Turrican series

[Tim Janssen]

If there is one game I have fond memories of, it has to be Turrican. I first met Turrican 1 on the trusty ol' C64. I was over the moon when I found out I could move the Turrican-sprite to all directions. Simply incredible.

When I bought my Amiga in 1991, Turrican 1 was one of the first games I copied to some discs. The Amiga version also had some great Chris Huelsbeck tunes. 11 years after its release I still play the game now and then.
Turrican 2: the Final Fight is much hailed as the ultimate Amiga game. It has everything its predecessor had but it is also more over-the-top: Bigger levels, monsters, sprites and tunes. Despite this overwhelming variety I prefer Turri 1 because I think it has more atmosphere
I am not so pleased withTurrican 3 which was released towards the end of 1993. It was a Megadrive conversion where our hero has a swinging rope. The game is too easy to complete and there is not a lot to explore in each level. Nice parallax scrolling, though.

Overall I think the Turrican series are a classic because it combined state of the art technology (in that time) with variation in levels.

[P-J]

For some reason I never really caught onto the Turrican 'thing'. It was a very 'average' platform/shmup kinda thing for me

My favourite is deffinitely Turrican 2.

My first glimps into the turrican series came on my Spectrum. It was my birthday and I just had enough money to buy a full price game (£9.99), I had played a short demo of Turrican off a tape on the cover of CRASH (appropriate name for a spectrum mag ) so I used my money to buy Turrican. It was fantastic. I only had a spectrum + (the one in between the rubber keys and the one with the build-in tape player) but it still ran very well. You had to play the tape before every level but the levels were so great and the gameplay so fantastic that I played it for ages. Probably the best money I ever spent on the spectrum (except maybe a cheap £1.99 game called REX)

Anyway back to the Amiga...... when I first got my Amiga my Dad knew someone at work who copied games so when I opened my Amiga on Xmas day I also had 10 disks of copied games to play with. Turrican was one of them. I started playing it again, this time with great graphics AND SPEECH. "WELCOME TO TURRICAN, HA HA HA" I tried to complete the game but the last few levels were corrupt and I couldn't get past them with the messed up graphics. Very sad.

Then Turrican 2 came out. The very first thing that struck me about the sequel was how fantastic the music was. It was similar to the prequel but it was so much better. The music to Turrican 2 is the best game music EVER produced and that is one of the reasons that I loved the game. You could even access all the music from the main menu so if you wanted to listen to the music for the very fast spaceship level, you didn't have to get all the way upto level 3:2(I think)
It also had a nice colourful intro along with its great music, the intro took ages to watch but it was worth it because the music you were listening to was so great.
The levels were big and there was loads to explore, it was great finding a new place where a 1up would fall down and give you an extra life. The game even had speech everytime you picked up a powerup "Shield", "Laser" etc. I remember when you picked up a certain powerup it sounded like "Rimmer" from "Red Dwarf"
There were a great mix of levels from the first world where you walked around to the second where you swam and the third where you flew and then there was that level in the fifth level where the only way was up, that was a brilliant level.

Why am I sat here typing this, I want to go home now and play it, it was so great.

[Tim Janssen]

Hi PJBonoMan,

You wrote about Turrican:

It was a very 'average' platform/shmup kinda thing for me

Ouch, that hurts. I guess you are not a fan of platformgames.
Never mind, I have this apathy towards sports games. I don't really care whether Sensi World of Soccer is better than Goal or Football Glory. They look all too green for me

[P-J]

Aha, then you know what I mean

It not that I dislike that type of game, I just think Turrican was a an 'average' member of that genre. I've no real preference on the genre of games I play.... If it's good, well, it's good!

A quick slap! for the lack of enthusiasm about sports games tho :bounce

[Akira]

Turrican 2, no contest IMO. First, the music. As Gibby said, the best game soundtrack EVER produced IMO. Level 1-2's music is awesome, and the Gradius-ey music from the shmup level si just AWESOME. Chris Hülsbeck's finest hour IMO.

Second position goes to Turrican 3 to me. Btw, just nabbed Mega Turrican for the Genesis. Gotta catch'em all © I have to get the SNES games too, and I will avoud Turrican 1 for the Genny, thanks.

[RCK]

For me, Turrican II was the best of all the serie, uncredible huge level, fantastic gameplay, huge boss, and of course... The awesome soundtrack from Chris Hülsbeck's !!!
(arrrrg, some of them like Techno Dungeon, The Desert Rocks or Climb To Survive will always be my favorites tunes until the end of my life)
(and Yes, I'm walking with my Rio500 & the Turrican Soundtrack )

And for finish, one stupid french joke from one even more stupid french magazine knowed as "Joystick" (in the test of Turrican, 8 years ago) :

" Si turrican, t'es mort "

[Akira]

If ye like it so much, why not support Chris and buy his CD? He has many other rearranged soundtracks, as well as free mp3s downloads on his mp3.com site, which is:

http://www.mp3.com/huelsbeck

Don't spoil this great composer's music, support him! The CDs are so cheap they are a steal Please try and remove that link to the mp3s

[Tim Janssen]

When I come to think of it, there are worlds in each Turrican which I really prefer:

Turrican 1: World 2 with the Fish and Lobster boss-enemies are my favourite. Chris Huelsbeck's music is perfectly suited to the atmosphere.
Turrican 2: Without doubt, World 3's shmup levels are the best sections of the whole game. I especially like 3-3 where you must fly though levels at an insane speed. I think the Giger levels in World 5 with those Alien monsters are also very nice. A picture with a facehugger on Turrican's face could be a nice avatar.
Turrican 3: The Giger levels (World 4) are the best. I am most impressed with those backgrounds which have some colour cycling. The death train ride (Level 4-2) makes it also a nice change from the usual platform affair.

[RCK]

You are right Akira.

Tim, do one screenshot of 60*60 pix of Turrican and I could add it to public avatar list

[Akira]

RCK, thanks for removing the link I try to support as much as I can the creators of the stuff I liekd back then and discover right now. I don't havea beef with stuff being available for download, as long as it is not something you can actually buy somewhere, like commercially available Amigs stuff, or Chris Huelsbeck's CDs. (did you check teh mp3.com page I linked to? lots ofneat stuff to enjoy. Allister Brimble has one too, with FAVE new mixes of Project X, Body Blows and others. I can't remember teh URL right now though)

About perferred worlds... Turrican 2's shmup levels were great (they should have converted Aerofighters with that engine!), but I enjoyed most of them, because they were so HUGE. I had many rewards thanks to going aroudn and adventuring I always ran out of time, but found lots of goodies that paid off teh loss of one life!

[RCK]

Aki, I know very well all the story-life of my favourite music maker (such as Chris or Lizardking), so I already knowed his MP3 page

[Tim Janssen]

Chris Huelsbeck's sonix in the Turrican -series are okay but in my personal opinion there is much better work of him available. My personal favourites are his compositions for Amiga-games like Apidya, Quik & Silva and Jim Power.

On the ancient C64 I especially like his sonix for games like Madness, X-out, To be on Top and Dulcedo Cognationis.
It is incredible how similar his C64 and Amiga tunes are.

By the way, I never figured out what Turrican is shouting in Turrican 2 when he collects goodies. "Shield", "Countable", "Laser", "Laser", "Murrain (or something like that). -Not a type to start a conversation with.

He said "Multiple" as well. And I think "Power Up" or "1 Up" or both.

Countable??? Was that the one I assumed to be "Round" - as in the round white shots that would Bounce of the walls?

[Akira]

Haha, the sound samples... Lemme check what I heard...

Multiple.
Round
There was a ' Power UP' and another like ' Power Oi!' , hahaha dunno what it said there, it powered up your beam methinks.

1-Up most definitely...

and i forgot the others? oops ;p

When Turrican said "Power Up" he really sounded like Rimmer from Red Dwarf and on the level 1:1 when you kill one of the those dragon type things that are attached to the ground in some cave, there was always a power up right there, after picking it up. I always used to say to my computer "Thanks Rimmer!" after he said "Power Up"

Oh how sad I was

[Warlock99]

Oh yes, turrican was the first game on the c64 that played like an arcade game but made amazing use of the c64 technology. Better than anybody thought possible. This was the game that all subsequent platform shooters had to be judged by.

The turrican games actually used clever tricks to achieve, the effects, so pushing the ageing c64 to it's absolute limit. This was how games should be made. It wasn't such a breakthrough on the amiga but it was still fantastic.

I must admit I didn't take to turrican 3 at first, but soon got used to it's quirky control system and am glad to say it's as great as the rest of this series.

[Akira]

i'm not too keen on the first game, but the second one is a godsend, and turrican 3 is a little step below that (very little

About pushing machine to the limits... This is not done today anymore.. They just invent a hardware upgrade. What a bunch of losers.

[Warlock99]

I think they've managed to do some quite amazing things with the psx (final fantasy's, metal gear, gran turismo's).

But the PC is never ever used to it's full potential at all unfortunately. It's just raw power with a bloated os that probably prevents it from running at it's full speed anyway. If only linux would sort itself out. It'd be a start.

BTW - Quik & Silver is great too, gameplay-wise and musically! I still have the odd go of this addictive little game.

[Akira]

This is going to get rather off-topic-ish if I start to rant about those first two things (psx pushed? not really... and linux? vomit), though I Agree about PCs completely.

I'll talk about Quik & Silva then

I have to try that game out. I heard it's good but never played it. I remember trying ro make it run in an emu prior to xfer it to the Amiga, and since it didn't booted I wasn't arsed to xfer it and try it out on the real thing.

What do you think about Mr. Nutz? This was one of my fave platformers.

[Warlock99]

Only played a 500 version, but wasn't too keen on Mr nutz, loads of hype surrounding it, i.e. sonic beater etc etc. It looked great but didn't seem to be that playable, maybe I'll try it again though, see if my opinion has changed. I heard the console versions were better, but I don't know if this was true not. What do you think akira?

To me Kid Chaos seemed a lot better as far as that type of game goes, great music, very very fast and decent enough graphics and yes the all important playability was there too.

I'm with PJ on this. I never really liked the Turrican series, although the music is excellent.

I did like platform games...well Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Mission Impossible anyway.

PC's are great, its just the crap OS that slows games down.

How many GOOD Amiga games were written in C?

For f***s sake C++ is a slow language, that is why the PC needs 1.5 GHz processors and gfx cards that move terrabytes a second to play "decent" games.

Windows is built for C++, running Asm code on Windows would be a Nightmare with a capital N five miles high!

Always believed games programmers on the PC are spoilt because most of the hard work is done for them. Coders are not as highly rated on the PC as they were on the PC. It's all design, graphics and 3D modelling.

True coding is an art!

[Akira]

Just one thing Khephren: I don't see anybody coding in assembler on LInux It's al stupid C.

Anyway, about Mr. Nutz. The console versions were PICH in my opinion! The Amiga game borrowd heavily from Sonic, the console versions were more mild romps which had nothing to do with the miggy one.

Kid Chaos was astounding technically, but not as fun, IMO. See, you first cited teh technical plus points of the game instead of its playability I liked Mr. Nutz a bit more. It was a bit easy, but I always loved Sonic, and that was as far as I got to Sonic on the Amiga. The game REALLY REALLY borrows too much from Sonic, not that I'm complaining eh?

That is a fair point Akira, Asm hasn't taken off for Linux in a major way.

But I think everyone will agree that the vast majority of software runs faster than under Windows. It's just the geekiness of it that stops people using it.

[Tim Janssen]

It is possible to run Quik & Silva on your Fellow emulator in DOS. The version I donwloaded from Back 2 the Roots had the tendency to crash. In Fellow you must fiddle with the settings: 500 Kb, no second discdrive and real loading emulation on. Once set, the game should cause no problems.
By the way, Quik & Silva is one of the few emulated Amiga games that runs fine on my P90. -It really is time to upgrade to a new pc.

Kid Chaos is a fine game but way too difficult. If you do not use the game's cheats (type in HARDASNAILS or ARCADEGAMES as pasword) it is very difficult to finish its worlds. World 1, the Magic Garden, is an easy one but the second World is impossible to finish. You see, in the second level in this world you must finish a giant map within a very tight timelimit. I get stuck in some yellow jelly, run out of time or get killed by spikes.
If Magnetic Fields just tested the gameplay a little more it would be a classic. Now it is a bit too difficult.

My copy (crack) of Mister Nutz has the tendency to crash at unexpected moments so I have not played it much. From what I have seen I think the game runs too fast on my Amiga. Once that squirrel is running he is very difficult to control. The game has some very annoying details: There are some stars to be collected throughout the game but they bump on and off the screen. I hate it when I have to run behind some bouncing power-ups. Second, I am not a big fan of these typical Mario-bros gamemaps in which you move from one location to an other.

[Akira]

Well, I try nothing but Winfellow DOS. I have a P133, you know It's not time to upgrade though! Hehe, I like pushing it to the limit I'll give the game a try then, thanks for the tips!

About Kid Chaos, I agree the gameplay is a bit unbalanced. I sill won't be cheating it Once you memorized what you have to do, the time-limit level gets easier. This demands many plays thru the game, of course.

I haven't tried the copy of Mr. Nutz I dloaded, I only play with the one I have on disks. It runs just fine, no lockups. Yes, the game is FAST, and the inertia is loose, this borrows quite a bit from Sonic (though Sonic's inertia is better balanced). It's a matter of getting used to it. By the way, the stars did not bounce, the Hitpoints did. And it was kind of annoying to loose more hitpoints trying to grab the one you just lost (and the fact that they laugh at you is not funny either. My, how I cursed those sneaky basts!).
However if you learned how to trick'em, it was easy to catch'em. It was just a matter of trying to stay still once you were hit, so they fall from the hitpoint counter right onto your head. Failing this, you had to corner the bastards.

Still, the game was too easy. And the Mario-like map, should have been left out. Not only is shitty to walk around it, but in one of the worlds (can't remember which one, teh purple map methinks), you could get LOST and wander for minutes around it. I hated that!!! Brian the Lion's map was fine. There's another fine platformer!

[Tim Janssen]

P133? Once I played emulated Amiga games on my friend's Pentium 200 but I was not impressed with the screen update. -Especially when it had parallax scrolling. Let's hope my future P4 1,5 Gigahertz can handle emulated Amigas.

Brian the Lion is one of the most difficult platformgames I've ever played. (Hmm, I just discover I use the words "most" and "difficult" very often ).
Once you have completed the Volcano Islands the levels get shorter, number of enemies and traps increase and the game almost becomes impossible to finish. It is a nice game, though. I especially like the level were you fly on the back of a bird and must shoot the enemy-birdmomma. The bonuslevels are also very nicely done.

Although I have never tried next-gen platform games like Rayman 3D, for me nothing beats Turrican. But then again, I am a bit biassed to that ancient game. It was the first game with multidirectional scrolling I had ever seen.

[Akira]

Who needs decent refresh speeds? I have a frigging Amiga I only use the emus to test the games I download, once. If they are pish, I don't even bother sending' em to the Amiga.

About next-gen platformers... there are not any more 2D platformers anymore. Rayman is what I call a '3D roamabouter', like Mario 64. The gameplay is very different and, to me, they are not games in the same category as the good old 2D platformer, which is, today, quite dead, except for the new incarnations it's getting on the Gameboy Advance (god bless that little machine!).

Rayman on the Jaguar qas quite good though. 2D platformer with raytraced graphics. The Gameboy Advance version will be based on this cool Jaguar ver.

What a coincidence... Turrican 2 was the first game I've seen with multidirectional, copper banding and parallax scrolling. I was amazed by all these technical treats

[Tim Janssen]

I just remember a demo from a group who call themselves Timex. In this demo you could control the Turrican-sprite. It had the typical Turrican 1 first world backdrops. The sprite lead you to different parts of the demo.
Now what is the name of the demo?

[Bloodwych]

This midi sounds awesome on my sblive! with 32 meg soundfonts!

Turrican 2 Midi

Right click, save as and Relive the tune!

[RCK]

haha, the funny midi sound
not bad on my monster sound.

Bloodwych, have you ever heard the "official" remix of turrican by Chris Huelsbeck ?
(on his turrican CD soundtrack)

[Bloodwych]

Never heard the official remix, where can you buy the cd? :hooooo

[RCK]

Starting with the official website of Chris is a good idea
http://www.huelsbeck.com/

[Chain]

is it really "Timex" group? i have two demos from timex and none is in turrican style..

[Tim Janssen]

The Timex demo featuring the Turrican sprite was reviewed in magazine CU Amiga in July 1991. The graphics were taken from the first world of Turrican 1. I wish I could scan that article with pictures from the demo. Just wait until I get my new computer...

[Drake1009]

I voted for the 2nd game in the series. I remember the first long time when I played the game, I had a ½(Or maybe less) level demo of Turrican 2 on my C=64. I can't remember how many times I beat that part of the level. It was just up till right after you kill that dragon thing stuck to the ground (As far as I remember). Still though it wasn't much of a level I kept replaying it again and again, it must've been the demo I've ever spent the most time on. Never saw a finished release of the game. Throughout the playing of the demo I found a good deal of secrets too, one of them turned out to be a small tunnel which led to another part of the level some way behind the dragon thing. It would seem that the demo stopped with a trigger in the level which I thus managed to bypass and there was some more of the level. I don't know if this was intentional or if they had finished the first level, decided to release a demo of it and just didn't want to cut the level down thinking their triggers would keep people from playing on. There were other triggers in the game too though so I never got to the end.

I just remember how awestruck I was at the graphics and the rapid gameplay.

After I got amiga emulation I found the 3 games and tried them out. I had forgotten most about the game (Don't even know how to use the ball like thing you can do to roll around with any longer). I still think the 2nd game is the best of the 3. I don't know if it's because I spent so much time on the demo or if it was because it really had a lot more to offer.

As for the Kid chaos/Mr. Nutz discussion here. I must admit I never really liked Kid chaos, maybe because I didn't play it too much to find out the cool things about it. I really liked the map part of Mr. Nutz which would allow you to get a feeling of going somewhere instead of just romping through levels again and again without knowing how far you've got.

[Akira]

IMO Kid Chaos was amazing technically, but Mr. Nutz was far more playable and 'Sonic-like;, which is great in my book I didn't likethe map parts as much because you could actually GET LOST in that bloody map of the second (or was it third?) world!

[Drake1009]

I don't know about getting lost on the second or third world Akira. I didn't play too long and I couldn't find the last level in the first world. And I don't know how to save the game either so I couldn't save and continue later on.

[Akira]

Heh, told ya, if you got lost on the FIRST map, good luck on teh other worlds.

To save you need to use a Star on the Save teleporter. It's really easy. There is a level where you have to fly to the top to reach the exit, use it to gain a huge number of of gems, thus earning a Star.

Remember, red-flagged levels ar the only ones you need to complete to go to the next world. The last level is somewhere over there, I think you need to hop thru a few teleporters. Will check it out at home.