Day and failed the first level, at the end of which there was an energy barrier that killed me as soon as I touched it. The show-off laughed at me because he had told me so, and left me alone with the game.
It was obvious that I had to turn off the barrier somehow. But how? The problem: I didn’t know English. At one point in the level, a short dialogue with Sarah Connor popped up, surely not without reason. But I didn’t understand it. And my cousins’ cousin didn’t feel like helping me because he was too busy laughing at a little kid. Eventually, I gave up.
In my hometown at that time, there were many stores selling used Gameboy games. One day, I went from store to store looking for Terminator 2. Sure enough, I saw it in a shop window. I went into the store and grabbed it.
At home, it turned out that there were several Terminator games for the Gameboy and I had bought the wrong one. My game was not called Terminator 2: Judgement Day, but T2: The Arcade Game. In retrospect, the cover had looked quite different too, but as a little kid you don’t think about such things. Terminator equals Terminator. Unfortunately, the game was not good at all, so a short time later I was standing in front of the store again to return the game. I was lucky: the store even had the game I was originally looking for. I exchanged Terminator for Terminator, went home happy, and unhappily realized that I still didn’t understand English and therefore continued to fail on the first level.
Days later, while strolling around the local public library, I came across the book: Neue Game-Boy-Spiele. A Gameboy game guide that actually had a few pages devoted to my Terminator game. I borrowed it and finally understood what to do in that damn first level.
I’ll withhold the solution from you, because by now you really don’t have to go to the public library for it. The important thing is: I haven’t played through Terminator 2: Judgement Day to this day because it reminds me too much of my cousins’ pretentious cousin. Also, it’s pretty shitty.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day is a Gameboy game where you run from left to right and shoot Terminators while solving tasks that you can only understand if you can read English. According to the walkthrough, at some point you also play the Schwarzenegger Terminator. Before I die, I definitely want to play through the game at least once. But I’m currently doing too well for that.
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