Turrican

Did You Know?

• The title screen of Turrican is based upon the album cover Kings of Metal (1988) by the heavy metal band Manowar.
• Subsong 2 from the Commodore 64 version of Turrican, arranged by Ramiro Vaca, was copied from the song Escape from The Transformers: The Movie soundtrack.
• The Spectrum version of Turrican was voted number 36 in the Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time.

Plot

The lost colony of Alterra is a man-made world in a nearby galaxy, abandoned long ago. It consists of five self-contained habitats bio-engineered by a network called MORGUL. After a cataclysmic earthquake severed system interfaces, MORGUL rebelled. Genetic science created Turrican, a mutant warrior, to reclaim Alterra by eliminating hostile organisms and destroying the three faces of MORGUL.

Development

The series began in 1989 with a demo level of the full game, which was released in 1990. Turrican was developed mainly by Manfred Trenz and published by Rainbow Arts. Versions were released for the Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and CDTV. Factor 5 handled the Amiga, Atari ST and CDTV versions, while Probe Software developed the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum ports. Console ports for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, TurboGrafx-16 and Game Boy were handled by The Code Monkeys and published by Accolade in North America. A conversion for the Atari Jaguar was discussed by Softgold but never progressed beyond discussion.

Music

Chris Huelsbeck handled the music for the Amiga versions of the first three Turrican games, plus Mega Turrican on the Mega Drive and both Super Turrican titles for the SNES. A full orchestra played Turrican II’s music live at Leipzig’s 2004 Symphonic Game Music Concert. The Turrican Soundtrack Anthology, a four-volume digital set, came out on November 24, 2013.

Sequels

The 1991 release Turrican II: The Final Fight had its Amiga version completed first, though Manfred Trenz considered the Commodore 64 version the original design. The Mega Drive/Genesis and Game Boy versions were rebranded as Universal Soldier, a movie tie-in, while a planned Super NES version never came out. Mega Turrican, an original Factor 5 title for the Mega Drive/Genesis, was later ported to the Amiga as Turrican 3: Payment Day, with planned PC, Acorn Archimedes, and Amiga CD32 versions left unreleased. A separate NES Turrican, created solely by Manfred Trenz, loosely adapted levels from the first two games. Factor 5 developed two Super Turrican games for the SNES, released in 1993 and 1995. Turrican 3D, intended for PC and Dreamcast, was cancelled after publisher THQ halted development. Thornado, a spin-off handled by Factor 5’s US branch, was developed for the Nintendo 64 and later the GameCube but never released due to legal issues.