It's tricky nowadays what you call Modern and what you call Vintage Collectibles. I mean, form my point of view, what came out in 2000 is Modern, but I realized there are readers of Terminator Trilogy that weren't even born then yet! But I always thought of using the term "Modern" to describe collectibles that weren't released in the initial release period, so they were released after the initial wave of merch had passed and a decade, or close to it, passed since the release of the last Jim Cameron's full length Terminator film. Kind of like an afterthought or legacy merchandise. So then, collectibles from the year 2000 fall under "Modern" category
I did a post on The Terminator CCG in the early days of Terminator Trilogy, with little description, and since I kind of got into it more again I thought I may "remaster" that post and go a tad deeper on the subject. Especially since now I realize my readers aren't only 40+ superfans who know and understand everything I'm writing about. There are 20+ year old people who weren't born before the CCG craze already ended, and some may think "What's a CCG?"
I mid to late 1990's, CCGs, Customizable Card Games, became extremely popular worldwide among scifi culture. Those were very elaborate card games, with a starter deck available for purchase and then so called booster packs would eat up your allowance. See, you could always change cards in your deck if you find ones that are better, stronger or fit more, and the new cards you could get in a booster pack - a package of few cards. The trick was, you never knew what you're gonna get, and you could also get a rare card inside that's worth some good dough and/or could be hellova addition to your deck. Magic The Gathering was one of the earliest most successful card games, and then a company called Decipher came out with a licensed Star Wars game based on the original trilogy and that just blew everything away. Since then, companies were releasing one licensed CCG after another. You had Star Trek, The X-Files, Babylon 5, Buffy and more. And most importantly for me in the beginning, Aliens Vs Predator.
One time in 1998, when I was a young teenager, I noticed Aliens vs Predator logo in a window of a place I didn't know was there. Whatever it was, and it looked like cards, I had to have it and came back there the next day when it was opened. See, where I grew up until the age of 17, in Poland, we didn't get any merch in the 90's. Yes we had video games and comics, but never merch. And Aliens vs Predator was for me a very known commodity, because not only was I a huge fan of the Alien Trilogy, but the 1990 Aliens vs Predator comic for me was one of the coolest things ever. So what I saw were cards displayed from Aliens vs predator deck. Mind you, that was year and years before the movie came out, but the crossover was highly successful in the comics, video games and teased in Predator 2 (Alien Warrior's skull makes an appearance). The problem was, back then and translating to Polish currency, boosters alone were insanely expensive, I could only buy one booster. Soon I've met many scifi nerds and eventually started playing the Star Wars CCG. Keeping contact with that crowd and going to the CCG places, which were a combination of stores and places with tables to play, eventually led me in 2000 to finding a new CCG game - The Terminator. Of course, my heart nearly dropped and I remember I bought every booster (decks weren't available there) they had with everything I had. Since no one else played it and decks weren't available, I just bought these cards to collect them, and for screencaps - see, back in those days there was no way you could just have screenshots from the movie printed around. So opening a booster pack wasn't just a treat to see what cards did I get, but more importantly what screenshots did I get. I thought I knew the movie frame by frame back then, but I was surprised how many characters and things I haven't noticed in the film until I saw the cards
The Terminator CCG was released on October 1, 2000, at the tail end of the CCG (Collectible Card Game) craze, by a company called Precedence. Unfortunately at the time the game wasn't a success and reasons listed are bad timing, weak advertising, extremely complicated gameplay and Skynet side feeling much stronger than the Resistance deck. The players can choose to be either Skynet or Resistance and the scenarios play out in both 2029 and 80s LA. 350 cards were released altogether.
The neat thing about the card set (There was total of 348 cards) is that it has vintage feel for few reasons. For starters, it was produced when only The Terminator and T2 were around and the mythology was generally accepted as being over and wrapped. Secondly, when it came out, The Terminator had only been released on DVD once, and it was through Hemdale, using Laserdisc transfer. So the screengrabs are from either laserdisc or the first DVD from 1997 ( I would lean towards Laserdisc as there's plenty of noticeable dirt and scratches in the screencaps) which gives it this vintage, eerie videotape feel.
Third, the packaging, and some cards, had this very crude, 2000 CGI images.
Since the card game is based on the first movie only, and there were only two Terminators shown in it, the game gets creative and uses both Arnold Schwarzenegger's and Franco Columbu's shots for different Terminator models, using shots where they may look a bit different or they're turning around and such.
Similar tactic is used for Resistance Soldiers - while there's much more soldiers than Terminators in the film, the number still falls short and some shots of Reese looking a bit different are used for other soldiers. That still wasn't enough to fill in the required number of Terminators so some CG rendered Terminators are used, and in one questionable move, they even use the boy from the end of the film to portray a special infiltrator Terminator, I kid you not. Well, the idea is some Infiltrators look like kids.
Another interesting thing about this CG is that they didn't have the rights to use Arnold Schwarzenegger's likeness. At the time, Arnold was still a major superstar and he was very picky about licensing his images. The game went around it a bit, and included shots of the Terminator only when he's a Stan Winston puppet - that way, they're showing Winston Studios puppets rather than the actor. The T-800 CSM 101 card features the image of Arnold from the theatrical poster, but the poster is an image that's licensed with the property - they can use the theatrical poster as it is a copyright image. So they went around the rule a bit, and all the other screenshots with the Terminator, Arnold's head is always cropped out, so we only see his hand, backs, torso or legs. Examples:
Today I'm getting closer to finally having a full set with over 300 cards, but I'm still on the way there, slowly and patiently filling up my collection. I like this set, I like the laserdisc screenshots, the 2000 look to them and perhaps I'll try to finally play the game someday.
Below, promo poster for the game
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