TERMINATOR SALVATION THE ARCADE GAME INTERVIEW:

Obviously when you like something... you want to find out more about it! We wanted to know more and who better to answer our questions than George Petro the founder of Play Mechanix, Inc. George is not new to the franchise and worked on T2 The Arcade Game and now it makes sense why the games, yet so technologically different, have a similarity and that is the same addictive gameplay provided for arcades in the early 90s.

Obviously some gamers can't afford to have one of the fantastic Terminator Salvation cabinets in their homes, does that mean that we can never play it at home? Oh let's find out!

The game was obviously a success to warrant a deluxe version?

It's the best game in the industry currently. Plus we thought it would look super cool on the big screen. Who doesn't want to shoot life-sized T-600s?

What are the chances of this game being released on consoles with a light gun?

Maybe, at some point. It's not something we would consider until after the product has been in the arcades for a couple of years.

Would it be possible to convert the game to the latest consoles (xbox 360/PS3) ?

It's certainly possible. Due to the extreme nature of the graphics in our game, we would probably have to make a few compromises. It's always a challenge to convert to another system and provide the same experience.

Legally Terminator is problematic, are your company's rights associated with current owners of the franchise Pacificor or are your dealings with the former Halcyon Co/its owners?

Our rights are with the Terminator Salvation property itself, so we just tag along with whoever may own it.

We have played the game and found ourselves, and the people we observed playing the machine, to be totally addicted, what are the chances of a sequel to this specific game-world (Terminator Salvation)?

Yeah, how great would that be?!!? The interesting thing about our game is that we only loosely followed the movie storyline. We knew that our job was to provide endless amounts of machines to cut down (isn't that what we all want to see anyhow ;-) ), so we had to formulate our own story that exists during the same timeframe. I personally thought that the visuals created for TS were absolutely awesome. Creating another arcade adventure set in the same context would be desirable.

Also will you be keen to obtain the future rights to a 5th and 6th picture which are being written as we speak?

We absolutely will be part of any further installments.

The T-7's (spider like wall crawlers) are really great and your team created something which was lacking in the movie (the T-7s in spider-like attack and motion... were the T-7's meant to be in the movie, or was it a game only Terminator (T-7 also featured in Grin Studios Terminator Salvation The Game for consoles also) ?

They are game-only Terminators. You are correct that the Grin guys used them also. We however changed their personalities to be a faster moving, hopping and climbing enemy.

We also noticed a fresh Terminator, like a propeller/fan like thing that grips onto its victims. Can you tell us what model of Terminator this is and again was that a game only creation or was it meant to be in the movie? (model = T-____)

This was one of our in-house creations. For gameplay, we needed some kind of mine type enemy that would stick onto something and then explode sometime later. Originally it was a flying/hovering type enemy based on the movie production's Aerostat. However, we eventually changed it to a spider-like creepy crawler as it was much more interesting to track and shoot. We call it a 'Spider Mine.'

Aliens Extermination is also linked the Terminator's director James Cameron, will we ever get more Aliens games from your company in the future also?

Interesting that you figured out that connection. I think that an Aliens game using our current state of the art or better would be killer. We are huge James Cameron fans here at Play Mechanix. On an interesting sidenote, I made the Terminator 2 arcade game back in 1991 when I worked at Midway. So my history turning Cameron titles into arcade games goes way back.

What is next on the cards for Play Mechanix ? (upcoming releases / links can be mentioned here)

Besides Terminator Salvation, we are excited about a few other projects: In May and June we released two ticket redemption games, Tippin' Bloks and Wheel of Fortune. Both games use a unique blend of mechanical and video to create an exciting player experience. Also, in November, we will be releasing Big Buck World which is an update to our premier titles Big Buck Hunter Pro and Big Buck Safari. Please see the following links for info:

www.rawthrills.com
www.icegame.com/p-18097-tippin-bloks.aspx