The Terminator - Ultimate Sega Mega CD Edition
Welcome back everyone!
I recently went back to England after spending nearly 4 years away from my family thanks to COVID. Not only was it an opportunity to catch up with friends and family, some I had not seen in more than the 4 years and my niece who I'd met for the first time, it was also a chance to get up into my Mum & Dad's attic and rummage around for childhood memories.
My main target was my Sega Mega Drive model 1 and Sega Mega CD 2, which I managed to find. Sadly, I only found about a dozen games for my Mega CD. I think I had about 30, so I'm sure there must be more up there in the attic somewhere, but after nearly 20 years of not living with my parents full time, a lot of stuff has been put up there. I'm sure I can find some more on my next trip.
I brought them back with me to Australia, and I'll do another blog about my experiences with the Mega CD growing up.
My focus in this blog is the fact that the Sega Mega CD doesn't have copy protection, therefore it's a great console for downloading and burning games on to CD-R's, which then run mostly with no issues on the Mega CD.
Unless the game is a purely a Full Motion Video (FMV) game, the Mega CD game is broken down into 2 main parts.
Part 1 is track 1 on the CD. This is the game data. When you download the game from the internet, this is the ISO file.
Part 2 are the remaining tracks on the CD. Most Mega CD games used CD audio tracks for intros with speech as well as more dynamic in game music than the Mega Drive.
All Mega CD games in this format can literally be placed into any regular CD player and play audio, something I often used to do.
I never had The Terminator game on the Mega CD, although I do remember seeing it on the shelves at video game stores. I probably ended up dismissing it as I already had the Mega Drive version. This is something I greatly regret now. The Mega CD version often goes for $200 or more and as an avid collector of all things Terminator, this would have been one of my crown jewels in the collection.
I'm not prepared to drop that much cash, so I obviously went and downloaded the game from the internet.
So, what is the game like?
It's an awesome run and gun platformer. It's vastly superior to the Mega Drive version. A lot of Mega CD games are just Mega Drive games with a few FMV intros or cut scenes and a re-recorded audio soundtrack, but this is not the case in The Terminator.
It's a lot larger at 10 levels compared to the Mega Drive's 4. The controls are responsive. The graphics and the character animation are detailed and highly impressive for 1993. It's a real showcase for what the Mega CD could be used for with the additional RAM it provided.
It's a relatively tough but fair game. As a result, it keeps you immersed. You won't put it down after 5 minutes because you can't get past the first level.
There's also FMV cut scenes with footage from the actual movie, but the quality is awful.
As impressive as most of the above is, the best feature is...
The music.
Tommy Tallerico composed the soundtrack to this game and it's an absolute gaming masterpiece. The first level plays a track called Taking to the Air. The music gets you so pumped on the first level, it's addictive.
https://open.spotify.com/track/2t39nLFvzlxg7p544iBxHu?si=2f19a19513b942f9
The second level has a track titled Future Shock, which is an apt name seeing Bethesda released a Terminator game called Future Shock for the PC in 1995, something I've previously blogged about. This is a heavier rock track and by the time you've completed the first 2 levels, you're excited about the prospect of what is to come.
https://open.spotify.com/track/1XJ2eYurrXStRyAnXvvhK1?si=e43fdac2d54b44c5
The remaining tracks are all decent in their own way, but don't quite hit the same spot as the first 2 tracks. They are quite atmospheric though and do seem to fit the game well.
The intro before the start menu even has Tommy's own rendition of Brad Fiedel's Terminator theme, which is a good version, but obviously not as epic as Brad's version.
This got me thinking, what would the game be like if it had the original soundtrack?
I have the original soundtrack on CD which I bought from Japan. If the audio tracks on the Mega CD game are just CD Audio, why can't I just replace the tracks when I burn another version of the game?
I started looking into how I could do this. You have to produce a hybrid CD, which has both the game data and the audio tracks. A program call ImgBurn allows you to do this.
I first had to rip the audio tracks from the original soundtrack CD. It's important they are ripped into a WAV file (lossless audio).
Then I had to set up a CUE file. A CUE file is the data file that any CD player reads when you load a CD. This shows the number of tracks on the CD and the total duration.
I'd place the ISO file from the game as track 1 on the CUE file, then place the audio tracks as the other tracks. I'd have to go through the soundtrack and the game and work out what track from the soundtrack I wanted to replace the music from the game.
The soundtrack CD has 11 tracks, comprised of Brad Fiedel's score for the first 6 tracks and 5 80's pop songs for the remaining 5 tracks.
The game has 9 audio tracks, so 2 tracks from the soundtrack didn't make the cut.
They were Brad Fiedel's Love Scene and Tahnee Cain and Tryanglz's You Can't Do That.
So how did I decide what level got what track?
Track 2 on the game was the Terminator theme, so that was a straight swap for the original theme.
Level 1 is based in the ruins of Los Angeles in 2029. I felt it best to use track 5 from the soundtrack, which is Future Remembered. This is from the scene in the movie where an exhausted Kyle Reese comes back from battle to the underground bunker. This is the only piece of music on the soundtrack which is based in the future.
Level 2 is the outside of the Skynet base, so I went with track 2 on the soundtrack, Terminator Arrival. Except this time, Reese is making the arrival.
Levels 3 and 4 are based inside of the Skynet base, so I kept it going with Fiedel's score with track 6 - Factory Chase and track 3 - Tunnel Chase respectively. I felt it better in that order as Tunnel Chase is more up-tempo and matches the harder difficulty of the level before you reach the time displacement machine and head back to 1984.
Levels 5 and 6 are based in 1984 Los Angeles, so time to use the time appropriate pop tracks.
Level 5 I went with Tahnee Cain and Tryanglz's Photoplay. Tahnee Cain and Tryanglz have 3 tracks on the soundtrack, so seeing I'd dropped one of their tracks already, I thought I'd start off with them. The other track they have I was saving for later, for good reason.
Level 6 is my personal favourite, Pictures of You by Jay Ferguson and 16mm. Thought I'd use it earlier rather than later for no other reason than it is my favourite track.
Level 7 is based in the Technoir discotheque. This was a no brainer. Burnin' in the Third Degree by Tahnee Cain and Tryanglz. This was the song playing at Technoir before the shootout.
Level 8 is based in the police station. As I only had 1 option left for 80's pop, I went with Intimacy by Linn Van Hek. This song was actually released in Australia in 1982, 2 years before the movie was released. I actually have it as a vinyl single and found it locally at a record store.
Levels 9 & 10 are based in a robotics factory and re-use the music from Levels 4 and 2 respectively.
Once the game is completed, level 4's music is used again.
I've actually done a playthrough of the hybrid game and uploaded it to YouTube.
I ended up using an invincibility cheat as I wanted people to watch it as an experience of the game with the alternative soundtrack, rather than be a judge of my video gaming skills. You'll see a couple of levels where I get to the end of the level before the track has finished, so I'll just hang around until the track plays out.
There's actually a bit in Technoir where my controller gets stuck and I continually run into the Terminator and die a couple of times, which is a bit funny. Consider it a blooper I suppose!
I still end up losing a couple of lives on the last level as I fell into molten steel and there's also one bit where I really struggled to get past, but eventually do. That bit can at least be skipped forward.
Have a watch and see what you think. Would you have put the tracks in that order? If you could replace the music to the game, which tracks would you use?
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