Turrican is a game almost solely created by one guy. The fact it stand up to and in some regards best Metroid I/II is very impressive stuff. This however, is a port of the original handled by a different team. While it's visually upgraded from the original, it's changed to the gameplay have an overwhelmingly negative effect.
A story exists, but who cares. You are man in mecha-suit, monsters, bang bang bang. That's pretty much the extent of what you need to know.
Visually, for an 8-bit game it looked astounding, one of the best looking without qeastion. This 16bit port though, hasn't seen much, if any visual upgrade, . When compared to the likes of Castlevania: Bloodlines or Revenge Of The Shinobi, it looks positively dated. The excellent music and varied levels ultimately help it pull through as a pleasing, though not up to snuff presentation.
Design wise, it remains in tact from the original (for the most part), it's far more open ended than most titles of this era rife with power-ups for the curious player willing to venture off the beaten path.
The shooting is very satisfying. Aside from the standard projectiles, the player can utilize a 360 degree stream of energy that is far more useful as well as far more powerful. The flip-side is that to use this the player must to stationary. Powerup's have various effects, but all are useful, able to change potentially impossible situations into a 1-hit cakewalk.
Intertwined between traditional platforming is smup elements with the player scrolling down an on the rails section. On paper this variation sounds great but in practice it serves highlights on the games major issues brought about by third party porter "The Code Monkeys", who for some reason felt an impulsive need to change the game-play for the worst.
Typical of this era was "bum rush", where enemies would dive from off-screen, in many cases created cheap instantaneous deaths. Many were designed for arcade machines, short and deliberately attempting to artificially increase playtime.
Turricans port ( not an arcade port) is almost solely reliant on it. Every inch is designed to cause the player to either be killed by the environment or by sprites pre-set in locations with the intention of a guaranteed hit.
It's so cheap and difficult, that without cheats, it's nigh on impossible. Overcoming it doesn't involve players moment to moment skill, but replaying over and over until a map is memorized, otherwise you might as well be Nostradamus.
Boss battles by contrast are jarringly easy using the tried and true "follow the pattern", one seems outright lifted from Shinobi. While the creature design is appealing, the fights themselfs are average at best, poor at worst. In one case it changed the original C64 version so that a boss is completely unavoidable with the original tactic of avoiding it removed, serving seemingly no point other than to deliberately force the player to lose lifes.
The Genesis port also makes unwelcome further to heighten the problem, namely lower life count, higher damage,
Turrican is a game I admire for what it represents, even if I find it incredibly cheap with a style of difficulty I dislike, the mere fact this entire game was almost solely created by one man is something of a wonder, that the later ports massively exacerbated rather than fixed (mild) problems the original games issues is a disservice.
Is this worth playing? Yes. But only, and if only you can't play the other versions, namely the C64/Amiga, or Super Turrican (Nes) developed by Manfred Trenz, the original creator.
This version has the visuals, everything else suffers.
