Turrican II

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The year is 3025 and after the first defeat of Mogul the world was very calm. United Planets Freedom Forces were responsible to keep peace. But everything changed after the Avalon 1 (one of their spaceships) has been attacked by an unknown battle-cruiser that came from deep space. While being the only survivor from this fight, Bren McGuire (the new Turrican), needs to take his revenge against those who killed all his partners. So the hero must fight, shoot, walk across traps and confront a variety of alien species of different potential and size. Here's where the challenging story begins. Turrican must jump across many platforms, kill the enemies and gather all tokens available since they grant him with energy, extra bombs and new weapons. His main weapons are a rapid-fire assault rifle, an electro-sweeper plus the ability of becoming a rolling sharp razor (which can kill anything in its path) much like its predecessor. Do not forget to keep an eye on the time limit, as it will be an instant death! Unlike other games of its type, Turrican II contains also three levels of horizontal shooter action in the spirit of R-Type.
The action is fun, mindless and absorbing, and the huge range of enemies and bonus pods keeps it that way for hours. This game is a perfect example of "coin-op like" high quality arcade shooter released on every 8bit/16bit platforms.
The game actually shows what the 16bit machines (Amiga and ST) could do back in the 90s in terms of graphics and sound, especially the Amiga OCS.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Amiga version is fantastic, with its strongest point being the sound. Apart from the great graphics featured (64 colors on screen, detailed backgrounds and smooth sprite animation), the sound FX and music scores (especially during the intro of the game) are among the best I've ever listened to. Note that, a PC (MS-DOS) version released a couple of years later (!) and was better in graphics (256 colored screens) running in VGA mode and similar in-quality Amiga sounds (with the use of a Sound Blaster 16 or better, card).