The Turrican games were hugely impactful on a generation of gamers who grew up with home computers in the early 90s. They felt like proper, big scale, and more importantly original run-and-gun titles, at a time when arcade conversions dominated the sales charts.

Though they literally borrow from all sorts of games, most notably perhaps Contra and Metroid (in the case of Mega Turrican, Bionic Commando seems to have had its grappling hook mechanic borrowed), Turrican’s impressive, non-linear feel and emphasis on making the player feel hugely overpowered right from the start truly sets the series apart. Not to mention the fantastic soundtracks featured in each game, composed by Chris Huelsbeck.

The series debuted on the Commodore 64 in 1989, but its 16-bit versions for the Amiga and Atari ST are definitely the best starting point. It’s the Amiga version of Turrican we get here, and it is, pun definitely intended, an absolute blast.

Turrican II: The Final Fight is arguably the peak of the series, and again we have the Amiga version on this Evercade cartridge (despite the red-coloured box, which usually denotes console-only collections).

Turrican 3 is here too in its Amiga incarnation (so Turrican II’s subtitles, The Final Fight, was clearly a fib!). This is an Amiga conversion of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis title, Mega Turrican, which introduced the grappling hook and smaller, though still fairly open, levels.

So, that feels like a good place to start with the console versions of Turrican you’ll find on this cartridge. Super Turrican is a shorter, smaller game but it has aged just as well as its home computer contemporaries in terms of audio and visuals, and it plays brilliantly too. It was infamously cut down to fit on a smaller sized cartridge by its original publisher, and the expanded Director’s Cut of the game is also on this cartridge.

Super Turrican 2 brings the grappling hook-style gear to the SNES, as well as featuring fantastic presentation and the addition of vehicle-based stages. Taking full advantage of the graphical effects made possible by the SNES hardware, this Turrican title is one of my favourites in the series.

Lastly, there’s the aforementioned Mega Turrican. A darker, more claustrophobic game than others in the series, it’s still notable for really making the most of its host hardware despite limitations, as these titles always do, and it’s just as addictive and feature-packed as any other Turrican game. The Mega Turrican Director’s Cut is featured here too, and has a few improvements and changes over the original version.

Rounding out the collection are the Mega Turrican and Super Turrican Score Attack titles, which were originally intended for players to compete on, at live gaming events. In both titles, the aim is simply to score as highly as possible in each stage.

Their inclusion here is welcome if only to ensure that The Turrican Collection really does represent the entirety of the series, though you’ll likely just play the full versions (and/or Director’s Cuts) of Mega and Super Turrican instead.

Though my verdict on these games is heavily coloured by nostalgia, given that I adored them as a young teen, all of them still play beautifully, with a great audiovisual overload to boot. The  aesthetic has aged fairly gracefully.

There’s a bit of an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ attitude to enemies and power ups, with everything thrown in (and at you), without much consistency or logic, but this is definitely symptomatic of the design approaches of the early 90s, particularly outside Japan (the Turrican games hailed from European studio, Factor 5).

Every now and then, a fatal drop off screen occurs too, which feels a bit cheap on levels which can be so vast and open, especially when there’s no warning or signposting that a certain gap in the scenery leads to death. It feels cheap, but again this was not uncommon as a game design element in the 80s and 90s; it doesn’t happen often enough to spoil the overall experience either.

So all in all, The Turrican Collection feels like a great value cartridge and one that also feels, to me at least, nigh on essential as an addition to any retro gamer’s library. I’ve previously covered two collections of Turrican games for modern platforms (here and here), and had just as much fun revisiting them this time around as I did then.

You can buy The Turrican Collection from Amazon.

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