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!