Current: Tie Fighter

The Terminator: Future Shock

In the futuristic year of 2015, Los Angeles is fully under Skynet's control. Extermination camps have been set up to wipe humanity off the face of the earth. You must escape one such camp and get in touch with John Connor, Kyle Rees and the rest of the resistance. This is the premise of Terminator: Future Shock, an ambitious first-person shooter from Bethesda SoftWorks, released in 1995. Where most mid-90s shooters were all about arcade action, Bethesda decided to have more of a narrative focus than was common at the time. Not that there's a lack of action though: not only do you get to kill T-800s on foot, you also can do so while driving vehicles and even flying aircrafts. Does all this result in an exciting game? Let's find out!

Hosts Martijn ("Tijn") and Florian ("rnlf") are joined by two DGC veterans for this episode. First of all we have Bjorn ("TigerQuoll") who has been on many an episode before and who, despite being new to the game, managed to play it all the way to the end. Last but not least we're finally joined by Watchful, who has sent us many voice messages over the years, but never joined the podcast in person until now! Not only does he have many fond memories of Future Shock to share with us, but he's also here to announce the launch of our new "sister podcast": Windows Game Club! That's right, it's no joke, you can check it out at windowsgameclub.com.

[ download mp3 ] (102 mins, 116 MB)

Thanks to our producer Pix for helping to make the podcast happen, and thanks to DGC member Console for editing the audio.

Thanks to all who make this show possible, we couldn't do this without you!

RELEVANT LINKS:

* Windows Game Club, our new "sister podcast", hosted by Watchful.

* The Legacy 5 on archive.org, this is the warez disc Tijn had as a kid that gave him his copy of Future Shock. It never worked.

* 1996 interview with Future Shock producer Todd Howard on Reddit.

* The Terminator: Future Shock review by Mike Finkelstein on AsteroidG.com.

* YouTube video reviewing all the 1990s Terminator PC games by user GmanLives.



22 May 2026

3 Replies to “The Terminator: Future Shock”

Evil Taco says:
May 23, 2026 at 10:55 am

This was a very nice, cozy episode about fighting killer robots post apocalypse! My impression of Future Shock and Skynet – fully from reviews – was that they were a bit underappreciated. They look very cool in videos, but at least Future Shock sounds just a little bit undercooked from the fun perspective. Like the game doesn’t 100% know what it wants to be and how to execute it. But this was pioneering work, so it’s really cool to hear the discussion about it.

I’ve joined the WGC forums and hope to join the fun when there’s a game that catches my interest!

Steapenhyll says:
May 24, 2026 at 1:49 pm

I had this game as a kid. We picked it up at a warehouse bulk store called BJ’s. It was probably around ’97 or ’98 and they had a big table of PC games and software. The games I remember there were 2 different Terminator games and Tomb Raider for PC.

We picked up Future Shock and had a bit of fun with it. It was difficult for my brother and me, but the atmosphere in the game was what I remember the most. We never finished the game, but I recall that we had to play simultaneously during the driving sections because the controls were so awkward. Shooting and turning at the same time were too difficult for either one of us alone.

jan0sch says:
May 29, 2026 at 7:56 pm

Very cool episode. I remember hearing about it but never played it.

Keep up the great work! =)

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