Turrican

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Rainbow Arts - 1990

Generation: 4

Machine: Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Nintendo Gameboy, Sega Megadrive, and others

Genre: Platformer, Character Shooter

Turrican was huge. Huge in both gameplay and sales. It populated almost every platform of the time, both computer and console, and it produced many sequels. It's not hard to see why it was so popular, it was completely different to everything else in it's genre. We had all moved little men from left to right whilst getting them to blast anything that moved before but we'd never had such an incredible selection of power-ups and we'd certainly never had such a huge field of play.

Turrican scrolled both up and down as well as left and right this gave you a massive area to explore on each level. It was well worth exploring too because lurking at the end of every cave or tricky series of mid-air stepping stones was a collection of incredible power-ups the likes of which you'd be more used to seeing in games like R-type. What's even more impressive about Turrican is that it wasn't just another arcade conversion or film licence like the majority of other games at the time. Turrican was a completely original game from a company that was just starting out.

Although originally programmed for the C64, out of the many formats available the ST version wins out but a special mention goes to the Spectrum version for it's stunning colour graphics.

Jakey 06 Aug '03

Emulator

STeem - e.g. Search Google to find the game file.

Links

Turrican SETA - An impressive fansite.

Play Online - The Atari ST version emulated online.

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