The Turrican series originated on the Commodore 64 and its existence was taken as proof that at a time when action games were usually made a) by the Japanese and b) for consoles only, the West could create a balls-out PC action game that can hang with the best of the genre.

Usually defined as a fusion of Metroid and Contra, both Turrican games had huge labyrinthine levels, immense firepower, and fast-paced action. The real thrill of the game is exploring every nook and cranny and discover the secrets hidden everywhere. You are packed with weaponry, and you can roll up into a ball and drop mines as you go (hmmm...).

Sadly, the C64 games are not available on the Virtual Console.

But the game we get to play is usually considered the most faithful console adaptation of this franchise! The Megadrive had a complete port that suffered from problematic sound (a crime considering the quality of the soundtrack) and controls, followed by a linear original game that seemed to miss the point.

But Super Turrican got the right idea. Almost completely original, and developed by the now legendary Factor 5 development studio, Super Turrican had gameplay reminiscent of the original games, a soundtrack optimized for the SNES's powerful sound chip (look at that Dolby Surround logo on the box!), and it controls very smoothly. Purists complain about the snow level which seems out of place for the franchise, as well as the fact that the game as a whole seems like a "patchwork" of the previous games. But who cares? It's as close to the Turrican experience as we can get without getting a C64 or Amiga.


Above: the Amiga version of Turrican, which we won't be playing
Why not add Super Turrican to your collection, and indicate you are currently playing it? And don't forget to rate it when you're done!


List of Awesome
A list paying tribute to all the brave warriors who play the game to completion
Nate38
X-pert74
Guillaume
VofEscaflowne
helaciouscrumb

List of Awesomer
To get on this list, attempt a time or score attack
nate38 - 1 hour, 20 minutes
X-pert74 - 182,400 points
VofEscaflowne - 228,000 points
Guillaume - 234,100 points

List of Awesomest
A list for one (or two). Reserved for time or score attack record holder(s)
nate38 - 1 hour, 20 minutes
Guillaume - 234,100 points

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Cool, well I said I'd participate on this one and I'll buy it tomorrow I've always wanted to try it out and now's certainly a great time for it!

For the curious: it was a close race between Super Turrican, Rondo of Blood, and Legend of the Mystical Ninja, but according to my own tally and nate38's, ST had one more clean "yes" vote. Actually, VofEscaflowne, your "well I want to get it on PSN" vote did not do Rondo of Blood a favor, haha!

Poor Rondo! Oh well, Super Turrican looks fun.

I'm gonna be kind of thrifty in a cheesy way, though--my friend has this on his Wii, so I'll be playing it from there next time we have a bash (so it should be next week sometime). I may try to storm through it in a night and just get a big BLAST OF TURRICAN.

Oh my god this conveyor belt room....I don't know how that jump is possible, but I made it once and then fell right back down again. I must be missing something...


Initial impressions

- Game is pretty tough, it only takes four or five hits to die.
- Seems like a good platforming/shooting mix. The wind and lightning in the first stage are pretty cheap, though.
- Hidden item containers are everywhere if you just fire the freeze beam randomly about. They each spew out like three of each weapon, lol. They're also very useful as platforms to find secret stuff.
- The stages are pretty big, seems like there are lots of secrets to find. Reminds me of Vectorman.
- How many stages are there? The VC description said 12, I think, but what constitutes a stage? I went through like six different areas already, but I only got one stage results screen...


Anyway, pretty fun so far.

@Guillaume

Well PSN still isn't up... So I guess it's for the best. Well for me anyway. Sorry everyone else

Oh my, the old Game Pro scoring system. That brings me back.

Well, I guess this gives me an excuse to stop playing Ninja Gaiden. But man, these things go too fast for me! I might have to do every other one or something.

Anyway, I'm happy with the winner. Rondo would have been nice too, although I already have it, it'd just give me reason to finish it. Maybe. I got stuck at this boss rush with like 5 insane bosses in a row and never went back.

@Zero
I'm stuck at the level after that. The boss keeps killin' me.

Also, I'm wondering if I'll EVER beat Ninja Gaiden 3. Sheeeesh...

Sweet, this is a game I have the cartridge of as well I'll hook up my Super NES again as soon as I can. I've gotten near the end of Super Turrican before (at least I think it was the end; it felt like an "ending" kind of level to me), but have never actually beaten it. Hopefully I can do so this time around

Wow, I've beaten Rondo of Blood and a bunch of you guys haven't. I feel netter now about never having beaten Ninja Gaiden until now (a little bit, anyway).

I'm glad Super Turrican won. I remember hearing about it awhile back and wanting to try it, but I never got the chance. So I'll definitely get in on this.

Meh.

Hm, well I think I beat the first boss. Like @nate38 said, power ups are everywhere and there's almost too much. I'm still not sure how you power them up...? I'll have to check the manual I guess. It is too easy to die and while I beat the first boss (before the result screen) easily enough, I didn't even know what he was gonna do most of the time so I feel like I just killed him without really knowing what I was doing right It's fun so far but I keep forgetting that I can't fire in directionals... or up.

I got to the end of the first area as well. I like that the game tells you how many lives you've found (4)... and how many you missed (7!). It really encourages exploration!

But I suck at this game. I stupidly wasted a bunch of lives as the "wind" segment, trying to get somewhere I couldn't, and ended up beating the first area's boss with no lives left.

Okay well I got to world 3 and that's that I must be too used to today's games being a bit more fair

FINISHED
Total play time: 2 hours, ten minutes
Completion time (according to Wii Message Board): 1 hour, 20 minutes

So yeah, each Results Screen comes after three stages. So you'll see four Results Screens total.

I was doing REALLY well until the...on rails level. One platforming section in that cost me about ten lives before I finally got through it. The snow level was also kind of a bitch.

and LOL at the end of the credits:

"If you want to contact Factor 5, write to
101 Lucas Valley Road
San Rafael, CA 94903
USA"

I wonder if they're still there =P But yeah, pretty cool game.

VofEscaflowne said:

Like @nate38 said, power ups are everywhere and there's almost too much. I'm still not sure how you power them up...?

From what I can tell, each time you collect a colored orb, its corresponding weapon levels up (and you switch to it).

So if you pick up a red orb, you'll get spread shot.
If you pick up a blue orb after that, you'll get power shot.
If you pick up a second red orb after that, you'll get spread shot level 2.
If you pick up a yellow orb after that, you'll get the ricochet shot.
If you pick up a second blue orb after that, you'll get power shot level 2.

And so on...you'll keep your upgrades until you have to use a Continue. Personally, I like the spread shot and power shot a lot more than the ricochet, but it can be good to pick up some early ricochets so that if I accidentally grab one later, it won't be the weak level 1 version. And in some cases, the game seems to put a certain weapon in an unavoidable spot, so you won't always have a choice.

I like the freeze beam a lot. It's key to keeping yourself from getting hit by the larger, faster enemies. Plus, I think enemies take a little more damage when frozen.

Don't forget about the shockwave attack thing: you get another one or two of those when you pick up a special blue orb, so you don't have to save them up too much.

Also, I didn't the morph ball very much, but apparently it makes you invulnerable to some attacks? That's what it seemed like, anyway.

I don't quite get the stage progression, is there only one exit and any other direction is to get secrets, or are there multiple exits?

PS. This game has some awesome music...

I thought there was only one exit...but I exited one level while in a tiny secret passage in the ground this morning, while I'm like 99% sure that didn't happen last night. So yeah, I guess there are multiple exits? I don't think it made any difference, though.

I kind of hate that they want you to explore yet there's a time limit. It makes missing a passage and being forced to redo a section much more annoying cause you always see the time ticking away so you almost don't want to try it out again.

Wait... this game has limited continues?

Yeah, I'm never going to finish it. Ug.

Yeah, you get three lives and three continues on Normal mode, and either five lives/three continues or three lives/five continues on Easy (can't remember which the Operations Guide said). No continues on Hard mode. I wonder if that's the only difference in the difficulties...if so, I probably won't bother playing on Hard.


Agreed on the music, it's good stuff.