Super Turrican Longplay (SNES) [50 FPS]

Developed by Factor 5 and published by Hudson Soft in 1993.

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I recently completed a longplay and review of Super Turrican 2 for the SNES and was pretty impressed with Factor 5's efforts. One of my viewer's comments mentioned that Super Turrican was a superior game, so I decided to check it out.

As with all Turrican games, the story once again sees the brave crew of the United Freedom Forces Avalon 1 fighting the tyranny of The Machine to prevent enslavement of humankind. Interestingly enough, the introduction mentions that the planet in danger this time is Katakis, which also happens to be the name of a horizontal shoot 'em up released by Factor 5/Rainbow Arts and makes me wonder whether the two games are set in the same universe.

Having played the game all the way through, it feels like Factor 5 used Turrican II as a reference design and then tailored the game to the strengths and capabilities of Nintendo's console with the end result being quite impressive.

This game feels much closer to the look and feel of the Turrican games released for the Commodore 64 and Amiga home computers than it's sequel does. I think the main reason for this is the level design in Super Turrican is much closer to the hime computer versions in that it retains the non-linear, exploratory elements from those versions where you can find secret locations and bonus power-ups if you look closely enough.

The weapons and power-ups in Super Turrican remain consistent with the game's predecessors, including the iconic 360-degree beam attack. However, Factor 5 decided to change this particular weapon's design so that it actually freezes enemies for a short period of time instead of actually doing damage, which is an interesting decision.

Also present and correct is the gyroscope attack, allowing the hero to transform into a spinning ball that provides temporary invulnerability and damages enemies on contact. Although the gyroscope was available in Super Turrican 2, there really wasn't any call to use it. Fortunately, it's more relevant here as Factor 5 designed this game's levels to include bonus areas and hidden passages that can only be accessed using the gyroscope, another feature that I associate closely with "classic" Turrican games.

Hidden throughout each level are diamonds (another Turrican staple) and bonus lives. These are rarely in plain sight and one of the challenges of the game is trying to locate and collect all lives and gems on each stage. Once a world has been completed, a summary screen tells you how many gems/lives you collected and how many were missed. It's great that Factor 5 did this since it encourages the player to try for 100% completion, but I'm not sure whether it's even possible to collect everything since certain levels have more than one route to the level exit and most of them are designed so that it's impossible to retrace your steps.

Another thing I really liked about this game are the graphics. Factor 5 took the design and art concepts from earlier games and took advantage of the SNES's graphics capabilities to make everything look even more polished. The robotic fist boss from previous games returns and features some very cool sprite scaling and rotation effects. The way the background in the final stage "throbs" is also a neat effect, making the place feel like you're inside a living organism rather than just a static level.

Audio and sound effects are great, with Chris Huelsbeck writing the music and sound effects. The tunes in the game still aren't as good as those from Turrican II for the Amiga, but they're still pretty good. I was also quite impressed with the clarity of the music in this game, with everything sound particularly sharp and precise.

The only niggle I have with Super Turrican is that a little of the magic from the C64 and Amiga versions seems to have been lost amongst the glossy graphics and polished presentation. The SNES (and Mega Drive) had a slew of top-grade platform/shooting games which delivered the kind of gaming experience that was much harder to replicate on the hardware of the 8-bit and 16-bit computers of the day.

Super Turrican is certainly a good run-and-gun shooter and it certainly feels more like a Turrican game than it's sequel. However, and I'm aware that this might be a case of rose-tinted spectacles, Super Turrican just doesn't seem to sparkle quite as brightly as it's computer-based counterparts.
#retrogaming