There used to be a time when the video game versions of a huge hollywood movies weren't sketchy exclusives . They were big-budget affairs from top-tier game developers, and they proudly sat on store shelves alongside Mario, Sonic, and the rest of the video game greats of the '80s and'90s.

Conan: Hall of Volta

This is the era that gave us Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES. Aladdin on the SNES. Heck, Aladdin on the Genesis. And they were good. Very good. Well... sometimes. For every TMNT there was a Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game. For every Aladdin there was a Superman 64.In the middle of this licensed game crapshoot sat Arnold Schwarzenegger. When you unwrapped a Terminator 2 or Total Recall video game on Christmas morning and popped the cart into your console, you didn't know whether you were going to get a badass take on Contra starring the big man himself, or something far more disappointing. But you at least knew it was going to star The Governator himself.Let's take a look back at some of Arnold's most memorable video game depictions:Look closely at the guy in the top-right. Yup - that's Conan! Don't believe us? Thrown off by the purple hair? The game's box art confirms that yes, this is indeed intended to be a depiction of Ahh-nold:

Predator

The Running Man

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Total Recall

True Lies

Last Action Hero

Terminator 3: The Redemption

Bonus: Terminator 2 Pinball

Yeah, now we're talking. Activision understood how to do Arnold justice, depicting him (along with some gruesome dead soldiers) with impressive detail, albeit without much color.Predator's title screen is equally awesome. Sadly, as was often the case with NES games, Arnold's in-game sprite didn't do him nearly as much justice:In the '80s, video game Arnold wasn't just limited to home consoles. He also hit PCs like the Amiga and Commodore 64 in a Running Man tie-in game. How good Arnold looked in-game really, really depended on which version of the game you happened to pick up:By the time the NES generation was winding down in the early '90s, even companies with questionable (to say the least) reputations like LJN were able to produce badass depictions of everyone's favorite action hero:Acclaim's Total Recall was an abysmal NES action platformer, even when compared to the iffy standards of the era. But at least it too had a pretty rad depiction of Mr. Schwarzenegger. Although he does look a little like a friendly dad about to pick his kids up from soccer practice:Did you know they made a video game version of True Lies? You know, that movie where Jamie Lee Curtis dances seductively for a man that is secretly her husband? Well... they did. It included an awesome gunfight in a shopping mall against the Crimson Jihad. So... there's that.Last Action Hero may have satirized the action movie genre, but the tie-in games it spawned - of which there were several (NES, SNES, Game Gear, Game Boy, etc) - weren't quite so self aware. But who cares how good the games were? We all know that what really matters is how gloriously those 16-Bit SNES visuals were able to depict Arnold himself, perhaps the true last action hero. The results? Judge for yourself:As video game consoles became more powerful, in-game depictions of Arnold must have gotten more and more realistic, right? Well... sort-of. The Arnold we received in Terminator 3: The Redemption for PS2-gen consoles is undoubtedly impressive, but he's also darn close to the uncanny valley . And for our money he also feels a little lifeless. Especially compared to some of the awesome pixelated NES depictions from the '80s:Ironically, the Terminator 2: Judgment Day pinball table might just be the best game Arnold has ever appeared in. It was one of the first pinball tables to ever feature a Dot Matrix Display, and the first pin to feature a video mode. It was designed by pinball legend Steve Ritchie, and is generally considered one of the best pinball tables ever made.

So, what do you think? Which video game depiction of Austrian Oak is the king? Predator? True Lies? Keep in mind there's several games we didn't cover here, including Midway's ever-popular T2: The Arcade Game. Let us know in the comments which video game Arnold you think reigns supreme.Justin Davis is the second or third best-looking Editor at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @ErrorJustin and on IGN