The Turrican game series were among the best selling game titles released for the C64 and Amiga 500 little over a decade ago. Now Pekaro Software finished their Turrican recreation using Direct X (version 7 or newer) for Windows. More info about other Turrican games and inspired projects can be found at the Turrican SETA Project homepage.
Turrican was also on one of the consoles as well, and I believe it was the SNES — although I may be wrong about it being the SNES — surprised this was not mentioned….
Michael Lauzon
Founder & Lead Project Manager
InceptionOS Project
http://www.inceptionos.org/
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Yes, there were Super Turrican 1 & 2. Haven’t played Super Turrican 1 a lot, but at least S.T.2 rocks.
Yes, various Turrican branded titles were created or have been ported to many platforms, including for the Gameboy, Megadrive and SNES.
The orginal Turrican games were released for the c64 and Amiga first however and IMO Turrican 1&2 are still the best versions available.
T2002 is most similar to Turrican 2, “Mega Turrican” (MegaDrive) and “Super Turrican” (SNES) 1&2 were more ports/recreations of Turrican 3 for the Amiga. (Mega Turrican is almost exactly the same)
Homepage:
There is a small setup file for users of Windows 2000/XP. It contains the music in the compact TFMX format, the original from the Amiga.
I have some difficulties with the TFMX version, the music seems to stop all of the sudden on my WinXP box. The MP3 version works without problems so far though.
Great tunes, amazingly the original Amiga version of Turrican 2 is only 1 MB of total filesize. The c64 version, while missing the great in-game tunes and stereo sounds samples is IMO still the most technicly excellent version. As it’s almost unbelievable what the programmer, Mafred Trenz, managed to get out of the c64’s 64 KB of total RAM.
Wow, it’s exactly like Turrican 2 (I just played the first level). They even included that power up box on the left. This is great fun!
Actually, it doesn’t seem to be changed at all. Graphics only look as detailed as they did in the original. I’m not saying they did, but they could have done the same by embedding a hardcoded WinFellow or UAE. What’s the achievement?
The TFMX version works for me in Windows 2K.
Lest we forget.
The STe version even used the 4096 colour pallette & stereo sound, IIRC. (Woohoo! Stereo Chip Music!)
Actually, it doesn’t seem to be changed at all. Graphics only look as detailed as they did in the original.
The game uses mainly the original graphics, however the game erea has a higher resolution than the (TV res) original and better color transitions. Sadly the main sprite seems a little blokier than on Amigas. (The same effect you get from running Turrican with UAE though…) Also the Turrican wheel doesn’t spin as well as the orginal.
But the levels are larger and include many nice touches, well worth for every 2D action game lover, even if you have already completed the Turrican 2 original for the Amiga.
Ah, bummer.. now I’ll have to boot into Windows… 😐
The STe version even used the 4096 colour pallette & stereo sound, IIRC.
Turrican 1&2 were (well) ported to the ST, however they lacked the colors and stereo sound/music of the Amiga versions. I don’t think there were special STe versions though.
Also note that the STe had far more limited screenmodes available compared to any Amiga released before it. The STe surely could not display its entire 4096 color palette simultaneously, unlike any Amiga at the time.
Some maximum color screenmodes available for comparison:
STe (1989)
640×200 4 colors
320×200 16 colors
Amiga 1000 (1985)
724×482 (NTSC) 4096 colors
640×512 (PAL) 4096 colors
Some games used special copper tricks to display thousands of colors on the Amiga. Using HAM modes was not an option as it was too slow for action packed games like Turrican, thus HAM modes were mostly useful for stuff like painting and picture viewing.
Turrican II had some colorful copper generated backdrops, but IMO the best game so far which has pushed the Amiga’s OCS chipset graphical capabilities to its limit is Lion Heart:
http://www.cus.org.uk/~alexh/games/lionheart/lionheart.html
Although my favorite Turrican alternatice is so far Ruff ‘n Tumble for Amigas.
http://www.nemmelheim.de/turrican/seta.html
Turrican 1&2 were (well) ported to the ST, however they lacked the colors and stereo sound/music of the Amiga versions. I don’t think there were special STe versions though.
I’m not wading through 4 or 5 years of ST Format magazines to find the article… 😉
I do recall Turrican 2 stirring up some excitement on the ST platform, however.
IIRC, they had it displaying 512 colours on the STe. They didn’t have to make a “special STe version,” as it was just extra code in the normal distribution.
In 1992 a German “hacker” even had a stock-standard STe displaying 32,768 colours. Pretty impressive, considering that it only had a pallette of 4096…
I do recall Turrican 2 stirring up some excitement on the ST platform, however.
I owned the Turrican 2 version for Amiga, c64 and Atari ST all simultaneously!
The ST version offered rather abrupt color transitions compared to the Amiga version.
Apart from the sound/music, Turrican 1 for the ST was very similar to the Amiga version. Actually most earlier Amiga game titles were only slightly better than the ST versions so it was easier for the software companies to support both platforms.
IIRC, they had it displaying 512 colours on the STe.
This could be done by repeatingly changing the
16 colors multiple times per scanline (pretty slow though).
Many Atari ST games only used 16 colors from a 512 color palette. There were tricks however a graphic artist could use to give the impression of more colors. Most notably by using certain color patterns, which work best with higher resolutions.
http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/tv/merging_color.html
But even on a low res c64 (16 color max & pallete) this trick will give the impression of more simultaneous colors.
… you could try Manfred similar game, rendering ranger R2. I think it was only released in japan on SNES but emulation make it easy. It does not have the Chris music but it’s a very good contra type game.
now some info:
turican 1&2 are best on amiga
turrican 3 is best on genesis (known as mega turrican) it have more detailed background and is full screen.
Super turrican 1 play like turrican 1 and 2, not like 3
3 is a mix of super turrican 2 and classic turrican
Super turrican 2 play like a mix of bionic commando/vampire kiss/contra/super star wars.
A turrican “mod” was made under the name universal warrior because they were too lazy do do a real new game for the movie.
Nice OS news… heh heh. Ok I won’t complain, because I love Turrican. Turrican 2 had the best music ever in a game (until Final Fantasy 6 arrived…). Although the Amiga versions were the best, the C64 versions were amazing for what they squeezed out of the little old C64.
Bit disappointed this clone uses a lot of the old levels.
i should have said universal soldier, not warrior.
@ Meesa
Nice OS news… heh heh.
OSNews is not strictly an OS only website. We have often reported on software titles including Blender, StarOffice or Games like Doom 3 or Quake 2 in the past as well.
The same can be said with regard to our hardware reporting. Just look at it like this. An OS is pretty much useless without software and an OS is also useless without hardware, but we try to mostly focus on Operating systems.
Ok I won’t complain, because I love Turrican.
🙂
Hi
I was once on the GBA dev mailing list and Manfred Trendz said that he was working on a Turrican like Game for GBA
kml
Amiga rulez
@ AlienSoldier
Super turrican 1 play like turrican 1 and 2, not like 3
3 is a mix of super turrican 2 and classic turrican
Turrican 3 was finished together with Super Turrican and Mega Turrican in 1993 and were all produced by Factor5. All three titles use very similar graphics and are quite different from the first two versions.
Personally I greatly prefer the useful omni-directional flamethrower from Turrican 2, over a Bionic Commando-style plasme rope (MT/T3, ST2 uses a similar cyberfist). (T1 and ST1 use an omni-directional lazer)
Super Turrican 2 was released much later in 1995.
Results from a recent Turrican poll, on a Turrican community website:
Which Turrican do you like the most?
Turrican 2 67%
Turrican 1 23%
Turrican 3/MT 4%
Super Turrican 2 4%
Super Turrican 2%