Turrican

STORY / GAMEPLAY
A gigantic, mean and powerful 3-headed demon-monster called Morgul is interfering with people's dreams, turning them into nightmares. Nightmares? Well there would be no reason for our hero Turrican to arm himself and begin his task in saving the planet for some nightmares, but it seems that some of these dark dreams become real. So Turrican 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 to refill his energy levels and gain 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). There are literally hundreds of hidden bonuses and features, thanks to the game's large maps and these make the game even more interesting! The power-ups are numerous and at times you can see some hints from other known games. Turrican is a combination of details taken from a whole host of platform shooters games. Within each stage there are dozens of places to go as well as hordes of robots, spiked pits and natural hazards to encounter! The different planets within the game are made up of various shoot 'em up and action adventure ideas, ranging from the exploration of the first level to the jet-pack based action as you fly towards Mongul's lair! But be careful, because Mongul has placed a massive guardian on each planet's exit. Turrican (and its successors) is one of the best platform shooters released on the 16bit home computers and consoles.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Amstrad CPC version is decent enough as it has colorful visuals, quite acceptable scrolling and the sprites move smooth enough on screen. Comparably, the sprites on the CPC are better detailed as they use better coloring (due to the Amstrad's larger color palette). Nevertheless, the game does not play as smooth as on the Commodore version, which is an asset for such arcade shooting games. Soundwise, the game offers a nice introductory tune plus a few typical in-game sound effects that cover the shooting, the explosions and all other actions in general.

GAMEPLAY SAMPLE VIDEO
On our video below you may watch all versions of the game.
The Amstrad CPC version is at 05:53.