Genesis

Turrican

Turrican ist ein technisch sauberes und spielerisch abwechslungsreiches Jump'n'Run mit massivem Ballereinschlag. Ausgenützt wird die Konsole durch die Umsetzung leider nicht: Weder in Sachen Grafik, noch in Hinsicht auf technische Gags kann Turrican den Mega-Drive-Vorzeige-Modulen das Wasser reichen.

I got the feeling while playing Turrican that Accolade was trying to go for their own Contra or Metroid, which is evident by certain gameplay aspects that are pretty obvious when you do the math. Unfortunately, at the start of a game new players are actually supposed to be able to get somewhere without dying nine million times in a row. With bland graphics, fairly uninspired but not bad music, and floods of enemies which seem to be spawning out of rifts from hell, Turrican is a pretty bad platformer with pretty good ideas.

Your most effective weapon is the high-powered "lightning whip", but since you need to hold down a button to unleash it, it's easy to forget about. For more hints, check out Turrican's demo mode, which reveals a number of hidden secrets. Unfortunately, even when you know the secrets and take a careful approach, you'll get your ass handed to you again and again. When the game prompts you to continue, it sends your sorry ass back to the beginning of the stage. I had to resort to a cheat code to check out the advanced stages, which I determined to be equally difficult and more repetitive. I will give this game credit for its adrenaline-pumping soundtrack, which had me humming along all the while. It's the highlight of the game! All in all, Turrican is unreasonably difficult, but I found it hard to pull myself away from it, so I guess it's not all bad.