Turrican II: The Final Fight

One of the most memorable games of my childhood

A little bit overrated, perhaps, but understandably so. It was mindblowing for a game you could play at home in 1990, having some of the coolest visuals you could get at home in a sidescroller, and a legendary soundtrack by Hülsbeck. It was quite ambitious too, with large labyrinth-like levels and a clear Metroid influence, coupled with a more arcade-inspired run 'n' gun gameplay, and even several shmup segments. The game has lots of weapons, a cool secondary weapon that you spin around, and you can even turn into an invincible rolling ball. It is a marvel to behold with fuckloads of personality, and I will never stop appreciating everything it did right. The problem? Gameplay is shoddy. The developers clearly tried as hard as they could and in many ways they succeeded, but I cannot gloss over the problems. The screen scrolls way too closely to your character, the run 'n' gunning is clunky compared to prime arcade games, the labyrinths sometimes go badly with the gameplay system, and so the game doesn't really feel like enough of an action game and it does neither feel like enough of an exploring game, the bosses are very bad and the shmup levels = Euroshmup, need I say more? Turrican II is a gorgeous game and an amiga classic, but it is still a mixed bag and a missed opportunity. The game could've been superb with better gameplay design choices, especially on boss fights and shmup levels. I used to love this game, but these days I am more critical of it. I've seen it compared favorably to Super Metroid (and I used to be in that camp) but other than the killer soundtrack (and in my case, nostalgia) I think the comparison might be unfavorable to Turrican. Turrican II has flavor, I'll give it that, and it is possibly the best game in its series (which I wouldn't say has any bad games to begin with) so do check it out and see what the big deal is for yourself if you're unfamiliar with Turrican.