|Terminator 2|
|Manufacturer||?|
|Release date||1992 (EU)|
|Media type||ROM cartridge|
|Compatibility||Famicom cartridges and NES (with adapter)|
|Input||2 controller ports|
Super Design Ending-Man BS-500 AS
Terminator 2 (Chinese: 终结者二; real console name Super Design Ending-Man BS-500 AS) was a video game console sold in Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Iraq,India and Hungary (where it was known as "sárgakazettás nintendó" - Nintendo with yellow cartridges). It was also sold in Spain, and in Italy, with the name "top consolle". It was a hardware clone of the Nintendo Famicom.
In the early 1990s, the Terminator 2 system gained massive popularity in Eastern Europe, probably due to the fact that until late 1990s there was no official distributor of Nintendo products in that area. The Terminator 2 consoles were mass-marketed by most of the major and smaller electronic stores.
This particular Nintendo-clone was hugely popular in Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, Pakistan, India, Iran and Bosnia, where it has gained cult status, and is still widely available on auction websites and flea markets. Due to economical restraints, the fourth generation consoles such as the Mega Drive or SNES were not popular in these countries. The previous generation remained highly popular, particularly Terminator 2 which was the most successful NES clone. It left a mark in pop culture and 1990s youth, establishing itself as antonomasia for 8-bit video gaming, to the point of being more popular than the original.
Terminator 2, like most known Famicom clones, was compatible with 60-pin Famicom cartridges, and partially compatible with some NES games, which could be played using a special converter. Original Nintendo games weren't popular however, due to raging piracy and lack of officially licensed products on the market. Majority of the games sold with and for the system were cheap pirated copies, manufactured mostly in Russia and China. Games for the Terminator 2 are widely available in Eastern Europe to this day, mostly on street markets and in small toy stores.
The typical retail set included the system, two detachable controllers (both with "turbo" buttons, which meant 4 buttons in total), a light gun, which also resembled the original Nintendo gun accessory except for a sleeker and more futuristic design (circa 3010, cribbed from Worlds of Wonder's Lazer Tag light gun), power supply and RF cable. The console had a built-in RF modulator, as well as audio-video RCA connectors. The system itself didn't include any built-in games, but most versions were bundled with cartridges such as "1,000,000 in 1" or "9,999,999 in 1", supposedly featuring a million games, only a small number of which actually being separate games and the rest just renamed versions of the latter. Usually these were popular games such as: "Super Mario Bros." or "Duck Hunt". They were renamed though, possibly in an attempt to avoid lawsuits.
Hardware specifications[edit | edit source]
|Processor||8-bit MOS 6502 1.79 MHz|
|Video||Clock||5.37 MHz|
|Resolution||256 x 240|
|Color Palette||25 on screen|
|Standard||NTSC ("forced" to PAL standard, 50 Hz refresh rate)|
|Sound||5-channel mono||1 channel noise|
(out of 64 possible)
1 PCM
3 channels for sounds