Turrican II: The Final Fight

The Good
I never found a game on the Amiga platform which captured my senses as much as the "exception-from-the-german-games-are-crap-rule" Turrican II - The Final Fight. Manfred Trenz really put his heartblood into this game and what came out was pure magic. I mean, six huge worlds, all entirely different, with many secret areas, tons of hidden stuff to find and so many enemies, together with unreal graphics and by far the best music (done by the absolute god of Amiga music, Chris Huelsbeck) - everything on ONE floppy disk! Thrown in was a very fast loading scheme which caused minimal wait between levels - heart, what do you desire more?

Well - for the graphics, the game was by far superior of any other game back then (and it still is). Everything hand-drawn of course, with a big amount of details. The level design had something most other games lacked - originality! Not only the path went up-down-left-right and back again, the levels changed when you walked through them (backgrounds were different, different graphic sets etc.)

And the levels "interacted" with the player: the first level had a storm, blowing enemies, leaves and other rubble towards the player. You couldn't get past the storm, but you could a) get hurt by the flying enemies or b) use the force of the storm to climb some high ledge and get a bonus. Later on, you got into a shaft where air was blowing from the floor. You had to use the power of the air draft to get up a high floor.

Turrican II also featured the most innovative methods of hiding secret stuff. The most interesting was a cache of 6 or 8 extra lives lying on top of a shaft - which you just fell down (and they only appear after falling down). How to get them? Well, the walls give in when they are shot, so you could shoot "steps"... go figure ;)

The enemies are also great - ranging from your basic Mario-esque "stomp-on-me-to-kill-me" dudes over nasty exploding shrapnel-bombs to very large bosses.

Everything shines even more with the ever-changing background music in every section of the level. Huelsbeck really did an amazing (I would say: his career's best) job scoring this game with nice tunes ranging from funny, joyful melodies over oldschool minimal electronics (Mr. Walker & His Factory is my favourite track there) to ambient noisescapes like in the last world. The soundtrack is so good it was also issued on CD - and I really love that CD ;)

Words can not really explain why this game is so great - you better try it yourself.

The Bad
It's pretty hard and sometimes not really fair, but with all the extra lives, it has been proven as doable.

The Bottom Line
If you can get the Amiga version on a real Amiga or a REALLY powerful PC with an emulator - go play it! But never play this game without sound since the music is simply out of this world!

The Good
The best 2D Action platform game ever done for DOS. Technically, I disbelieved what I saw the day I launched it on my 386Dx40 PC, the animation was just unbelievable for that time.

It used Mode X graphics 320*240 and let setup 50Hz display mode when all games used the 60Hz Dos refresh rates. This PC version delivers smooth parallax scrolls never seen before in a prior PC game, a 100% perfect animation. Even more astonishing were the shooter stages which used multiple smooth parallax scrolls (more than 4) , and yes it worked on a 386Dx40!

Add to it the MOD music format, which played better that in the Amiga version!, this in a time where the majority of games used FM chip (MIDI) music.

A programming gem that is a proof of the classic 386/VGA PC superiority over the classic Amiga once and for all. Thanks Mr Abrash!

The Bad
Hard to start on modern Pc's

The Bottom Line
You have to play this game, be it on PC or Amiga.

The Good
Super Nintendo - Super Mario World (or Donkey Kong Country) Sega Genesis/Megadrive - Sonic the Hedgehog Commodore Amiga & Atari ST - Turrican II

Without a doubt, Turrican II is among the best arcade-platformer games of the 16-bit era. How does it compete on the 8-bit C64?

While the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum had to make sacrifices to make it possible, rendering it somewhat inferior to the previous game, the C64 version... didn't change at first glance. The main sprite had just a minor rework, and the overall graphics looks much of the same. I already detailed the technical achievements of the Turrican franchise in my review of the previous game. The smooth scrolling and high framerate animations are still present, although the graphics feels a little bit more blocky. Once you have seen the Amiga version, you will miss the amount of pixel-art details and beautiful colors (especially the background of the first level), when you look at this version.

It does not have a digi speech and a cool loader screen like the first Turrican, it has a high-resolution image slide-show and text instead that tells the story of the game --with huge gaping plot holes, I have to add. But the game has not much relation with the intro story anyway.

In the aspect of sounds, it is way inferior to the Amiga version, because it lacks the awesome music compositions by Chris Huelsbeck. They are a masterpiece! We only get sound effects instead, they are the same like before, and they are very melodic. The C64 version has a few music on its own, in the intro, at the title screen, on the spaceship levels and perhaps elsewhere too.

The gameplay... well in short, it took the most of that Turrican was, and polished it. Now we can turn into a wheel at any time for example. The levels feel even bigger and twisted. There are so many secret places to explore it is amazing... of course, you have to keep an eye on the time limit. Now instead of a laser, we have kind of a "flame thrower", which is the most convenient weapon. I like to stick with that. But accidentally I always run into the "bounce" weapon power-up, which replaces the fire-waves with balls that bounce off walls and split into smaller projectiles. It is nice in some cases, but not as useful as other weapons. Of course the graphics of the projectiles are simplistic here. I noticed that the boss fights are much harder than in the Amiga version. The boss of the second auto-scrolling spaceship stage differs especially: on the Amiga, it scrolls in from the right in fully assembled form in an open area. While on the C64 you first see it in the foreground passing by (as an enlarged sprite), then you meet with its "arms" in a narrow tunnel, and then... err, I didn't got further XD

The Bad
It is harder to get into - the tricky maziness of the first level can scare away newcomers, like me, when I first tried it. I recommend the previous Turrican first.

Oh yeah, the time limit is back!

I am not so fond of the auto-scrolling spaceship levels in the middle of the game. They are there do drain your lives.

Should I mention the lack of Huelsbeck's soundtracks as a problem?

The Bottom Line
The franchise, despite the subtitle called "the Final Fight", didn't end with Turrian II, nor was intended to. But we all know why it is the final: this was the developers' last original C64 production, a tearful but confident goodbye to the old scene. It is everything that Turrican is, and even bigger. A masterpiece! And you know how they say: "it is the best to quit while you are on the top".

The Good
To keep it short and sweet: Amazing graphics (particularly the backgrounds), great selection of weapons, excellent level design, great sound effects and absolutely AMAZING music.

The Bad
It's challenging, not for the faint of heart or keyboard. Also, be warned - it's a very difficult game to run on even relatively modern machines (Pentium-class).

The Bottom Line
This has got to be the shortest review I've ever written :-) Bah. Just play the game, it rocks. Has to be the single best Amiga-PC conversion ever made.