The Terminator Franchise to Conquer 2025 Video Game Market with Two New Releases

It may have debuted in cinemas in 1984, but The Terminator continues to be tremendously popular across a plethora of media to this day. Owing to the superb characters, story, and world-building of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the setting has long been fertile ground for exploration in the gaming industry.

This year, we’re set to get two brand new entries to the Terminator gaming world, with one being distinctly retro and already receiving heaps of praise, and the other being a very modern open-world survival game. Given the legacy of The Terminator, the hope is that these will be worthy additions to the lore, more so than most official films in the franchise made since the 1990s.

A Relentless Omnipresence in Gaming

Through to the mid-2000s, it was tradition, perhaps even obligatory, for hit new action, sci-fi, or fantasy films to also have a movie tie-in game on the top consoles of the day. This has become untenable over the last couple of decades, but hit franchises like The Terminator have found ways of staying in the interactive entertainment space.

Where official game tie-ins and even game spin-offs faded due to the increasing time and money needed to create a good enough game, a different form of gaming stepped in with much shorter production schedules. Not only this, but its particular preference for licensing IPs has been to tap into classics and proven names.

So, it makes sense that The Terminator not only entered the slot world but has been a mainstay in it for over a decade now. As this list shows, the online casino scene has exploded in recent years, with there now being several highly-rated and very competitive platforms. The best of these invariably carry one of the Terminator games.

On many of the top ten highest rated of these sites, including bet365, Jackpot City, and FanDuel, can be found The Terminator featuring Win & Spin, the latest slot in the series. It’s a new take on the classic slot released in the 2010s. Easily the most beloved of the bunch, though, is the 2014-released Terminator 2 Online Slot. It’s because of this game that the later Terminator Genisys slot and Terminator 2 Roulette were given the green light.

Of course, having been released in the 1980s, there have been many disparate tie-ins and spin-offs in the gaming world outside of casinos. Some of the best, released towards the end of the last millennium, include Bethesda’s Doom-like Skynet and the Terminator 2 arcade shooter.

Still, there’s been a bit of a renaissance in recent years, too. Arguably, the best Terminator release to date was Teyon’s 2019 FPS game Terminator: Resistance (Enhanced). Teyon – the makers of the also strong, retro IP-inspired game RoboCop: Rogue City – puts you right in the middle of the Future War and makes Skynet a truly fearsome adversary.

Carrying Forward The Terminator’s Momentum

There wasn’t originally meant to be two games set in The Terminator universe coming out in 2025. Originally, Nacon Studio Milan was to release Terminator: Survivors in October 2024, but that got pushed back to this year – potentially lining up two hit Terminator games in just one year.

For retro gamers and those who sat amazed in the cinema seats of the 1980s and 1990s, Terminator 2D: No Fate may be the most appealing of the two. A clear love letter to the 2D movie adaptation on the Sega Mega Drive, the trailer showcases its superb pixel artwork, rampant arcade action, and there are even multiple endings to discover!

Terminator: Survivors looks to build on the efforts of Teyon – a regular collaborator with Nacon’s publishing arm – and Terminator: Resistance with a more expansive, HD exploration of the setting. You play as a solo or co-op survivor in an open world, and while you seek to build your base and scavenge resources, you’re being hunted by a T-800.

Both Terminator 2D: No Fate and Terminator: Survivors look to be very promising projects that emphasise the might and drive of Skynet’s relentless machines. Hopefully for fans, both land well and do so in 2025 to offer a grand comeback for the legendary franchise in gaming.