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Every person who was alive during the 1980s probably remembers the two great, not-so-human heroes, RoboCop and the Terminator T-800. The films starring these two characters are some of the most captivating action films I've ever seen and, like any big, commercially-successful movie, they spawned video games, too. Naturally, RoboCop and the Terminator had never crossed paths, even in video games - the first games were made separate from each other, just like the movies - until one day the guys at Dark Horse Comics decided to bring the two big names together to better attract action fans. The result? RoboCop Vs. The Terminator, a four part series that, while not as successful as Dark Horse's earier Alien Vs. Predator series, was a fairly big hit. Of course, a game based on the series was bound to follow, and sure enough, it happened. Virgin Games was given the honors, and together with NMS Software they created the first version of RvT - the Sega Master System version. It was followed by the GameBoy, Game Gear, NES, Genesis and SNES ports. The SMS game is exactly the same as the Game Gear game. Of course, the SMS was being laid to rest at that time in the US, so RoboCop Vs. The Terminator never saw the light of day on these shores.

One bad thing about this game (probably the worst thing about it) is that, although you can see Arnold Schwarzenegger's face on the box, on the instruction manual and in the game introduction, he is nowhere in the game and you can only play as RoboCop. RoboCop is the good guy in this game. The story has him needing to battle through an entire army of Terminators in order to destroy the Skynet CPU, which is trying to destroy mankind.

The game is pretty well thought-out, in my opinion; it's very playable and arcade-like, as are all Master System games I've tried so far. You can pick the difficulty setting ('Easy' - start with 7 lives, 'Normal' - 6, 'Hard' - 5), whether you want to hear music or sound effects, or not, and you can view the credits also. The soundtrack has just 2 tunes, I think, but the main one is very upbeat and entertaining, at least for me. What I like best about the sound, though, are the two lines that RoboCop says, in a clear voice, at key moments: "Thank you for your cooperation!" and "You are terminated.".

RoboCop is very easy to control. Quoting from the manual, "[h]e can walk, crouch, jump, shoot, climb ladders and chains, pull himself along overhead cables and pick up Special Items [...] and new firepower". He can shoot in all 8 directions around him. One might not ned to know the following two things in order to beat the game, but 'up' + 'button 2' makes RoboCop jump higher than just 'button 2', and 'up' + 'button 2' also grabs a cable if RoboCop is directly below it. Don't ignore the 'Pause' button when you play this game because 3 useful cheats can be activated when the game is paused, including restoring RoboCop's lives count up to 9 (press 'up' + 'button 1', 'down' + 'button 1', 'down' + 'button 1', 'up' + 'button 2', 'down' + 'button 2', 'up' + 'button 2', 'up' + 'button 1', 'up' + 'button 1' while the game is paused).

There are 11 stages in the game; not all have bosses, though. In each stage, you have to shoot the Terminators coming at you, destroy weird-looking machines and, later on, avoid traps like loose boulders, toxic waste and pits of fire, while looking for the end of the stage. Missions 2, 5 and 6 require RoboCop to rescue hostages also, while missions 3 and 10 require him to take out Skynet's security cameras and radar dishes, respectively, in addition to killing the fiends. The bosses are not too hard to defeat, but they might take a life away from you before you do so. The plasma rifle (has the thickest barrel) is the best weapon for fighting the bosses. Oh, and don't expect to face Arnold or the T-1000 in the final battle...

The graphics are not extremely colourful, but then again that's not expected from a RoboCop or a Terminator game. The guns look nice, especially when they're on the floor, and the enemies/hostages are well drawn, too. RoboCop doesn't look as nice and big as in RoboCop 2 for the NES, but he easily stands out from the bad guys. Some foes turn from a human-looking guy to a Terminator after you shoot them once, which I thought was a nice touch. The cans that are often seen in the game (I think they are cans ,probably, or jars), restore energy -- there are no bad pick-ups in this game. The only really bad thing about the graphics is that, when the screen gets filled with enemies and bullets, the bullets flying around tend to disappear and RoboCop will get hurt since you can't see the bullets heading towards him, so that may cause some frustration.

RoboCop Vs. The Terminator is a fine action-shooting game but, if you're a Terminator fan, don't be fooled by the title, this is essentially a RoboCop game. Okay, this is it. "Thank you for your cooperation!"

- Swordlord