No fate, just pixels: Terminator 2D revives Judgment Day, pixel by pretty pixel
5.5.2025
By Dave Tach, Contributor
James Cameron’s action film exists in the upper echelons of the summer blockbuster pantheon. It was the most expensive film ever made at its time, the highest-grossing film of its year, as critically successful as it was commercially.
It’s also the kind of film that doesn’t really exist anymore. Today, we bathe in blockbusters that aren’t exclusively relegated to the summer. Each year, there’s an embarrassment of movies with budgets in the hundreds of millions and effects shots so ubiquitous as to be often undetectable.
In those days, you got no more than a few big and bombastic blockbusters a year. You also got video game adaptations of those movies. The thing is, tie-in games were often small and forgettable ancillaries of their inspirations. Terminator 2-inspired video games didn’t do much to break that stereotype.
Until, perhaps, this year.
Bitmap Bureau, a developer that specializes in creating modern 16-bit games, is deep in development creating Terminator 2D: NO FATE—a game that looks for all the world like the one that should have been made in 1991.
“During those times, the movies were very creative, with great storytelling and innovative, ground-breaking special effects,” Pixel Artist Henk Nieborg told Epic Games Store. “You were experiencing something you haven't seen before. I had my mind blown a few times during that era, but with Terminator 2, it was off the charts. T2 left a big impression, you can say. I would never have dreamt that 34 years later I would be the art director and artist on a Terminator 2 pixel-art modern-retro video game.”
Ahead of the game’s Sept. 5, 2025 release, we interviewed Nieborg, Design Director Mike Tucker, and Programmer and Designer Quang “Quang DX” Nguyen about their love of 16-bit games, Terminator 2, and their self-proclaimed mission dedicated to the fine art of, as they declare on their official site, “continuing and preserving the fine art of 2D game development." It's an ethos which Nieborg summarizes well.
“Most of us on the team are kids from the ‘80s and ‘90s and experienced the golden era of video games in person,” Pixel Artist Henk Nieborg told Epic Games Store. “We try to bring back the feel, fun, and challenge you will find in ‘90s arcade and console games.”
Design Director Mike Tucker’s 16-bit machine was a Sega Mega Drive (Genesis in North America), which arrived at his house thanks in part to paper-route savings. That, along with the Nintendo Super Famicom (Super NES in North America) inculcated a lifelong love affair with the era and its games that would eventually come to define his game development career.
“As for breaking into 16-bit game development, that all came about because of the Global Game Jam, where we tasked ourselves with developing a simple horizontal shoot ‘em-up for the Mega Drive in 48 hours,” he said. “That was probably a touch ambitious, but we did end up with something playable, and that was enough to convince us that we should attempt to create a fully fledged Mega Drive game, which we would manufacture and sell ourselves.
"That game was Xeno Crisis, a top-down arena shooter which could be described as ‘Smash TV meets Aliens,’ and following a successful Kickstarter campaign, we developed the game and have since brought it to many other platforms, including the Dreamcast, Neo Geo, PS Vita, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and Super Nintendo, with several others still to come.”
To kids of a certain age, the power contained in those 16 bits was revolutionary. They took the blocky sprites of the former 8-bit era and added significant depth and complexity. At Bitmap Bureau, Pixel Artist Henk Nieborg’s job is to preserve that aesthetic and bring it into the present.
“From an artist point of view, pixel art is an essential part of making a 16-bit game feel genuine and appealing," he said. "I'm creating my artwork with the ’90s consoles and color palette restrictions in mind. It's just in my system after so many years, I guess. It also makes life easier, converting the art to actual real ’90s arcade and console hardware.”
The “know it when you see it” 16-bit look is a huge part of the package’s appeal, but it’s more than a limited graphical color palette that defines a 16-bit game. It’s also the way that it plays and sounds, which is a big hook for players and developers alike. Bitmap Bureau is in some ways beholden to the cutting-edge technology of that time—think of the 8-way D-pad, not the ascendant analog stick of the modern 3D era—and those limitations both contribute to the feel and offer a playground for creativity.
“There is a purity in the 16-bit and earlier video games, where due to the processing, graphical, and audio limitations, your gameplay really had to shine through to make your game good,” Nguyen said. “Limitations breed creativity, with the 16-bit era of technology giving just enough flexibility to make some amazing things if you were clever about it.”
When he thinks back to his favorite era of gaming, Tucker echoes Nguyen’s sentiments and ties it to his day-to-day work.
“The games of Capcom, Konami, Namco, Sega, Nintendo, Taito, etc., had a huge impact on me in my childhood and youth, and I think there’s a lot to be said for the simplicity and elegance of those titles, which don’t overwhelm players with exposition and patronize them with hand-holding,” Tucker said. “To me, they were the perfect combination of astounding pixel art, excellent music, and both original and fun game design, and I love being able to insert a cartridge or disc into a retro system and know that I can start playing the game immediately. We aspire to reach those same standards with all of our titles, and try to give players a true retro experience whether they’re playing on a retro or modern system.”
The announcement for Terminator 2D: NO FATE touted “a classic arcade experience,” which evolves the discussion, moving it out of home consoles and into the once-ubiquitous arcade cabinets of the 16-bit era. Bitmap Bureau's games call back to a time when things could look good at home, but the arcade is where you went to see the best graphics.
At the risk of slightly oversimplifying matters, console games were generally designed for long experiences, while arcade games were typically more difficult quarter-munching endeavors. Bitmap Bureau’s goal with Terminator 2D: NO FATE is to meld the two experiences.
“A ‘classic arcade experience’ is what you would have gotten when you stepped up to an arcade cabinet to play a game in the ‘90s,” Nguyen said. “[There's] an immediacy to the gameplay as you press the Start button and are thrown into the game. You are generally told very little before starting, but as you play, you are shown what is needed, with more things being revealed to you as you progress.
"The hidden depth of an arcade game is found through repeated play, each time you return. Arcades have an instant bombastic level of presentation, through graphics, sound, and effects, which grab you and give you an exciting experience throughout your play. I think console games get to be more of a drawn-out sort of play versus the instantaneousness of arcades.”
So, how does Bitmap Bureau ensure a credible 16-bit experience without becoming too modern?
“These days, no one needs to create a 16-bit game, of course, as modern systems have so much more power,” Tucker said. “But if that’s what you’re aiming for, then you need to carefully consider the game’s resolution, color palette, and probably the input method too. As our focus is primarily on retro platforms, it means that we simply have to adhere to these limitations.”
It’s not about being stuck in the past, though. As Quang “Quang DX” Nguyen put it, Bitmap Bureau also embraces knowledge gained in the years since to correct some of the mistakes of the 16-bit era.
“Taking the years of learned gaming sensibilities and applying them to retro-styled games can give us better playing experiences," Nguyen said. "Many of the earlier games could be obtuse to play, with spikes in difficulty, leaving the player without a clue of how to proceed.”
Think of an arcade game that didn’t want to eat your quarters.
“Although Terminator 2D: NO FATE is very much an arcade experience, it’s by no means a quarter-muncher,” Mike Tucker said.
As you’d expect, Terminator 2D: NO FATE follows the story of the movie, with sequences starring Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic T-800 killing machine, and its gameplay isn’t pigeonholed into a single type. Practically speaking, that means that Bitmap Bureau is creating a game that blends the best of console and arcade experiences.
“The game spans multiple genres, comprising driving sequences, a beat ‘em-up section, multiple run ‘n’ gun missions, and there’s also a stealth element to the hospital level," Tucker said. "The core gameplay is built around running and gunning, though, and anyone familiar with the likes of Contra, Metal Slug, Rolling Thunder, Shinobi, and particularly Elevator Action Returns should feel right at home.”
Terminator 2D: NO FATE will also include some scenarios designed specifically for the game.
“We have introduced a couple of ‘what if?’ moments in the game that take the game down different paths and alter the story of T2. Everything had to be OK’d by the license holder, so they kept us wrangled within the Terminator 2 universe.”
Perhaps the worst case one can make against nostalgia is that it’s often a hollow return to a sappy past that we’ve moved beyond. But Bitmap Bureau isn’t here for that. Ultimately, they see their job as both reverence for and preservation of a laudable past that hasn’t outlived its fun or usefulness. Theirs is an ethos that welcomes massive technological change without tossing aside what was great in a time before we lived in the future, as Nguyen told us.
“It makes perfect sense for a Terminator 2 game to be made in the style of what the hardware was capable of at the time, staying true to the look and feel of the era that the movie was released [in].”
You can add Terminator 2D: NO FATE to your Epic Games Store wishlist now, and explore the past and the future on its Sept. 5, 2025, release date.