In 1997, 3 billion lives were lost to the war the machines began. The survivors called the nuclear holocaust Judgment Day. Those who remained faced disease, famine, and constant battles against the machines. After three decades of war, the Human Resistance's repeated attacks are finally weakening SKYNET, the supercomputer controlling the machines. In a last ditch effort to destroy humankind, SKYNET has sent two terminators back through time to eradicate the future leader of the Resistance, John Connor. The first terminator, a T-800, was dispatched to 1984 to prevent John's birth by killing his mother. It failed. The second, a T-1000 prototype, was programmed to kill John himself when he was 10 years old. To prevent John's death, the Human Resistance has captured and reprogrammed the T-800 to do their bidding. As the T-800, better known as The Terminator, it is your job to save mankind by stopping the T-1000 from killing John.
Designed for use with (although not limited to) the Super NES Super Scope, T2: The Arcade Game consists of maneuvering the sights of a gun around a scrolling wasteland of robots, tanker-trucks, cyborgs, war vehicles, endoskeletons, terminators, and other machines, shooting everything in sight. Your primary weapon through the seven levels of play (broken up into two missions) is a machine gun. Its ammunition supply is endless, but it does have a tendency to overheat. Additional weapons you can pick up include a rocket launcher, a 10-gauge shotgun, smart bombs, an M-79 grenade launcher, and a rotating-action six-barrel mini-gun.