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Lenny Kaye is one of rock ’n’ roll’s national treasures. He’s the guy who never has to pay for his drinks in bars from Stockholm to Shanghai, thanks to “Nuggets,” his now-essential compilation of what were obscure garage rock classics that became the foundation of punk rock and a lingua franca for the spirit of DIY. He’s the kind of guy who should have been given a Guggenheim Fellowship because of his galactic range of interests, knowledge and influences and for his input and his contributions to rock ‘n’ roll as an art form.
Lenny was at Patti’s side until she bowed out of public life and rejoined her when she returned — but he’s never sat still.
Kaye was writing about music — for publications like Rock Scene, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone — when the discipline was still nascent. If you read his early writing, which is well worth your time to hunt down (like this review of The Rolling Stones’ “Exile On Main Street,” in 1972), he brought knowledge and curiosity and genuine enthusiasm; even if he didn’t like something, he still gave it his serious consideration.
It was that exact spirit of inquiry, within an article about the history of the doo-wop revival, that caught the attention of another doo-wop aficionado from South Jersey. She tracked him down and they became friends, hanging out and listening to music. One night, she asked him if he thought he could make a guitar sound like a car crash for an upcoming poetry reading she was doing, and that’s how Kaye joined forces with Patti Smith.
Lenny was at Patti’s side until she bowed out of public life and rejoined her when she returned — but he’s never sat still. Across the years, he put together a band (The Lenny Kaye Connection), accompanied Jim Carroll as he tried to work out his rock ‘n’ roll form, wrote Waylon Jennings’ biography, produced Suzanne Vega’s first two solo albums (among others), has a country and western alter ego, wrote introductions and liner notes and seemingly offered and participated in hundreds of other contributions across the decades. Lenny Kaye was the kind of cool, level-headed rock ‘n’ roll maven who was both important to and part of our history. His openness and curiosity — still, turning 80 later this year! — makes him the music fan’s music fan.
The only thing Lenny Kaye somehow hadn’t done was release a solo record, which he rectified in July of 2026 with the release of “Goin’ Local,” out on Yep Roc on July 17. “Goin’ Local” is a collection of deliberate compositions across a range of styles, whether straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll (the title track), ballads (“This Love,” “Let’s Make A Memory”), folk rock (“The Things You Leave Behind”) and sweet ditties (“World Book Night,” “Pennsylvania Girls”) that might seem light until you find yourself humming them later after only listening to them once. There are bulletproof pop melodies, gentle riffs, solid construction, and engaging stories. And that’s the result of a formidable quantity of skills acquired over half a century immersed in the rock ‘n’ roll trenches, whether as a listener, critic, producer, or active participant.
(Jorgen Angel/Redferns/Getty Images) Patti Smith poses with Lenny Kaye (left) and Richard Sohl (right) from the Patti Smith Group
“Goin’ Local” was assembled both from songs he started 15 years ago with friend and bandmate Tony Shanahan (who has a co-production credit and also plays on half the tracks), and another half dozen that were written over the last few years. “I don’t write a lot of songs,” Kaye told Salon, “I believe a song has to need to be written, if only for one to figure out a situation or to understand the dynamic of a relationship, or something occurs to me that needs framing as if in a picture. So if I write one or two songs a year, I’m happy with that, and I bring them to fruition. But I just continue to sit there with the guitar, and come up with something that is meaningful to me and hopefully, whoever listens.”
Lenny Kaye was the kind of cool, level-headed rock ‘n’ roll maven who was both important to and part of our history. His openness and curiosity — still, turning 80 later this year! — makes him the music fan’s music fan.
The title track is a perfectly crunchy, rock ‘n’ roll number about haunting the East Village’s watering holes and the people you meet (and the challenges of maintaining a cross-borough relationship). Emphasizing the ‘local’ point, the album’s cover is a black-and-white historical photograph from the early 1900s, taken from the New York Public Library’s historical collection, with Kaye imposed into the frame, standing under elevated train tracks. Look closer and you can just make out the street number of the Lyceum Concert Garden (“Follies of the Day!”), which was located on the Bowery at number 302. That’s across the street and about half a block away from where CBGB’s would find itself decades later, and also just happens to be adjacent to another landmark: “If you stand in front of CBGB and look in the 10:00 position, that’s where I lived,” Kaye confirmed.
One of the record’s highlights is a co-write with the musician who stood to Kaye’s right onstage for more than 50 years. “Solstice,” where he shares writing credits with Patti Smith, possesses the same kind of metaphysical shimmer that’s often intrinsic to a Patti Smith composition (think “Ghost Dance” or “Beneath the Southern Cross” to name two other relevant co-writes from the pair). As to how the song ended up on “Goin’ Local,” Kaye said, “As the song developed, Patti thought it certainly suited my new persona,” he told Salon, “and she urged me to sing it. I mean, she could have sung it quite well, but she urged me to take it under my wing and express it. And she felt it appealed to a certain sense of the celestial that I have in my solo persona.”
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Then there’s the delightful “World Book Night,” a song that Kaye performed live via livestream from Electric Lady with Smith during the days of the COVID-19 lockdown, on the anniversary of their first performance together at St. Marks On The Bowery in 1971. “I wrote it originally when there was a kind of strange day set aside called ‘World Book Night.’ Publishers would give books to people and they would spread out all over the city or wherever they were and just hand them out for free, at subway stations or on the beach, and I thought that was a beautiful thing,” Kaye explained. “. . . It’s just my tribute to the written word, how it feels putting those words one after another after another, and the readers out there who find them and find something of themselves within the pages of a book.”
On the note of physical media, there’s “The Things You Leave Behind,” a song that Kaye’s been playing at the occasional solo show for a while now. It’s a wistful, country-folk paean that offers both a wry yet realistic assessment of the disposition of collections someone leaves the planet. “Gonna pick up the pieces and your life and theirs/who gets what and why/we all cart around a whole lot of baggage/that would better be left/by the side of the road/books and records, old clothes and photos. . .” and of course, in Kaye’s case, guitars.
One of the record’s highlights is a co-write with the musician who stood to Kaye’s right onstage for more than 50 years. “Solstice,” where he shares writing credits with Patti Smith, possesses the same kind of metaphysical shimmer that’s often intrinsic to a Patti Smith composition.
Even at 79 — he’ll hit octogenarian status in December — Kaye confesses he hasn’t slowed down as a collector. “I haven’t cut myself off yet, but I’ve been more discerning,” he tells Salon. “That said, I always come home from being on the road with a few well-chosen records and a few well-chosen books that I will read one of these days.”
Does he still have a holy grail?
Kaye laughs. “Absolutely not. At this point my holy grails are things I have yet to discover. I found most of the things I really needed to have, but every once in a while you’re exposed to a new record, and sometimes it’s not that great to just be able to go on eBay and poke the bid. You want to find it. You want to find it in context.”
He’s on a roll now: “The other day I was in the East Village and I went past a store on E. 2nd Street called Ergot and I walked in and they had 12 Umm Kulthum 45s from the ’60s and I just put my money down, came home with them, and they’re all fascinating. I have certain genres that I always check out: I’m particularly into Jamaican gospel now, which is kind of primitive and not reggae, very illuminated, great singers. I’m into Egyptian music too; I really like the music of the Middle East. And of course then there’s the rock band that I’ve never heard of that really needs to be part of my collection.” He pauses. “I always think, like the song, about cleaning it up or at least culling it so I could get all the records off the floor and onto the shelves.”
Kaye was good friends with Tom Verlaine, the late Television guitarist whose epic collections of books are still being distributed and caused hour-long lines when they were first put up for sale, and whose music equipment is next for dissemination. Salon asked Kaye if he had any clue to the extent of his friend’s collection, or its future plans for disposition?
“No, but I’m very excited because it’s kind of a way for me to perhaps move my accumulations into the world at large,” he said. “I knew that Tom loved records, books, all of the above, and often would find the weirdest, which is of course great. I think it’s wonderful that his legacy of intellectual curiosity is being moved into the world at large so other people can be illuminated by his quest for the unusual.”
On the subject of holy grails, there’s the first recording by Lenny Kaye, “Crazy Like A Fox,” released under the nom de guerre Link Cromwell. That was the result of Kaye’s uncle Larry Kusik, who was a working film songwriter (his credits include the love themes from both “The Godfather” and “Romeo and Juliet”), trying to get in on the burgeoning protest music movement in the 1960s. He recruited his nephew to sing the vocals and although the song didn’t chart (it got re-released a decade later under the auspices of Ork Records, the label that launched in order to release the first Television single), it did give the young hopeful Kaye the conviction that he could find a way in the music business. And decades later, that’s Uncle Larry’s lyrics behind the plaintive and gorgeously intricate “Yes I Will,” the album’s closer.
So while “Goin’ Local” is technically Kaye’s first solo record, back in 1984, there was another project, the Lenny Kaye Connection, a quartet which gigged around New York City and environs. They released one album, “I’ve Got A Right,” not on a major label but instead on Giorno Poetry Systems, a record label started by downtown poet John Giorno. The Connection reunited back in 2022 for a show in honor of Kaye’s 75th birthday, but the record’s been out of print for some time. Salon asked Kaye if there were any plans to reissue it, even just on streaming.
“Well, you never know,” Kaye said. “Right now I’m kind of pointed to the future. I’ve listened to that record recently and I do songs from it. I still do ‘I’ve Got A Right’ and ‘Record Collector,’ which I often play when I appear at record stores, but at this point I’m future-oriented. I mean, it came out 42 years ago. It represents a much younger version of myself, and right now I’m more in tune with who I am today. That doesn’t mean that it might not see a reissue along with some of the bonus tracks that got left by the wayside in those days, but right now I’m really moving into the future.”
He continued, “I have studio time booked and Dennis Dyken from the Smithereens is going to come up and play on a couple of songs that I have under construction, and that to me is where my fascination is. I think the Lenny Kaye Connection has merit. It is kind of my debut solo album, even though it was within a group context. But to be honest, I’m more about the future. I mean, Patti has that great quote, ‘Progress isn’t the future, it’s keeping up with the present,’ and my present is unfolding at actually quite an unexpectedly rapid rate, so today, I’m just gonna ride that pony.”
“Patti has that great quote, ‘Progress isn’t the future, it’s keeping up with the present,’ and my present is unfolding at actually quite an unexpectedly rapid rate, so today, I’m just gonna ride that pony.” Kaye says.
In 2022, Kaye’s book “Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock ‘n’ Roll” was published. It wasn’t the long-awaited memoir folks might have hoped for, but it was a sterling example of the kind of careful scholarship Kaye excels at, where he can maintain a 30,000-foot view over music history while diving deep into specifics and individual historical moments. This was Kaye’s fourth book, along with the other considerable inches of print he’s logged over the decades. Salon asked Kaye if there were any plans for more long-form writing.
“I think I mostly got it out of my system for ‘Lightning Striking,’ that seemed to cover all the bases, though I just did a foreword for a Led Zeppelin biography called ‘When Giants Walk The Earth’ by Nick Walls. So I still write. I have some vague ideas, but right now more on the musical side of my personality,” Kaye said. “You know, writing is time-consuming and very solitary and I’m enjoying making music and following that inclination in my personality. I’m not ruling out another piece of writing. But again, you go into any bookstore and there’s millions of volumes, so just like a song, it has to mean something.”
But he’s not saying no. “I would like to assemble a collection of some of my writings. But that means I have to go into the file cabinet and be shocked by some of my early attempts at explicating rock ‘n’ roll . . . when I finish this next solo record, and see the Adrift project (his “goth psych jam band, a power trio”) through to its record, perhaps I’ll feel like I’ve done that and I can return to the one word after another, after another, after another. I do believe that in writing, there is a rhythm and melody within a sentence, just like there’s a narrative arc in a guitar solo.”
Across the last 60 years or so, Kaye has toured the globe, worked with amazing musicians, and witnessed multiple incredible moments. Salon asked if he had one favorite thing that he’d gotten to do because he was Lenny Kaye.
“It’s really hard for me to say ‘favorite things,’” he explained. “My favorite thing is, I like to go and hang out, and see what the serendipity and pinball of the night shows me. I mean, I’ve done incredible things as a musician. The Dalai Lama put a scarf around my neck at Glastonbury, and I’ve also stayed up till four o’clock in the morning with Tom Clark singing songs at the Treehouse at 2A. To me, they’re all kind of a thing. But what my favorite thing to do is see what my inclination is in terms of the next sentence or the next song or the next guitar part. The fact that I can continue to do that is really my favorite thing.”
Kaye’s always had an optimistic, positive attitude, and that has not changed. “Right now I’m a solo artist, which is kind of fun. I’m up there like a folk troubadour, singing the songs, reading from the book, and making some well-timed joke,” he told Salon. “It’s portable and there’s a certain sense of being able to control the song. I do like the power of a band behind me, but I’ll see how that begins to reveal itself. I’m having a good time.”
He continued, “I feel good. I’m a new artist! That’s what cracks me up. I feel whatever I’ve done in the past, this is a new mode of presentation for me. And it feels very much at one with who I am at this moment, drawing on the experience of, at this point, sixty years of playing that guitar, and yet I feel an excitement because I’m entering uncharted territory. And that, to me, is what makes life exciting and revelatory.”
“Goin’ Local” is out now via Yep Roc and Bandcamp; you can keep up with him on YouTube and Instagram.
Earlier this year, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison for moving a box of zines. He was charged with corruptly concealing a document or record, one of the nine people convicted in the prosecution following last year’s noise demonstration at the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas in northern Texas. Unlike the others convicted in this case, Sanchez-Estrada was not at the protest and maintains he had no role in its planning.
According to prosecutors, Sanchez-Estrada moved the zines at the request of his wife, Maricela Rueda, who attended the demonstration and was sentenced to 70 years in prison after being convicted of rioting, explosive charges and providing material support to terrorists. But no evidence was presented at trial regarding why Sanchez-Estrada moved the publications, which a defense committee has subsequently told Salon “was done entirely of his own accord and for his own reasons.”
The Prairieland case has been widely criticized for its application of terrorism charges against protesters. Sanchez-Estrada’s conviction, in particular, has been criticized for the harsh sentencing applied and his tangential connection to the protest. Ana Bell, the sister of Sanchez-Estrada, spoke with Salon about her brother’s case and what it means for free speech in Trump’s America.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How is your family holding up, and how has the trial and conviction impacted you and your family personally?
My brother Dez was the main caregiver for my parents, with him having the most flexible schedule. He could easily schedule his appointments for whenever my mom didn’t have a doctor’s appointment and stuff like that. We’re not complaining. They’re parents, and we love them. We want to take care of them. It did present a challenge that we weren’t expecting because he was the main person taking care of them.
My younger brother is a teacher, so he’s usually in a classroom. I opened a bookstore a couple of months ago, so I’m trying to run the business and everything. It’s been interesting with all of the things that we have to take care of. We were talking yesterday, I had to figure out how to deal with his taxes. He was detained, I have his power of attorney, and I’m just like, “Okay, so a lot of this stuff that is in the house, what is receipts, what is actually business expenses? Stuff like that is not something that one is expecting to do, and all of a sudden you have to take care of it, and it adds an additional layer of stress that wasn’t there before.
“Everything that’s happening right now, it’s very hurtful, very painful for our family.”
And that’s on top of the emotional roller coaster. You don’t know if this is the last conversation we will have for a while, because he could be moved to a different facility and then we have to figure out how to set up communications, how to set up his commissary. Like, would we be allowed to visit him in person? Is he even at a distance where we can drive to see him?
For example, this weekend, on Saturday, we were able to visit. My mom, dad and his stepdaughter. So he was able to see me and he was so happy that she was there. But then on Sunday, when it was my turn to go visit him, we showed up, and visitations had been canceled, so we didn’t get to see him on Sunday. Now we have to wait until next Saturday or Sunday, and hope that from here until then, he hasn’t been moved to a different facility, and we didn’t miss our chance to see him.
Sometimes he calls and we miss the phone call, or sometimes the number doesn’t work, and like you’re trying to press five to answer the call, and it just hangs up the call instead. It’s an emotionally-charged situation, even though it was just a phone call. It all adds up because right now, everything feels like an open wound that we have been trying to heal, and it’s not closing. Everything is fresh. Everything just gets harder.
Could you talk a little bit about how it feels having people on the internet trading incorrect information about your brother?
I’m not saying that these people have ill intent, but I do believe that words have a lot of power and the words we use to communicate can make a breakthrough.
Someone asked me in a comment if he had just printed the magazines, and someone would come and grab them from that house, and I was just like, “You have completely wrong information.” These were magazines that he bought. They weren’t 10 or 20 copies of the same magazine. They were one like one copy about freedom, one about the environment. They were materials that he read, and he critiqued.
I think people just need to take a step back before making a statement and actually do a little bit of research because a lot of the information is just one Google away. You can go on the internet right now and look for all the evidence. It’s available. It has been unsealed. Once you have that in your hands, you can see all the information, not just what I say, not just what the government is saying.
I try not to spend a lot of time online doing this because, as I said, I do run a business. I have three kids. I’m a single mom. There is a lot of misinformation out there, and a lot of people are just running with it, kind of like a case of broken telephone.
Everything that’s happening right now, it’s very hurtful, very painful for our family. If I don’t check my emotions before I start talking with people, I could make it a bigger issue than it actually needs to be.
For me, it’s very important right now for people to understand that while my brother is the one who is in jail, and the government is not literally stating, “We are coming for your freedom of speech.” That’s exactly what is happening. He is just the vessel right now.
Could you speak a little bit about what it’s been like to witness this campaign from the government to paint your brother in this way? I think the idea that you could be convicted for what amounts to moving a box of your own magazines is a very foreign idea to most Americans.
It is very disturbing. I just opened a bookstore. So what are the odds that I literally have countless works right now in my store of examples of people who fought against fascism? I only sell fiction, but you have Katniss Everdeen in “The Hunger Games,” you have Harry Potter in Hogwarts, you have Thomas in “The Maze Runner.” You have all these characters that are literally standing up to oppression and fascism, and those who are in power and they show an amount of corruption that you think only happens in books.
“We felt that the government was trying to make an example out of people who are not content with the current administration.”
We felt that the government was trying to make an example out of people who are not content with the current administration. Judge Reed, at my brother’s sentencing, said it. The state is trying to make an example to not encourage people with similar ideologies to follow this path. “The reason why you guys are getting this many years,” and this is me paraphrasing, “It’s because we’re trying to make an example.” He said the quiet part out loud, and it’s on the record.
This is the reason why I encourage people over and over to look at the court transcripts, listen to what the prosecution presented as their case, listen to what the defense attorneys were questioning and asking for and then see who told the truth by looking at the evidence that they’ve presented to you.
In my brother’s case, when you look inside the box, everything was dated prior to COVID. Even if you did not like the political observations of some of those magazines, essays, critiques, poetry or whatever was in ther, these are feelings from the people, and they’re protected under the First Amendment. You are allowed to feel how you want. You are allowed to feel that the current administration is the best one ever, and you’re allowed to tell that to people and not go to jail. But you’re also allowed to do the opposite and it still doesn’t earn you a sentence.
None of the stuff that was in there, whether it was for or against the government, was a crime or illegal to have, and it was not used to persecute anybody who took part in the noise demo, which my brother was not an attendee of.
My understanding is that you must commit a crime in order to be punished, right? It’s not because of what you think. It’s not because of what you read. It’s not because of what you have in your house. Even more absurd is that it’s not because of the paper magazines, books or pamphlets that you have in your house. That’s what is so incredibly disturbing to me.
What is your message to other people who might be critical of the current government, to would-be protesters?
If I could just give one word of advice to people, as a person who loves this country but doesn’t love what is happening right now, it would be to study the Constitution and fight for it. Listen to which political candidates right now are talking about freedom of speech or immigration issues. Ask yourself what things seem to be in jeopardy in our Constitution and find a way to make a change for those. I do not believe that staying quiet is the way to go. I also don’t believe violence is the answer. I do believe that we all need to speak up and defend and uphold the Constitution.
Why do you think the government decided to go after your brother? Assuming this conviction stands, there will be potentially profound implications for the First Amendment and who does and does not enjoy freedom of speech in this country.
I actually think that if he had been somebody else, it would have been the same thing. With him, I feel like the main reason why was that his wife was at the noise demonstration. She was arrested on July 4, and the government had a whole day to look into her and see who she was married to. He was arrested on Sunday, and they did a big production. I watched a video of his arrest.
“In the current political climate, anyone who has brown skin is low-hanging fruit. It’s someone who you expect to get lost in the system.”
I saw all the units that were surrounding him and asked, “What is this?” They came after him as if he were a terrorist, and all he had with him was a box of zines. At some point, they claimed it was explosives, but when they opened it, it was just paper. In the current political climate, anyone who has brown skin is low-hanging fruit. It’s someone who you expect to get lost in the system.
But the fact is that he’s an immigrant — an immigrant who has legal status in the county but an immigrant regardless. Right now, there is so much hateful and hurtful feelings towards immigrants that I feel he was just the perfect scapegoat. It changed the whole thought process of how they see him. They completely dehumanized him simply because of that.
For me, it just aligns so perfectly with everything that they were looking for in a “terrorist.” Even the beard. Some people were crazy about how he had a beard and said that he was in a sleeper cell and all this stuff. He’s a tattoo artist who loves cats. This is outrageous.
There are some headwinds in that this appeals to the Fifth Circuit and then the Supreme Court, both of which are very closely tied to the current administration and their view of the world. At the same time, these judges who handled the case, they do have a record of going too far, even for the Fifth Circuit, and so I’m wondering how optimistic you are about your brother being able to prevail through the legal system.
I wanted to believe that justice would be served. I wanted to believe that we would be bringing my brother [home], but the moment I heard the sentence for Autumn Hill and the reasons that the judge gave, the judge said that the sentence was not more than he thought was reasonable to give. That changed my perspective on that moment. I lost hope before we got to my brother’s sentencing. I lost hope because it didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense from the legal point of view that they would receive this much punishment for something that was so minimal.
I don’t know how to feel. Part of me wishes that I could be hopeful again, because we’re gonna keep fighting regardless. I made the statement before that we’re probably going to spend every last minute of our lives trying to fight for his freedom, and that’s very unfortunate because he’s so young. They’re all so young, but they shouldn’t be behind bars. And I feel that the justice system is failing them, and it’s failing all of us. If the appeal doesn’t work, then it will be just like a failure in the justice system. I want to be hopeful, but I’m not holding my breath.
Do you think there is a chance of a potential political solution to this, or is there the political bravery out there to speak to this issue? I’ve spoken with people who have suggested that the next president should consider a pardon if they don’t prevail on appeal.
I don’t think the current administration will do it at all. But I would like to think that we will vote better next time, and that if we have not been successful with the appeal, or we’re still fighting this case, we could ask for a pardon.
So I’m hoping that if we end up having to go that route, we are able to ask for it and that it might be granted. I would like for the judicial system to actually do its part and be just.
Fans des 90er-Jahre-Kinos und von Arcade-Action mit Retro-Tugenden haben lange darauf gewartet, nun ist Terminator 2D – No Fate auf PC, PS4/5, Switch, Xbox One und Xbox Series X|S erschienen. Das Spiel von Bitmap Bureau lässt euch die Handlung von Termiantor 2: Tag der Abrechnung als Run-and-Gun im Stil von Contra nacherleben – in der Rolle von Sarah Connor und dem T-800 in der Gegenwart und als John Connor in der Zukunft.
Passend dazu veröffentlichen wir die Aufzeichnung eines Interviews, das Jörg Langer auf der Gamescom 2025 mit Mike Tucker führte, seines Zeichens Mitgründer von Bitmap Bureau und Design Director von Terminator 2D – No Fate. Das Gespräch wurde auf Englisch geführt, Jörg fasst die Aussagen von Mike immer wieder kurz zusammen. Mike Tucker verrät unter anderem, wie Bitmap Bureau an die Terminator-Lizenz kam und teast mögliche Portierungen für Retro-Konsolen an, die schon für frühere Titel des Studios wie Xeno Crisis produziert wurden.
Bei unserem Schwestermagazin GamersGlobal.de erschien derweil Kai Schmidts PC-Test von Terminator 2D – No Fate. Kai mag Kino und Arcade-Spaß und hatte entsprechend seine Freude mit der Spielumsetzung des Klassikers, aber ihm fehlt doch etwas in seinem Meinungskasten:
Die Steuerung funktioniert klasse, es gibt genügend Abwechslung, und die Action flutscht wie ein gut geöltes Maschinengewehr. Wäre Terminator 2D – No Fate damals in den 90ern erschienen, hätte es heute wohl einen Platz auf meiner Liste der besten Spiele aller Zeiten inne. Dieser nicht vorhandene Nostalgiefaktor ist es allerdings, der mich am Ende ein wenig zurückhaltend bleiben lässt.
Die Arcade-Action ist ohne Zweifel gut, aber mit nur etwa einer Stunde für einen Story-Durchgang auch ziemlich kurz. Und nach drei Durchgängen mit zwei Entscheidungen hat man alles gesehen. In diesem Zusammenhang möchte ich euch unbedingt ans Herz legen, nicht auf der leichtesten Schwierigkeitsstufe zu spielen. Unbegrenzte Continues klingen zwar verführerisch, doch das Spiel wird durch viel zu leichte Gegner und generell weniger Gefahren auch stark verwässert.
Terminator 2D fehlt es neben Inhalten auch an Motivation. Klar kann ich mich nach der Story mit Boss-Rush und Time Attack beschäftigen oder durch harte Arbeit das Cheat-Menü freischalten, doch das ist nichts, was mich längerfristig an das Spiel fesselt. Klassiker des Genres motivieren mich längerfristig vor allem mit Koop-Modi für zwei Spieler. Ein Contra 3 kann ich beispielsweise jederzeit einlegen und trotz kurzer Spieldauer mit einem Gleichgesinnten auf der Couch zocken. Das macht Spaß wie eh und je. Terminator 2D bietet sich durch seine Struktur natürlich nicht unbedingt dafür an, würde aber deutlich an Wiederspielwert gewinnen und seinen doch recht hohen Preis besser rechtfertigen.
Alles in allem ist Terminator 2D nicht ganz so gut wie das ähnlich gelagerte Neon Inferno, aber keinesfalls schlecht und meilenweit von dem Schund entfernt, der seinerzeit zum Filmstart auf den Konsolen erschien!
PRO
+ Gegner, Gegnerverhalten und Gefahren variieren pro Schwierigkeitsstufe
+ Durchspielen schaltet neue Modi, alternative Enden und ein Cheat-Menü frei
+ Detaillierte Pixel-Art-Hintergründe und liebevoll animierte Figuren
CONTRA
– Nur 45 bis 60 Minuten pro Durchgang und nach dem dritten Durchspielen habt ihr alles gesehen
– Maximal zwei Abschnitte mit dem T-800 (der zudem nicht Arnies Gesicht hat)
– Fahrsequenzen recht dröge
Den ganzen Test mit 4K-Video findet ihr auf GamersGlobal. Und was haltet ihr vom neuen Werk von Bitmap Bureau?
Hier ist das Video, das Jörg Langer mit Amiga-VIP RJ Mical auf der Amiga40 in Mönchengladbach auf Englisch geführt hat. Der US-Amerikaner war an der Entwicklung des Amiga 1000 beteiligt sowie hat eigenhändig Intuition programmiert, die Grundlage für die grafische Benutzeroberfläche des Amiga, Workbench. Viel Spaß dabei!
Liebe MacOS-Safari-Nutzer: Bitte auf „Video auf YouTube ansehen“ klicken, wir können gegen diese neue Browser-Sicherheitseinstellung nichts machen.
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