Turrican II: The Final Fight

In a class of its own!

In all, Turrican II is another fine product from Rainbow Arts and a perfect follow-up to the superb original. It surpasses everything they went out to achieve and is a game that any self-respecting shoot ‘em up fan should own.

It's the last day of schedule, but we can't miss the conversion of last month's C64 Gold Medal winner. The story obviously remains the same, the planet Landorin has been invaded by the massed forces of The Machine. Turrican answers an SOS and is soon knee-deep in attack robots.

So, all in all, Turrican II is one hell of a big game, with a fair old rake of diversity flung into it. In fact, this is a dead impressive piece of ST programming overall, with smooth multi-scrolling that puts some Amiga titles to shame. If shoot ‘em ups are your bag then Turrican II is well worth checking out. In fact, it is “an essential purchase”. Oh, and by the way, he is not really after his mountain bike, er, that was sort of a ‘joke’.

Turrican 2 si “limita” a riaffermare con voce ancora più forte, se davvero ce ne fosse stato bisogno, di essere IL titolo simbolo di un computer, l’Amiga, che ha ospitato nel corso della sua esistenza alcuni dei più grandi capolavori di sempre e a cui tutti i retrogamers sono indissolubilmente legati. Ha davvero senso aggiungere altro?

Turrican II plays exactly the same as its ST counterpart, although, obviously, there is rather more in the colour and sound departments with judicious lashings of multi-layered parallax scrolling dotted about. There is not really a great deal to add, short of repeating the ST review word for word, so, er, that is that basically – an essential purchase. A gigantic game – although some may feel it is a bit on the hard side.

Incredible! Although not as quite as slick as the Amiga version, what Rainbow Arts have achieved on the humble ST would be considered by many to be impossible! Gasp at the parallaxed backgrounds! Quake at the speed of alien attack! Scream at the size and ferocity of the end-of-level monsters! Even the tunes are great rather than grating! I don't think there are enough superlatives and exclamation marks on my keyboard to express how good this game is. Without any doubt the best shoot-'em-up on the ST.

Definitely a case of familiarity breeding content. Apart from the colourful sky shading and the sampled voices, the improvements on the original Turrican aren't immediately obvious. However, the excellent parallaxed backdrops are even smoother, the aliens' intelligence is better and the gameplay has been tweaked and polished until it sparkles. I expect fans of the original will already have placed their orders; newcomers should join the back of the deservedly long queue pronto.

Abgesehen von den Raumschiff-sequenzen wird bei Turrican II nichts grundlegend Neues geboten, was aber angesichts der technischen Perfektion des Spiels leicht zu verschmerzen ist: Die Animationen der Sprites und die Hintergrundgrafiken sind besser denn je, das Scrolling ist butterweich, Chris Hülsbeck hat jeden Level mit einer anderen Begleitmusik (gemischt mit zackigen FX und Sprachausgabe) ausgestattet, und die Steuerung ist hervorragend. Ballerneulinge werden wegen des hohen Schwierigkeitsgrades zwar ihre liebe Mühe haben, aber geübte Joystickartisten kommen voll auf ihre Kosten. Alles ist (irgendwie) machbar, es gibt praktisch keine unfairen Stellen, kurzum: Turrican II ist eine absolute Ballersensation!

Obwohl ein Gros der Spielelemente und Situationen nahezu unverändert vom Vorgänger übernommen wurde, ist "Turrican 2" definitiv noch besser als der erste Teil.

Turrican II ist zweifellos das technisch wie spielerisch beste aktuelle Ballerspektakel jenseits der Konsolen. Einige englische Amiga- und C-64-Programmierer müßten kalte Füße bekommen, wenn sie sehen, zu welchen Leistungen ihre Computer fähig sind. Gerade die vernachlässigten C-64-Besitzer dürfen sich endlich wieder auf ein Programm freuen, das ihren Computer bis aufs letzte ausreizt. Natürlich reicht die 64er-Version technisch nicht an das Amiga-Vorbild heran (was leider etwas Spielspaß kostet), doch im Rahmen des Machbaren wurde ganze Arbeit geleistet.

Despite these impressive changes, the basic game design is very similar to Turrican. The characters may look different and there may be extra weaponry and levels, but the gameplay itself has not been hugely modified or improved. This will come as good news to those who are avid Turrican fans and want to play more of the same kind of stuff, but your average gameplayer may find the sequel game slightly disappointing. This is a real shame, since the framework of the game is very solid and enjoyable, but simply making a few cosmetic changes and throwing in a couple of extra features just is not QUITE good enough these days. Still it is a fair enough blaster which should appeal best to all those who do not own a copy of the original.

Auf dem ST fällt der Actionknaller grafisch und akustisch naturgemäß ein wenig ab, der Levelaufbau wurde jedoch Amiga-getreu auf den Atari übersetzt. Kaufen!

Turrican II è un titolo brillante anche sul 16 bit Atari. La Factor 5 riesce, infatti, a mantenere gran parte del feeling della versione Amiga, riducendo il più possibile i comunque notevoli compromessi audiovisivi, inevitabili in una conversione tra due sistemi con potenzialità grafiche e sonore così diverse. Per fortuna la giocabilità è ottima anche sull'Atari ST dove T2 continua a garantire la sua generosa dose di divertimento.

Treue Turrican-Fans werden ohnehin zugreifen. Großartige Verbesserungen gegenüber dem Amiga-Vorbild dürfen sie aber nicht erwarten. Und für Einsteiger besteht hier akute Frustgefahr.

He can, she can, Turrican: Rainbow Arts beweist mit der 100% recycleten PC-Version, daß der stählerne Jump & Shoot-Recke noch lange nicht zum alten Eisen im "horizontalen Gewerbe" gehört. (-- Petra Maueröder)