Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines T-900 Explained

Despite Terminator 2: Judgment Day being a huge financial and critical success, it took another twelve years before fans of the science fiction franchise would get to experience a third Terminator movie, in the form of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Whether you love or hate Terminator 3, you have to appreciate the fact that the movie studios provided Terminator Fans with multiple video games. The one thing all these games had in common was a new Terminator unit, – the T-900.
The T-900 Terminator unit appeared in four new games on PC, Xbox, Playstation 2, GameCube and Game Boy Advance.

T-900’s would attempt to terminate players in the first person shooter ‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines the Video Game’, the awesome third person shooter ‘Terminator 3: The Redemption’, the multiplayer online FPS ‘Terminator 3: War of the Machines’ and even a ‘Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines’ handheld outing for Game Boy Advance.
The superior game (for the wider audience) was indeed Terminator 3: The Redemption, which still holds up today; with the other games receiving mixed opinions from fans and gamers. Terminator 3: War of the Machines, although not perfect, was a pretty good online SkyNet Vs Resistance experience for fans that had access to online pc gaming back in 2003.

The T-900 Terminator Unit Was Created By Cyber Research Systems (CRS)

In these games players could experience the future war of 2032 in scenarios where Cyber Research Systems took over the work of the defunct, and bankrupt, Cyberdyne Systems.
Cyber Research Systems continued on with project SkyNet after acquiring patents from Cyberdyne through bankruptcy, and in this new future CRS went on to create familiar Terminator units like the T-800 and T-1000, but also new units like the T-X (Kristanna Loken) and T-900.

T-900 Terminator Unit Design

The T-900 definitely looks to be a concept that simplifies the original T-800 design; covering the Endoskeleton in armor-plating (most likely in favour of reducing polygon size for developers to make simpler character models whilst still keeping the core essence of the Terminator Endoskeleton design).

T-900 Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Movie Appearence

A lot of fans will be familiar with the T-900’s appearance in the movie. You can see Cyber Research Systems workers analysing a unit in a scene with an aerial hunter killer. This easter egg is a nod to T3’s videogame tie-ins where the T-900 is a more common enemy in the future war levels – you could even play as the T-900 in Terminator 3: War of the Machines, as you took on other players in battle in the future war between man and machine.

T-950 Terminator Unit

T-950’s also make an appearance in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines the Video Game, although they simply look like T-900’s in much the same way a T-850 Endoskeleton is aesthetically the same as a T-800 Endoskeleton.

T-900’s also come in various colors and they can be seen in, green, yellow, red and blue light variants. In Terminator 3: War of the Machines the red lights denote a supply T-900 unit and blue lights are labelled as being a ‘Heavy’ variant.
In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines the Video Game, the colors depict the difficulty and phased plasma weaponry that the T-900’s carry; green lit T-900’s carry one SkyNet SMG, yellow lit being a medium difficulty – carrying two Skynet SMG’s and red lit being the most difficult – carrying SkyNet assault canons.

Reprogrammed T-850

In the story for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines the Game a T-900 is also utilized in the reprogramming of the T-850 after its capture by General Katherine Brewster (Claire Danes) and Tech-Com soldiers.

Terminator 3 T-900 Collectibles

The T-900 even made it to collectible form with figures, a trading card and also appeared on comic book covers.

Did you play any of the Terminator 3 video games? Would you like to see this Terminator unit again in the franchise? Or would you prefer the T-900 to be left as a relic of Terminator 3’s past?