Super Turrican Impressions: Amiga-Stink Free
Mar. 9
Try as I might, I've never been able to get into European computer games. They're an important part of gaming history, to be sure, but something about their obnoxious art styles, arpeggio-crazy soundtracks, and unreadable fonts make them hard to appreciate for an ignorant American slob like me.
There's something universally appealing about the Turrican series on the Amiga, though. Playing to the console's strengths, the Turrican games are an impressive mix of graphical wizardry and exploration-based platforming, and they're still fun to play today, despite their extreme difficulty and sprawling and intimidating level designs.
Super Turrican successfully bridges the gap between console simplicity and the ridiculous excesses of the Amiga. It's good stuff.
In Super Turrican, you play as a robot...uh, guy, and you have to shoot all these aliens for some reason or another. Gameplay mixes sidescrolling platforming with Contra-styled gunplay, complete with switchable weapons that can be powered up until the screen is constantly filled with delicious candy-like bullets.
Unlike Contra, controls in Super Turrican feel more precise and weighty. Which is a good thing, since Super Turrican contains way more precision jumping and platform-hopping than any game in the Contra series. It kind makes me wish that Contra had tried this approach at some point. Can you imagine Contra as a non-linear, Symphony of the Night-styled adventure-platformer?
Oh. Right.
Super Turrican ditches the sprawling level design that characterized earlier games in the series in favor of more straightforward gameplay progression. It doesn't feel dumbed-down in the least, though. Its streamlined approach to level design means that Super Turrican's action much better-paced and less confusing than in other Turrican games, and the series' characteristic difficulty is still in full effect. The end result is pretty much everything you could ever want in an action game, with almost no filler.
Super Turrican may be the only game to be released on the Shop Channel this week, but it's a good one. Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.
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Comments
"Try as I might, I've never been able to get into European computer games. They're an important part of gaming history, to be sure, but something about their obnoxious art arpeggio-crazy soundtracks, and unreadable fonts make them hard to appreciate for an ignorant American slob like me." you never got into the GTA or Tomb Raider or Driver games? poor guy.
Okay, Yogi Bear's Big Clean Up was pretty good, but that's IT.
Dammit, just admit it, you only loved Yogi's four-on-the-floor faux-electro soundtrack!
Yogi Bear's Techno Rave was truly a surreal experience. I consider myself fortunate for having been able to take part in it.
But back on topic, I never really did play any of the Turrican games past the first one on the Genesis, which really didn't feel all that polished and wasn't that much fun. But everyone says the sequels improved on it big time, so maybe I should try this out one of these days!
Man I was teetering on the edge with this one until I saw that gigantic robot fist.
SOLD!
all of the console versions of Turrican were pretty inferior tbh, they all became really dumbed down and linear, though credit where credit is due, this one was still pretty good and is easily the best one of the later games.
God damn it I only just realized you put alt-text captions on your pictures. Now I have to re-read your whole backlog of reviews. I hope you're happy.
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