This game, from what I have heard was originally going to be The Terminator for the NES. Instead, they went with a horrible game that has glitches that kill and is plagued by putrid music and a couple of extremely cruel driving stages. When playing this one, it is all right, but it is plagued by incredible difficulty too and it is on the short side. However, it is a much better game than the game that won the which game will become Terminator video game on the NES. Why that one won, I cannot say. Maybe the music in this one was way to upbeat and good and the people in charge of games said, "Terminator should have a bleak, minimalist soundtrack."
The story shows a couple of random pictures which seem to depict a nuclear war, which would fit in with this game being The Terminator. However, the story that goes along with it has something about intergalactic space travel and the main character's dad being killed. You are out for revenge! I guess anyway, there are no more story boards beyond those found prior to the final level. So really, you have no clue as to what is going on or what the motives of the bad guys are. You just progress through each level shooting away with your assortment of weapons.
The game play is pretty good. It has a Megaman flare, in that you have some weapons that are better suited for some enemies. Unfortunately, you usually need to exhaust your special weapons to defeat a mini boss that always appears prior to the stage boss. The mini boss leaves behind a new weapon, you pick it up and then proceed to fight a stage boss, usually with very little special power left so you are stuck trying to defeat it with your normal weapon. Thankfully though the stage boss is easier than the mini boss, because a definable pattern is easy to see and you can often take out the boss with no damage. The hardest boss was actually the first one involving a ship that looked suspiciously like one of those things in Terminator that fly around. They just added some blades to it. It was not too hard either after you kill the three things that are hard as heck to hit jump out and attack.
So this game is okay, I sort of liked it, but it also was incredibly annoying too. Then you win and the ending is not all that special so you feel kind of let down. A bad ending is one thing it shares in common with the NES version of Terminator. You can also tell the last stage was supposed to be a factory stage like in the movie and the last boss looks like the Terminator without flesh. So while this game is not great, it is a better game than the game that got titled Terminator.