Turrican (Commodore 64, 1990)

What is it?: A shoot-'em-up, 1990, Commodore 64, ported to many platforms.
What computer will it run on?: N/A.
Tags: Not on the PC.

With Turrican, the 8-bit era came to a fulminant conclusion. It was the last major game designed primarily for an 8-bit platform (its own sequel Turrican II was already designed primarily for Amiga and Atari ST), and what a game it was: some consider it one of the best games ever.

From an Interview with Julian Eggebrecht

Just as the idea for Katakis actually came from Irem via R-Type, Turrican was inspired as well. In 1988 everyone at Rainbow Arts was playing Super Mario Bros. and Metroid on the NES. RA then cloned Super Mario without mercy with Giana Sisters, while Turrican leans heavily on Metroid. The second big influence on Turrican was Data East's arcade machine Psycho-Nics Oscar—from there stem many weapons, backgrounds, and the main character.

The first version commenced was the C64 version and the whole game took its bearings from the C64. Back then nobody thought that a fluid Amiga version was possible—no game had yet achieved fluid scrolling in all directions at this point. In the end Turrican made this breakthrough […] One of the most important elements of the game was Chris Hülsbeck's music. Our first cooperation with Chris was R-Type, and with Turrican we finally had the opportunity to use all the sound resources of the Amiga.—(German original here)

Versions

Few games were ported to as many platforms, but not to the PC.

1990: Commodore 64; Amstrad CPC; Sinclair ZX Spectrum; Amiga; Atari ST
1991: Game Boy; Sega Genesis; TurboGrafx-16

Besides, there was Super Turrican on the SNES in 1993.

From an Interview with Julian Eggebrecht

Versions

Links