Turrican

Turrican is a 1990 video game programmed and designed by Manfred Trenz. It was developed for the Commodore 64 by Rainbow Arts, and was ported to other systems later. In addition to concept design and character creation, Trenz personally programmed Turrican on the Commodore 64. A sequel, Turrican II: The Final Fight, followed in 1991 for the Commodore 64 and other platforms.

The lost colony of Alterra is a completely man-made world abandoned long ago in a nearby galaxy. Alterra is actually five colonies in one. Each self-contained habitat has been separately bio-engineered by a powerful ecosystem generation network known as a Multiple Organism Unit Link. MORGUL, for short. Early colonists used MORGUL to render Alterra inhabitable. But a cataclysmic quake severed all system interface functions, and MORGUL murderously rebelled. The few colonists lucky enough to escape told a grim tale of a higher intelligence gone berserk.

For generations, mankind sought a return to Alterra. Finally, genetic science created a saviour: Turrican, a mutant warrior, bio-engineered for the task of planetary reclamation. In the meantime, MORGUL has diligently twisted Alterran life forms to his brutal, destructive purposes. Thus, Turrican's challenges consist of eliminating hostile organisms from Alterra's five multi-level worlds and, finally, destroying the three faces of MORGUL.

The series started in 1989 on the Commodore 64 with a demo level of the full game which was released in 1990. Turrican became very popular due to its high technical achievements, demonstrating graphics which many did not believe to be possible on a C64.

Turrican was developed mainly by Manfred Trenz and published by Rainbow Arts. A later Amiga conversion was produced by Factor 5. The Spectrum version of the game went to number 2 in the UK sales charts, behind Shadow Warriors.

Turrican was also released for the Atari ST, Amiga, CDTV, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Boy, PC Engine, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. The console ports were handled by The Code Monkeys and published by Accolade. A conversion of the game for the Atari Jaguar was under discussion by German studio Softgold, but work on the port was never stated beyond the discussional phase.

The Turrican series is well known for the quality of its soundtracks. Chris Huelsbeck composed music for the Amiga conversions of Turrican, Turrican II and Turrican 3, as well as Mega Turrican for the Mega Drive and Super Turrican and Super Turrican 2 for the SNES. Music from Turrican II was performed live by a full orchestra at the second Symphonic Game Music Concert in 2004. The event took place in Leipzig, Germany. The music from Turrican was released in the Turrican Soundtrack Anthology on November 24, 2013 as a 4-volume digital download.

In addition, 'Subsong 2' from Turrican, arranged by Ramiro Vaca, was copied from the song 'Escape' of The Transformers: The Movie soundtrack. The title screen for Turrican is based upon the Manowar album cover Kings of Metal.

Turrican can be described as a cross between Metroid and Psycho-Nics Oscar. While the huge levels and the morph-ball function were inspired by Metroid, the overall graphics design and weapons were inspired by Psycho-Nics Oscar. Unlike many other action games of its time, Turrican did not force the player to complete a linear level. Instead, the player can explore each level and uncover secrets.