Turrican II: The Final Fight

aka: Turrican 2, Turrican II
Moby ID: 6468
Amiga Specs

Description official descriptions

Turrican II: The Final Fight is a platformer/shooter as typically seen on consoles, but designed for home computers from the ground up.

Its plot is - naturally - very simple: an evil mega-robot called The Machine attacks the United Planets Ship Avalon 1, slaughtering all who resist. All - except Bren McGuire, who manages to escape and slips into the experimental Turrican bionic armor. As Turrican, he strives to show The Machine who's the boss.

Unlike other games of its type, this game contains three levels of horizontal shooter action in the spirit of R-Type or the developers' own Katakis. Six large worlds are to be explored, where you are basically free to go everywhere you want, since there is no automatic scrolling and the levels are packed with hidden extra lives and weapons. All those levels are very different: the first one in the rock desert is pretty colorful with parallaxing rainbow background and happy music, while the following worlds get darker and darker.

Turrican can get some different weapons for his arm cannon:

  • The bounce weapon which rebounds from surfaces into smaller bouncing balls when powered up;
  • The laser, which can shoots beams as large as Turrican himself when maxed out;
  • the multiple shot beam, which can shoot up to five beams covering approximately a 90 degree angle.

The Turrican suit weaponry is not limited to the arm cannon however:

  • He also can fire a continuous beam, activated by holding the fire button. This beam can be rotated around Turrican, so it is possible to blast things below him in this way;
  • Additionally, he can fire power lines by pressing the space bar, resulting in two energy bars as high as the screen going from the Turrican suit to the left and right of the screen, severely damaging enemies in the process;
  • If the space bar is pressed when the hero is crouching, the Turrican will morph into a shuriken shape. In this state, it will roll to the left or the right, damaging enemies while being invincible and small bombs can be dropped by pressing the fire button;
  • Finally, the most powerful attack, which can only be used one time per life, can be delivered by pressing the fire button and the space bar at the same time. The Turrican suit will morph into a shuriken shape and fly around the screen for several seconds, while firing shots of the different weapons in multiple directions.

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Amiga version)

12 People

Presented by
  • Rainbow Arts
16 Bit Versions by
  • Factor 5
Designed by
Based on an original design by
Program
Graphics by
Music
Soundeffects
Package Artwork by
Layout
Marketing & Press
Produced by
Managing Director

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 29 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 114 ratings with 4 reviews)

The final fight of the Commodore 64

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".

Commodore 64 · by 1xWertzui (1135) · 2013

The ultimate platform.

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.

DOS · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2002

Better than the Amiga version!

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.

DOS · by Ali Jakamy (7) · 2005

[ View all 4 player reviews ]

Trivia

Exhibition riots

Factor 5 presented a Turrican II demo on a computershow in Cologne in 1991. Only 900 copies were available for the public and overwhelming demand caused riots on the show with two people wounded.

Extra points

Shoot the very first "EXIT" arrow (pointing down), it will increase your score

Graphics Amiga

Both Amiga and ST versions feature 16-colour graphics. On the Amiga the 32-bit colour mode was avoided on purpose: according to Julian Eggebrecht:

"because 32-colour mode would use up far too much memory. There'd be too much processing time to run it at 50 frames as well. Anyway, we weren't going primarily for presentation. From the start what we were aiming for was excellent gameplay, so when it came to choosing between 50 frames, parallax, animation and 32 colours, it was the colours that had the lowest priority." (Source: The One #28, 1990/12)

With this reduction of colours 50 frames per second were achieved on the Amiga.

Music

The game's music was originally written for the Amiga using the TFMX sound format - some of it actually contains 7 channels! This was actually achieved by the technique used to play tracker modules on the Atari ST, on which the channels had to be mixed by software rather than hardware like on the Amiga. The Amiga 7 channels sound routines was invented by ST music programmer Jochen Hippel and was adapted by Chris Hülsbeck for the Turrican title tune. Basically the method uses one hardware channel of the Amiga soundchip to play 4 software mixed channels, resulting in 7 independent channels.

Original version

The German ASM magazine published a review of the Amiga version in issue 1991/03. Two issues later the Commodore 64 version was reviewed as a conversion, but this is not true. In an interview with the designer Manfred Trenz he stated in ASM issue 1991/07 that the Commodore 64 version is the only original version and all other versions are conversions.

References

  • In one of the shoot-em-up levels (just before the vertical rocks), a heli with a "KATAKIS LIVES" banner appears, shooting it results in a nice reward.
  • Did you know that the alien complex in the Turrican II extro was inspired by The Book Of Alien from 1979. A sketch of comic artist Moebius.

Amiga AGA remake

On 21 December 2022 a free and unofficial remake of the PC-DOS version of Turrican 2 was released for the Amiga. The game requires AGA chipset. The main difference is in graphics and lots of extra options and unlockable secrets. It can be downloaded here.

Soundtrack

A soundtrack CD exists and, as of 2002, can be ordered via SynSONIQ Records. It contains original music from Turrican 1-3 (Amiga) and the console versions as well as the medley from Chris Hülsbeck's album Shades.

Tracklist:

01. Opening
02. Prologue
03. Main Title
04. Techno Dungeon
05. The Desert Rocks
06. The Great Bath
07. Walker Factory
08. The Hero
09. Bionic Action
10. Air Combat
11. Climb To Survive
12. Transfer To The Battlefield
13. The Machine
14. Countdown
15. Freedom
16. Bonustrack: Turrican Medley

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #10 The All-Time Top 50 C64 Games
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1992 – Best Action Game in 1991
  • Retro Gamer
    • September 2004 (Issue #8) – #76 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Christian Klein, phlux and Sciere

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  • MobyGames ID: 6468
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by phlux.

Commodore 64 added by Quapil. ZX Spectrum added by Kabushi. Atari ST, Amstrad CPC added by Martin Smith. BlackBerry added by MAT. CDTV added by ケヴィン.

Additional contributors: MAT, EboMike, Yearman, nudgegoonies, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Jo ST, FatherJack.

Game added May 25, 2002. Last modified March 3, 2024.