Turrican

Turrican is a 1990 video game programmed and designed by Manfred Trenz. It was first developed for the Commodore 64 by Rainbow Arts, but was ported to other systems later. In addition to concept design and character creation, Trenz personally programmed Turrican on the Commodore 64. A sequel, Turrican II, followed 1991 for the Commodore 64 and other platforms.

Story

The lost colony of Alterra is a completely man-made lifeworld abandoned long ago in a nearby galaxy. Alterra is actually five colonies in one. Each self-contained habitat has been separately bio-engineered by a powerful ecosystem generation network known as a Multiple Organism Unit Link. MORGUL, for short. Early colonists used MORGUL to render Alterra inhabitable. But a cataclysmic quake severed all system interface functions, and MORGUL murderously rebelled. The few colonists lucky enough to escape told a grim tale of a higher intelligence gone berserk.

For generations, mankind sought a return to Alterra. Finally, genetic science created a saviour: Turrican, a mutant warrior, bio-engineered for the task of planetary reclamation. In the meantime, MORGUL has diligently twisted Alterran life forms to his brutal, destructive purposes. Thus, Turrican's challenges consist of eliminating hostile organisms from Alterra's five multi-level worlds and, finally, destroying the three faces of MORGUL.

History

Level 1 (Atari ST version)

The series started in 1989 on the Commodore 64 with a demo level of the full game which was released in 1990. Turrican became very popular due to its high technical achievements, demonstrating graphics which many did not believe to be possible on a C64.

Turrican was developed mainly by Manfred Trenz and published by Rainbow Arts. A later Amiga conversion was produced by Factor 5. The Spectrum version of the game went to number 2 in the UK sales charts, behind Shadow Warriors.^[1]

Turrican was also released for the Atari ST, Amiga, CDTV, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Boy, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. The console ports were handled by The Code Monkeys and published by Accolade.

Music

The Turrican series is well known for the quality of its soundtracks. Chris Huelsbeck composed music for the Amiga conversions of Turrican, Turrican II and Turrican 3, as well as Mega Turrican for the Mega Drive and Super Turrican and Super Turrican 2 for the SNES. Music from Turrican II was performed live by a full orchestra at the second Symphonic Game Music Concert in 2004. The event took place in Leipzig, Germany. The music from Turrican was released in the Turrican Soundtrack Anthology on November 24, 2013 as a 4-volume digital download.^[2]

In addition, "Subsong 2" from Turrican, arranged by Ramiro Vaca, was copied from the song "Escape" of The Transformers: The Movie soundtrack.^[3] The title screen for Turrican is based upon the Manowar album cover Kings of Metal.^[3]

Gameplay

Reception
Review scores Publication Score Crash 94%[4] Sinclair User 79%[5] Your Sinclair 92%[6] MicroHobby (ES) [7] Zzap!64 97%[8] MegaTech 73%[9]
Awards Publication Award Zzap!64 Gold Medal Crash Crash Smash C+VG C+VG Hit

Turrican can be described as a cross between Metroid and Psycho-Nics Oscar.^[10] While the huge levels and the morph-ball function were inspired by Metroid, the overall graphics design and weapons were inspired by Psycho-Nics Oscar. Unlike many other action games of its time, Turrican did not force the player to complete a linear level. Instead, the player can explore each level and uncover secrets.

The Spectrum version was voted number 36 in the Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time.^[11]

Sequels

Turrican II: The Final Fight

Turrican II: The Final Fight was released in 1991. The Amiga version, done by Factor 5, was finished before the C64 version, but Manfred Trenz cites the C64 version as the original design. The game was also released for the CDTV, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and PC (MS-DOS), and also for the Mega Drive/Genesis and Game Boy rebranded as Universal Soldier.

Mega Turrican/Turrican 3: Payment Day

Mega Turrican was an original Factor 5 game initially designed for the Mega Drive/Genesis, and later followed by an Amiga port under the title of Turrican 3: Payment Day. PC (MS-DOS) and Amiga CD32 versions were also planned and developed, but it was never released and only some enemy sprite designs have surfaced.^[12]

Super Turrican (NES)

Released for the NES, this Turrican game was created by Manfred Trenz alone. It is based roughly on the levels of the first two Turrican games.

Super Turrican and Super Turrican 2 (SNES)

The Super Turrican games were developed for the SNES by Factor 5. They were released in 1993 and 1995, respectively.

Never released

Turrican 3D was intended to bring Turrican into the third dimension, but was never released because publisher THQ stopped development. The game was intended for PC (Windows) and Dreamcast.^[13] Screenshots and videos show how the world of Turrican would have looked.^[14] In an interview, Manfred Trenz, creator of Turrican, Turrican II, Super Turrican (NES) and co-developer of Turrican 3D, stated that many members of the project were far too profit-oriented, and the project failed as a result.^[15]

Thornado is another never-released Turrican spin-off. Handled by the US branch of Factor 5, they did not use the name Turrican because of legal issues. It was developed first for the Nintendo 64 and later for the GameCube. All that is available from this game is a piece of preliminary music composed by Chris Hülsbeck and some art assets that were reused in Star Wars: Rebel Strike, such as the Golden Gate-like looking bridge. The "Thornado Demo" track which was released as a teaser for the upcoming GameCube game, was in fact running on the older Nintendo 64 sound hardware using Factor 5's new proprietary MusyX software sound engine. The Thornado demo, although not available on Factor 5's website anymore, can still be found on Chris Hülsbeck's page at GarageBand.com.^[16]

Next-gen Turrican; in April 2007, a Gamasutra article revealed that Factor 5 was working on concepts for a new Next-gen Turrican game.^[17] The game didn't have a title yet and was simply known as Turrican or Project cyclone.^[18] Since the game was being planned once again by the US branch of Factor 5 and they went bankrupt not long after, this game was never released either.

Fan projects

Hurrican is an independent freeware sequel released for Windows in 2007.^[19] In the past there were already several other more or less extensive fanmade remakes of Turrican including T2002, T4 Funeral and even a Turrican table for Visual Pinball,^[20] but Hurrican is particularly notable for its 2nd place in the 2008 Indie Game Showcase contest.^[21] As the source code of Hurrican was released in 2012, source ports to other platforms are now possible.^[22]

Gallery

• 
  Turrican played on an Amiga, photographed in England in the early 1990s.
• 
  Turrican on an Amiga (left) and a C64 at the Games Convention 2006.
• 
  Play! A Video Game Symphony live concert of the Turrican soundtrack. Left bottom, a monitor with the game.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Turrican.

• Turrican on thelegacy.de
• Turrican 1-3 Download Backups by Factor 5 for UAE