Turrican: Simply one of the best lost classics of all time

[prfsnl_gmr]

This is a great article, and I would love to see articles like this posted on the front page of the site.

Also, do you have any thoughts on the Gameboy version of Turrican?

[Jagosaurus]

^ agreed. I have the Genesis port which is notoriously difficult.

[Xeogred]

This post is insanely awesome, I'll have to read it when I have more time.

Huge fan myself, but unfortunately I never grew up with an Amiga and always had trouble emulating that stuff, so I've never officially played the official titles (been crossing my fingers for a port/collection for ages now), but I've listened to the OST's for years and years now, the symphonic suite, everything, huge Chris Hulsebeck fan!

I couldn't get into the Genesis game that much, but love the two SNES titles. The second one is definitely really weird and when you glance at the others, you can tell it's practically another IP itself... but damn, the music on that one was really awesome and pretty unique on the SNES. Reminds me a bit of Super Metroid or something.

I guess this is potentially like another Thunder Force case. I'd personally take Thunder Force over Gradius, R-Type, etc anyday, when those overshadow TF but a long shot. I could maybe say the same about Turrican vs Contra or something. Something about Turrican just really resonated well with me when I was a kid and I have this weird huge piece of nostalgia attached to it, after playing the first one in 1995 or something, I completely forgot about the name for like an entire decade before my dad and I were talking about it and somehow he remembered it. So it was incredible rediscovering the SNES games and diving back into the series in a way after many years of trying to recall it but was never able too, before the internet really took off and stuff. But yeah it's probably the music that made this series immortal for me, mindblowing stuff and it was always amazing as a kid getting one level further if only to hear more awesome music. The same experience might apply to those who grew up with the Amiga games I'd guess, heh.

And yeah what others said, seriously, this is front page material gold or something hardcore gamer would put up.

I've always felt like a Metroid (interconnected levels) styled Turrican would have been cool.

[dunpeal2064]

I've always felt like a Metroid (interconnected levels) styled Turrican would have been cool.

You would probably love Gunlord then.

[Krejlooc]

This post is insanely awesome, I'll have to read it when I have more time.

Huge fan myself, but unfortunately I never grew up with an Amiga and always had trouble emulating that stuff, so I've never officially played the official titles (been crossing my fingers for a port/collection for ages now), but I've listened to the OST's for years and years now, the symphonic suite, everything, huge Chris Hulsebeck fan!

I couldn't get into the Genesis game that much, but love the two SNES titles. The second one is definitely really weird and when you glance at the others, you can tell it's practically another IP itself... but damn, the music on that one was really awesome and pretty unique on the SNES. Reminds me a bit of Super Metroid or something.

I guess this is potentially like another Thunder Force case. I'd personally take Thunder Force over Gradius, R-Type, etc anyday, when those overshadow TF but a long shot. I could maybe say the same about Turrican vs Contra or something. Something about Turrican just really resonated well with me when I was a kid and I have this weird huge piece of nostalgia attached to it, after playing the first one in 1995 or something, I completely forgot about the name for like an entire decade before my dad and I were talking about it and somehow he remembered it. So it was incredible rediscovering the SNES games and diving back into the series in a way after many years of trying to recall it but was never able too, before the internet really took off and stuff. But yeah it's probably the music that made this series immortal for me, mindblowing stuff and it was always amazing as a kid getting one level further if only to hear more awesome music. The same experience might apply to those who grew up with the Amiga games I'd guess, heh.

And yeah what others said, seriously, this is front page material gold or something hardcore gamer would put up.

I've always felt like a Metroid (interconnected levels) styled Turrican would have been cool.

Getting slightly off topic but Thunder Force is my favorite SHMUP series and I could easily write page after page about my love for that series. Terrific games with an outstanding soundtrack.

I've noticed that an outstanding soundtrack does a great deal to elevate my love for a game. Thunder Force, Turrican, Tempest 2000... all excellent titles with terrific soundtracks. I don't think I'd like any of them nearly as much if their soundtracks weren't so stellar.

[Xeogred]

Yeah I just love Technosoft in general, but the Thunder Force series were the top dogs for sure. I'd love a huge breakdown of the series if you ever went there, haha, there's certainly a lot to talk about with the ports and stuff. Thunder Spirits on the SNES is definitely a different game than Thunder Force III/AC. IV is a technical accomplishment for the Genesis I'd say, musically, graphically, everything, that game is mindblowing.

Finally went through this post and after listening to the music for the NES game and skimming a longplay of it... I can't believe I've missed out on that one. I guess for all these years I just kind of assumed it was similar to the Genesis port or worse, but it looks superior in every way. Everything about it really screams Sunsoft to me as well, I wonder if Turrican was a bit of an influence for Blaster Master, the graphics are definitely pretty similar off and on among other things.

If I can figure out how to play the Amiga games with controllers, I'll definitely have to look more into that.

I've always felt like a Metroid (interconnected levels) styled Turrican would have been cool.

You would probably love Gunlord then.

It's that combo I guess? I'll definitely have to check it out, I remember absolutely loving the artwork I saw from screens.

[Krejlooc]

I could actually write up a pretty boss Thunder Force retrospective if I get some free time. I have every release in the series save the original on the PC-88, including a Thunder Force AC PCB and the saturn gold packs. Thunder Force III is my favorite in the series, followed by Thunder Force V, so I probably have a different opinion than most.

If you like Technosoft and especially thunder force, can I recommend Elemental Master? It's sort of like Technosoft's take on Konami's Knightmare but it plays like a vertical Thunder Force.

[Xeogred]

I've played and beat it, definitely an amazing game. That and Hyper Duel are some of my favorites outside of Thunder Force.

That's awesome about TFII, the computer versions of it look very different from the Genesis version. V... yeah I don't know, I've never been too big on polygon shmups, haha. VI looks badass though but I haven't gotten around to getting a copy.

But yes, TURRICAN! The Duke Nukem comparison thrown around earlier is pretty funny, since I always kind of saw that myself.

[Krejlooc]

But yes, TURRICAN! The Duke Nukem comparison thrown around earlier is pretty funny, since I always kind of saw that myself.

What an outlaw era of gaming that was. You could release pretty much unofficial ports of games to other systems without too much legal trouble (save for the Great Giana Sisters), and even steal artwork directly from other games.

I guess there wasn't really much of an eye for the on-goings of early 486 gaming, though. Especially not from overseas. That's an era of gaming also worth exploring, and I'm doing research for a write up on 486 gaming at the moment, actually. I've built myself a 486 DX and fixed it with a CF Card slot and I've been getting old games to run, like Mega Man X and Doom. That's all for another topic, though.

EDIT: But to expand on my thoughts on the ways Duke Nukem borrowed from Turrican beyond merely stealing artwork, I feel like its level design is very much in line with European Platformer level design from that era. European platformers being games like Zool, Kid Chaos, James Pond, Quik: The Thunder Rabbit, Fire & Ice, Arabian Nights, Cool Spot, etc.

These sorts of platformers usually had a much more open level design, instead of the flowing, directed level design of japanese games at the time. Where a Japanese platformer will generally lead you to the end of the level with multiple paths, directing the player where to go, Euro platformers of the time did not. This is because the basic goal of many Euro platformers of the time were different than that of Japanese platformers.

In Japanese games, the typical convention was that getting to the end of the level, usually signified by a goal post or end screen, would advance you to the next stage. European platformers, typically but not always, had a different or secondary goal to advance. This typically revolved around killing all types of a certain enemy or finding a few keys or, my most disliked - collecting hundreds of items.

Because of this, European level design is all about getting the player to explore every part of your level, which usually sprawls in just about every direction. They are almost always littered with thousands of items to collect.

Now, where the Japanese weren't unfamiliar with superfluous items, Euro platformers are typically overloaded with them. Most of the time, such items are basically useless, which is a pet peeve of mine. If a game's reward for exploring a level is this worthless 100 points trinket, then I'm not engaged enough. The better platformers from Europe of that time tended to understand that pointless items littered about weren't much fun to collect, and either attached bonuses to them or made them the central part of the game.

Zool 2, for example, is one of the better Euro platformers of the era that focuses on item collection. You need to collect 99% of the items in any level by the time you reach the end of the stage, but it's not a true percentage and it increases 1% with every 5 items you get. So you don't need to collect every item to advance, and most stages usually have like 5 times as many items as you need, but it makes jumping into huge hoards of them have meaning.

Turrican's take on the large sprawling levels is that they reward you with incredibly useful extra lives and crystals that grant powerups (in essence, 5 extra lives per 50). The main goal in Turrican is to simply find the exit, as well, which is also a major advantage it has over its other european contemporaries.

Duke Nukem I feel has the level design of poorer European run & gun games. Large, sprawling levels, lots of powerups, but not many of them are useful. Later PC games which weren't quite as derivative were better with their item placement, notably Duke Nukem 2 and Jazz Jackrabbit (and especially Jazz Jackrabbit 2). But the original I feel is pretty poor with regards to it's item placement and their use.

Er, to wrap up this rambling post, I feel Duke Nukem also borrowed the general european platformer conventions, perhaps through turrican. LOL I went way off topic with this.

[Krejlooc]

Necro bump, but my sister gave me the TG16 port of Turrican 1 for christmas the other day. I went through and beat it yesterday and a few things to note:

1) Only 1 song per area? In the Amiga version, each act has it's own music, but the turbo grafx port has 1 song per world. The graphics look ripped straight out of the amiga, which I suppose is pretty nice for the TG16.

2) The difficulty seems much lower thanks to the unlimited continues (or, at least they seemed unlimited). Unfortunately, because the continues are so numerous, it renders the gems rather useless as they used to grant continues. This makes exploring a lot less integral to the game.

3) A couple of levels were missing! The jet pack levels specifically. I wasn't a huge fan of those levels originally, but their absence makes the game feel really short.

4) The music sounds really poor compared to the Amiga version, although I guess this is to be expected.

despite all the above, playing the thing on my Turbo Express is a goddamn blast! Portable turrican!