shmups.system11.org

Been curious about Mega Turrican, it's a game I'll give a whirl to sometime. I've listened to MT and T3 soundtracks quite a few time already though and to my ear, Mega Turrican sounds more pleasing overall. I'm an FM synth junkie so maybe I'm biased towards that kinda sound. But they did a bangin' job here on the ol' YM2612.

MT seems to have more screen size too. and a bit better visuals overall

If I remember right, Turrican 3 is zoomed out more and has better weapons, which is more than enough to win me over.

The golden armor trick is quite cheesy and I don't advise playing with it, other than that it's mostly minor grievances in an otherwise nicer game.

Again...if I remember right.

It's a pretty good game. I played the Amiga version first of all and at the time that was really decent.

I'm probably committing blasphemy here, but I would really appreciate a few "quality-of-life" improvements in Turrican 1+2. I'm talking about something like a completely optional "Sega Ages" mode.

As someone who grew up with consoles and missed the Amiga train, I must admit that I prefer Mega and Super Turrican over the originals. I totally get the appeal of the Manfred Trenz-developed games, with their sprawling, non-linear design, but I've tried several times and, for the life of me, I just can't get into them. Which is kinda ironic, because if I discovered anything during my super- LTTP experience with Amiga's library is that I generally seem to gravitate towards German-developed games. Yet, classic Turrican always gives me a hard time.

Coming from a "console gaming" background, the lack of i-frames feels extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY, weird to me. Having a life bar puts me in a false sense of security when even the easiest enemy can stay on top of me for several frames and just drain my energy in the blink of an eye. On top of that, unfortunately, the games commit one of the trademark sins of "western-developed side-scrollers from the 8/16 bit era", where the camera doesn't scroll until your character has reached the edge of the screen. So, about 75% of your FOV is wasted on seeing what happens behind you (which you don't need) with only 25% of the screen available for seeing what's coming ahead of you. This, alone, results in many frustrating situations but, when combined with the lack of i-frames... it's a cocktail that's very difficult to stomach. I also have mixed feelings about the timer. On one hand, it gives the game a sense of urgency which I appreciate. On the other hand, though, I'm not sure if I want a timer in a game with focus on exploratory level design, at least not in my first, blind, playthrough (I felt the same way about Granada when I was trying to get into it back in the 2000s).

I hate being so negative towards a classic like Turrican, but it's frustrating because I feel that I would otherwise enjoy the game. .I don't mind the non-linear level design, if anything, I enjoy exploration in video games. The collect-em-up aspect is also OK with me. The soundtrack is fantastic and absolutely deserves all the praise it gets. I also love the simple and clean "proto-16bit" style of the graphics and that, SEGA-style, blue sky in the opening level is glorious. Frankly, a simple rom hack would do the trick.

Other way around : Mega Turrican is zoomed out more than Turrican 3.


You might be right about the weapons though, I haven't checked into that.

I had to double-check and I think I was right, actually. T3 seems very slightly more zoomed out, and yes, the weapons are way more satisfying in it.

^^^^^^^^^^
This surprises me : Mega Turrican is 320 pixels wide and T3 I think is 250 or so pixels wide. I watched a side by side video last week and some boss screens had slightly scrolling playfield in T3 to show the whole setpiece whereas in MT everything fit on one screen since it's wider and therefore had no need to scroll. I'll go check that side-by-side video gain and report back.


EDIT : yep, you can see here on the starting screen that Mega Turrican is a bit more zoomed out. On the right edge there's more of the door revealed, as well as the whole pillar and some space past it. There's also a bit more screen on top and bottom.

Yeah, these two design choices is probably the main thing that makes most of this series completely unplayable to me.
NES Super Turrican is an awful game.

I bought Mega Turrican many years ago, but never got around to playing it. I'll be sure to give it an unbiased chance at some point.

Mega definitely has a bigger visible playfield. Due to the overlaid HUD, you can see the whole 320x224, while the Amiga game fills 24 of its 232 vertical pixels with an opaque HUD. The resulting playfield size is 304x208. Thus, Mega Turrican shows 16 pixels more on each axis, as the sprites and background elements are identical in size across both platforms.

added a pic to my previous post

@Herr Schatten you explained it better than I could, nice detailed info

@Hornet I'm with you there, I'm a console kid through and through as well (even though C64 was super popular here. and Amiga and Atari St even had a bit of a presence, and MS-DOS machines + IBM clones were huge of course). The lack of i-frames makes the game feel completely alien to me(like, it messes up with my playing at a completely structural level). oh and that second point too is irksome. Having said that, I still plan on giving Mega Turrican a spin soon.

Interesting. I wonder why I misremembered it so much.

You must unlearn what you have learned.

Seriously, I can understand how this can be irritating if you are used to something else, but in the end it's just a different way of handling damage, not necessarily a worse way. If your energy is gone in the blink of an eye, it's the game's way of telling you not to linger on top of objects that hurt you. I never really felt like the damage handling was ever detrimental to my enjoyment of any of the games. After all, what you usually want is avoid damage altogether, no matter how it's actually handled.
Remember what BIL says about Ninja Gaiden: Sure, the punishment for failure is harsh, but the solution is not to get mad at the mean game, the solution is not to fail in the first place.

I can get behind the criticism regarding the scrolling, but the Turrican games aren't like Contra, where you go in all guns blazing, instead you tend to inch forward, so it's less of a problem. Nonetheless, I wouldn't mind at all having the "camera" repaired. There's clearly room for improvement.

Regarding the time limit, I always thought it was more than generous. In fact I think the only level where I ever ran out of time was 1-1 of T2, and only if I really explored every nook and cranny. Of course doing that, you pick up a ton if extra lives, which softens the blow of losing one to the time running out.

It's been a while, but I remember the first two titles being piss easy?
The only reason it took me a while to finish the C64 versions was the sheer length of them.

Super Turrican is a bit harder, but still pretty mild really.

You remember it right. Back in the day, I used to finish them with 20-30 extra lives left, and I'm not a great player.
I always saw them less as games and more as jukeboxes that give you something to do while you enjoy the music.

I'm partly to claiming it's absolutely a worse way.
Defending the choice sounds to me a lot like defending typical Euroshmup tropes

The energy bar punishes you accordingly for the severity of your mistake, as Schatten correctly stated.

As for the scrolling, if you read the manual or look at the title screen there is a piece of invaluable advice: shoot or die! These level are designed to be roamed with autofire blazing, the only time I inch forward is when I'm down to my last microgram of health. There's enough easily found 1-ups and health-restores to allow you to plow through the stages quite recklessly.

The issue here, though, isn't that the game is "too hard", but that it's extremely bad at giving the player any kind of feedback, which in turn makes it less enjoyable.

You must be talking about the Nes one right? I don't know what feedback you need other than your lifebar chugging down from healthy green to danger red accompanied by a really annoying dzzzzzzzrrnneeeooowwwwwww noise. (no sfx for C64) Everything was consolized after the second game anyway. Why is the entire series unplayable?

Yes, the NES one is the worst offender. They aren't all that bad.

I do get where Sumez is coming from, and last time I tried to play the Amiga version it felt pretty weird, but with the amount of platforming in Turrican I just don't think a collision or knock-back would work. It's a funny game full stop, although it seems quite generic to look at, there really hasn't been much like it since at all. Which reminds me, I've still got Gun Lord that I need to check out properly on Switch.

As a huge Turrican 1+2 fan, I am also available it's shortcomings and I won't argue with anyone who attempts to criticize it.

However, I would argue that it's shortcomings are a part of it's charm. Let me explain.

First, it belongs to the group of games that have been designed around the technical limits of C64. Ideally you should design any game around the experience you want to give, but in the twilight years of C64 the game designs went technology first.

Therefore, the sometimes irritating push-scroll. Second thing to notice is that the game is designed and balanced against it. Since you die often in a split second and often in unfair ways, the game balances this by adding enormous amounts of extra lives and powerups.

This, in turn has been implemented by hiding them, which greatly benefits the exploration. Once you learn the levels and know where the hidden powerup tiles are, you will never be outnumbered by enemies.

The amount of different weapons and methods to dispense enemies is bordering comical. In fact, most of them hardly pose any threat to you unless they manage to take you out by surprise due to nasty push scrolling.

But it is always easy to recover. All it requires is just a little bit of effort on exploring the map.

And as for exploring. The levels can be vast, exhausting, unfair, you need to have maps to fully navigate them. But the way they can surprise and reward you is something that is mostly gone from games today.

Reason for this is: most games are made so "professionally", and also so safely, that they hardly take any risks and deviate from the norm. Anything that frustrates or wears down players is promptly cut or fine tuned. What this means is, that none of the level design in games can surprise you any more. Once you learn the thinking and visual language behind modern game levels, you can pretty easily guess what's coming behind the corner. There are no surprises and even "secrets" are highly predictable.

Turrican, in other hand, revels in amateurish glee. Small opening hole in the level can lead into huge rabbit hole filled with new power ups, enemies, even hidden boss - especially in c64 version.

Manfred Trenz was no original, he distilled everything he liked at the time - Metroid, Darius, arcade shooters into one game with a naive joy without thinking twice whether the elements complemented each other. He simply fine tuned and balanced the game until it all worked.

The amateurish approach of Turrican and pure love that has been poured into it feels like a fresh breath in a time, where everything has been so focus tested to death, that nothing offers you any surprises any more. It is flawed, and I love the flaws just as they are. I don't want Turrican to be any different or better - I prefer it exactly the way it is - an amateurish, passionate ode to joy for 80's games.

I should note that this applies only to Turrican 1 and 2.

I want to know what they're going to do about the Amiga games being designed for 50hz.

This is definitely a valid argument. I generally tried to do that during my time with Turrican and Amiga games in general. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. It definitely worked in the case of, say, Lionheart. It took me several attempts to get past its "anti-console" control scheme, but i eventually went from "are you kidding me?" to "holy shit, this game is great!". With Turrican, though, it's a bit more complicated. FinalBaton described my experience perfectly when he said "it messes up with my playing at a completely structural level". I even tried to approach its damage handling as a "forgiving one-hit-death mode" instead of a "console-style life bar". And it almost worked...until the camera ruined it for me. As I said in my previous post, unfortunately, I just can't handle both at the same time. The timer, on the other hand, isn't really a "problem" (I like the sense of urgency), it only bothers me during the learning process when I'm trying to familiarize myself with the non-linear level design. But this didn't stop me from loving Granada and it won't stop me from enjoying Turrican.

I plan on buying the collection and giving the game another go. But I'm also crossing my fingers for that optional "Sega Ages" mode (especially if it's true that M2 is handling this).

I'm a bit concerned about this being the first attempt at commercial Amiga emulation ever, as far as I know.

Many Amiga games were ported on other systems, reworked and remastered, but this Is the first time a collection includes actual Amiga software. I wonder how they'll handle this. I guess we can discard keyboard support altogether.

Not really into the series, but I like what little I've played of it (those camera issues aside), and I pick up M2's work on principle. Very interested to hear if they're developing this.

Doesn't the Evercade already have some Amiga stuff?

Nope, nothing of the sort. It will undoubtedly have some franchises which originated on the Amiga or had at least an episode on Amiga (Jim Power, Drakkhen, the Immortal) but the catch is, they're all easily-emulated consoles ports (snes and megadrive in such cases).