Turrican

Copyright : Rainbow Arts | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Now here is a game I did not think would ever get converted to the Amstrad or any other format than 16-bit because of it?s high-paced action and fluid gameplay.

It was converted though and by the people who created it too - not an unoffical version like we had expected to see. Turrican is a droid created by the future defense team to kill and destroy all hostile life and get the hell out of there before he too ends up as scrap metal.

Armed to the teath with fire-power and the latest armour you must run through level after level, zone after zone jumping over and killing the murderous droids before they get to you and soon the rest of the population, you are our last and best hope against the machine.

Graphics

The first of the Turrican series was instantly made famous upon release as the hoards of magazines gave it a monster review and everyone ran to the shops for a copy. It?s not hard to see why it was so popular as this is one of the greatest shooters in history.

The graphics in the CPC version almost reached out and touched the improved 16-Bit versions as the colour scheme used to design the levels, bad guys and animals in the game pretty much matched. Turrican looks amazing and is well animated as he runs around in his underwear (well it looks like pyjamas anyway) and multi-directional shooting is just great. If you are willing to ignore the fact that a few frames have been removed from the characters in the game (they don?t move as fluid) then this is a corking conversion.

Sound

Sound is superb, you get to hear the woosh of the lazer when you keep your fire button held, robots and enemies explode when you kill them and there are plenty of "well done" sounds when you pick items up. The only things missing from the conversion are the excellent music track that overlayed the sound during the game and sampled speach which made an appearance in the later conversions.

Gameplay

Gameplay is amazing because this is one of the largest, if not the largest shoot-em-up games in history. The only game to challenge the playability and range of Turrican is it?s very own sequel which came later by the very same developers. If you love your shooters and have never played Turrican I recommend you give it a try and then when you complete this one download the sequel and complete that! - an amazing game.