Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 arcade pinball game designed by Steve Ritchie and released by Williams Electronics. It is based on the movie of the same name, and Arnold Schwarzenegger reprised his role as The Terminator. Unsurprisingly, the game rode the movie’s popularity to become the best-selling pinball machine of 1991 by a landslide.

Instead of trying to replicate the plot of the film, the pinball instead opts to recreate the emotional highlights with a whirlwind of nonstop action. Shoot the two Cyberdyne ramps to raise the Security Levels, repeatedly hit the Chase Loop for progressive bonuses, then fire the ball over the left loop and Escape into the saucer to collect more rewards. Hit the dropdown target below the T-800’s skull, then load the swinging cannon and shoot the HK-Aerial across the playfield to start multiball. But to score the Super Jackpot among all the chaos will require the cool demeanor of a robot…

Terminator 2 was one of the first pinball games to use a dot-matrix display, and the first pinball game to feature a Video Mode. It also eschews the traditional plunger for an automatic plunger (in the form of a gun), and features a ball-firing cannon on the right side of the playfield.