A blast from the past
A classic shoot-em-up title gets a new lease of life on today’s consoles
IN these uncertain times, like many people, I’ve been turning to the familiar for solace. Favourite movies that make me smile, warming recipes that feed the soul, and games which remind me of happier days.
One big old comfort blanket this week has been Turrican Flashback, a remaster of one of Amiga’s most beloved franchises.
First released in 1990, Turrican’s gameplay and graphics were beyond what anyone had thought the Commodore 64 was capable of.
A mix of Metroid and Psycho-nics Oscar, Turrican’s huge levels broke away from traditional linear gameplay, allowing players to explore each level and uncover its secrets.
Needless to say the game’s success saw several sequels released, the second of which – The Final Fight – was rebranded to tie-in with the release of the Jean-claude Van Damme movie, Universal Soldier, when it was ported to the Mega Drive and Gameboy consoles.
This compilation bundles the original, and The Final Fight, with Mega Turrican and Super Turrican to create a collection that’s an absolute tour de force for retro gamers.
The original is also the most simplistic, the run-and-gun action playing out a surprisingly detailed plot for a game of its time.
Where this collection hits its stride though, is The Final Fight – a superb title which has stood the test of time.
The various weapons and powerups here are unlike anything you’ll find in another game of this age and style. And unlike Mega, and Super Turrican – which both enjoyed console releases – the graphics are ruddier, a bit more pixely.
While gamers of a certain age will adore that rough and ready look, younger players might prefer to smooth off those sharp edges – and that’s where some of the new features introduced by developer Factor 5 come in.
You can customise your display, giving you several graphic options to choose from. You can add scanline and curvatures to mimic the look of a retro monitor, or smooth out those gorgeous imperfections to give you pixelless graphics, while stealing all the charm.
One welcome addition is the introduction of save states, which means you can save progress after surviving through a particularly difficult part of the game and walk away for a breather without losing your place.
There’s also the lovely rewind feature which means that if you’ve been kersplatted or slipped into a pit, you can rewind a couple of seconds of time and replay to rectify your mistake. To purists, that may feel a bit like cheating, but I found it proved very handy on numerous occasions.
Another thing which always made the Turrican series stand out from the rest was its score.
Written by legendary game’s composer Christopher Hülsbeck, it left such an impression on the industry that music from Turrican II was performed live by a full orchestra at the second Symphonic Game Music Concert in 2004.
In Flashback, the games have been painstakingly programmed to ensure the highest quality playback of the original audio, fantastic chiptunes that stay in your head for hours after you’ve closed the game down.
Mega Turrican has a very different feel from the first two, much more linear and constrained. Effectively it’s Turrican 3, but the first in the series to be designed for release on a console first, and then ported to the Amiga.
It also introduces the grappling hook to the mix of weapons and tools in Turrican’s arsenal, a fact I only remembered after I’d died several times.
For my money, the weakest of the four is Super Turrican.
Originally developed for the NES, it’s a mish mash of levels from the first two games, with a few new features heaped on – but it somehow failed to get the gameplay mix quite right.
In this day and age it’s so unusual to see Amiga games being resurrected for new consoles, and it’s even rarer that a forgotten gem such as Turrican gets a second chance.
It sounds dramatic, but it’s hard to undersell just how historic this release feels, and I can only hope that it’s the start of something very special.
Buy it: £24.99 at store.playstation.com/