For the longest time, I have believed that, in order to get the most out of any video game, you have to experience it in its most true, original form, and by that, I mean you would get the most out of a game by playing it through its original release on its original system. While I don’t agree with that now, I can kinda see where young me would come from with that argument, because after all, having the physical copy of a game to play on the actual system would probably leave a much bigger impact on the player rather than, say, just loading it up on your emulator like any other game and playing it from there. However, now that I am a true pirate at heart, I have come to learn that some games can not only a lot out of a game even with the addition of emulation, but you can also hypothetically enhance the experience thanks to all the quirks that come with it. This isn’t even limited to emulation either, as there have been plenty of collections or re-releases of a game out there that do add several features that you would typically see from an emulator, which ends up ultimately making the process of playing the game that much less painful. That became all too clear to me whenever I had decided to play through the original Turrican.

Truth be told, I had no idea that this was a thing for the longest time, as I’m sure most of you probably don’t know what it is either. The only way I ended up finding out about it was when I saw some people logging it on this website a long time ago, and it did somewhat catch my eye, so I looked it up, and it actually looked like it could be pretty fun. So, I went ahead and decided to play the original game… after a long time of waiting (don’t ever change, Mega), and based on what I have played, there are many ways that I could absolutely tear this thing to shreds, as it has a lot of issues. However, at the end of the day, I ended up enjoying it enough not just because of some solid elements that do shine through all the rubble, but also with the way that I played the game that did make a huge difference, and will definitely play a big factor into how you enjoy it.

The story is somewhat generic for the time the game was made, where there was once a peaceful, man-made world in a distant galaxy known as Alterra, which was held together primarily with the help of the MORGUL unit, who all of a sudden decides to rebel against the humans due to a freak accident, so in response, the remaining humans created Turrican, a mutant warrior who is given the sole task of taking out MORGUL and taking back Alterra for them, so he sets out to do just that. None of that is explained within the game itself, and it is definitely one of those plots you can just throw to the wayside with no care in the world, as it is basically just copied and pasted form plenty of other games, just with a few words changed around to make it sound original.

The graphics are good, with Turrican himself having plenty of detail, as well as all of the environments and some of the enemies, but most of it does look pretty generic for a platformer made around this time, the music ranges from being pretty decent to pretty bad, and while I can’t say I really grew attached to any of the tracks found here, there were definitely several tracks that I would much rather listen to over others, and the gameplay/control is somewhat typical for a platformer from the early 90s, but it does mix in plenty of elements that do make it stand on its own, even if those legs that it is standing with are pretty frail and could snap in half at any second.

The game is a 2D action platformer, where you take control of Turrican, go through a set of thirteen different nonlinear levels through several different worlds, take down plenty of different enemies and get through several parts of the world using any of the weapons that you have at your disposal, gather MANY different power ups that can do a wide array of things, including healing yourself, upgrading your weapons, giving you ammo for said weapons, and so on, and take on plenty of bosses that will surely put your skills to the test, both in terms of how much you can dodge and attack, but also in how much bullshit can you put up with before calling it quits. Like I mentioned before, while a lot of this is pretty typical stuff, there are definitely a lot of combining elements that do make this game stand out from a lot of the others on other systems, even if it is held back massively due to all of its faults.

Starting with the good though, I have to bring up Turrican’s moveset, as he is quite possibly the most versatile video game protagonists that I have ever seen from the early 90s. From the start of the game, you already have access to a ridiculous amount of weapons, and as you keep going, your arsenal only builds from there, with you being able to shoot a regular shot, throw out large bombs, place mines to blow up enemies, shoot a fiery laser, roll into a spikey ball and speed around the place, and plenty of other things I didn’t even mention. That is a FUCK-TON of things you can do right out the gate, and while this may seem like too much at times (which it can be), a lot of these weapons and skills become very helpful later down the road, not only in terms of taking out enemies, but also with getting through several areas, which is really appreciated, along with several areas that change up the type of gameplay you will handle, and thus, how you will go about using these weapons.

What is also pretty noteworthy is how one goes about progressing through the game, as it is basically a mix between your standard action platformer and something like Metroid. You have one clear goal in mind, and that is to get to the end of each stage and/or fight a boss, but a lot of the levels are pretty big, allowing you to explore many different pathways to figure out precisely where you need to go. Sure, there are some levels that remove this aspect entirely, and there aren’t really too many areas that you would want to go exploring in other than the one that takes you to the end, but it isn’t as if exploring around is a complete waste of time, because you can find a MOTHERLOAD of power ups by searching around a lot of the time, making it worth it to go out of your way in plenty of instances.

Despite all of that though, none of that can make up for the game’s problems, because MY GOD, there are a lot of them. In fact, there are so much of them that we are gonna pull a Mega Man 1 here and do a quick lightning round of all of them, because if I were to discuss each point in depth, we would be here all day. pulls out sheet of paper and clears throat............ while the levels are pretty expansive and rewarding to explore, the level design itself is pretty shit, full of plenty of different traps and unfair sections that hinder your progress because of you can’t see everything clearly, you have no invincibility frames, meaning that you can go from having full health to none in the blink of an eye because you didn’t notice that one spike pixel touching your ass, there are several segments throughout the game where you need to navigate through very tight spaces while using your tools to help you go further, and trust me, doing this is much easier said than done, especially when you are fumbling around like an idiot most of the time, you are on a time limit for every stage, where it does give you plenty of time in the first couple of stages, but later down the road, it gets to the point where if you take just one wrong turn, that’ll cost you one life, and finally, the bosses can be a pain in the dick, taking up way too much room and not giving you any sort of fair opening to get shots in without getting hurt yourself, and finally, there are enemies all over the goddamn place, making it so that you will never get out of a fight unscathed, and you will always need to watch around the corner to make sure you won’t die………………. yeah. I’m pretty sure there’s one or two other problems I could’ve brought up, but I think that should be plenty to prove to you that the original version of this game FUCKING SUCKS, and I don’t know how anyone would’ve gotten away with releasing something like this back in the day.

However, note that I said the ORIGINAL version of this game sucks, which brings me back to the point that I brought up from the very beginning. You may have been wondering, if I think this game sucks and have been bitching about it for a lot of this review, why did I still give it three out of five stars? Well, that is because of one saving grace that made this entire game bearable to play: re-releases. I played through this entire thing using the Turrican Flashback collection on the Switch, which not only has several Turrican games included on it, but it also updates in them in a lot of the ways you would typically expect from one of these collections, such as customizable controls, save states, a rewind feature, and so on. All of these features, especially the rewind feature, basically saved this entire game for me, as whenever I did encounter a particularly frustrating section or an obstacle I couldn’t quite clear on my first go, I would just have to hit that rewind button or save state button so that I could give it another shot.

Now, some of you may criticize me for using these methods in order to play this game, and you may question how I can call this game good with those features present, to which I say that, because of these features, the game turned out to be a lot more enjoyable. There are aspects of this game that I did genuinely really like, and there are a lot of aspects here that, if treated with better care, could’ve made the game so much better, but because of these functions, I am able to enjoy the game at a reasonable pace with a reasonable amount of difficulty, to where I never ended up getting too frustrated and I managed to enjoy myself by the end of it. If you aren’t convinced by that, then do yourself a favor, and try to actually play the game as it was originally intended, with no save states or rewind feature whatsoever, beat the whole thing like that, and get back to me on how you feel then.

Overall, despite its many, many, MANY problems, I ended up enjoying my time with Turrican regardless of all that, not just because of that shit that I just mentioned, but also because of all the different weapons you can mess around with, the fun combat whenever you manage to get a proper rhythm going, and some genuinely fun levels that do keep you on your toes to watch out for what comes ahead. I would definitely recommend it for those who are into old-school platformers, but if you do decide to try it out for yourself, PLEASE do so using an emulator, or that collection that I mentioned earlier. It may not be the most official way to play the game, but it will definitely be the best way you can play it, and hey, who knows: you may end up liking it as much as I did. I just hope that, for the sequel, they end up toning down on the bullshit so that I wouldn’t need to rely on that stuff religiously in order to have a good time. Although, let’s be real, those silly 90s devs probably aren’t gonna do that, so I will prepare myself for the inevitable ass-whooping I will get from that game in the future.

Game #575

Is this an early 2010s Flash game? You guys remember Flash right, not like I'm a generation apart from the average BL user. As the first review for the game, I have a big responsibility as the game's salesman, even though I grabbed it for free. Special announcement for our colorblind friends: cease & desist!! This game is all about da colors, and as Hector Salamanca said: I need to see your balls! POC balls. I am also the game's only player as of writing this review, so nobody is gonna understand anything or verify my claims, but I'll behave. The first lie is no sigb of human life in the game, clearly contrasting with the cover art shown here. You remember old arcade games doing that? Do people love humans or something. Maybe if I were one it'd click.

I feel like a hacker playing this, turning the wheels to the rhythm of my heartbeat trying to get into mainframe. Ayo tho the game has no theme at all, it quite frankly... looks like turd, and we ran out of lore 5 minutes ago. It's a gameplay comes first ahh typa deal, the basic system is good but short of great, great at being short. I'll stop teasing you, it's a collection of levels (visually the same) taking place inside the Super Mario Brothers pipes, Yoshi keeps producing eggs into the fucking pipes, I never liked that dino honestly and that gringo said that balls with go in any empty holes it comes across and you huh spin the thing and throw the balls where it belongs, which is another spinny thingy, well you get the gist of it, combine 4 of the same colors in one spin thingy spinny and it explodes 🤯🤯 of happiness. Pat yourself on the back.

While doing all this makes a nice dance, it doesn't make you feel like the belle of the balls. It works enough for how simple it is, but clearly more could have been done. It controls like a mobile game despite swearing off that platform, so who knows what's happening behind the curtains. I think a collab is needed to breathe new life into this. Fortnite did it, no excuses. Deadass I think this game barely afforded one restaurant meal to the dev 💀 he doesnt want to see any colors for the rest of his life I bet. Btw the colors are the traditional red, blue, green, but there is a kinda beige kinda brownish kinda yellowish one. I seldom see this one. A rare species sighting indeed this oughta be the game's true catch after all.