Turrican

Overview

Turrican is a 1990 "run and gun" shooter/platformer akin to something like Contra. The player, as the bio-mechanical mutant warrior The Turrican, must make their way across a semi-non-linear world and defeat a boss before they can move onto the next world. The Turrican can change its weapon type, but any weapon besides the default will require finite ammo which must be found in the environment first.

Turrican was originally developed for the Commodore 64 by a single programmer/designer, Manfred Trenz, but the Amiga and Genesis conversions are the best known versions. This is due in part to the music composed by Chris Huelsbeck for those versions. Turrican also saw releases for the Game Boy and TurboGrafx-16. Super Turrican (NES) is a composite game partly based on stages in the original Turrican and its sequel Turrican 2. Numerous homebrew attempts have been made to reboot Turrican for the modern era.

Story

The story (like found in the home computer manuals) is fast told: A long time ago the three-headed creature called Morgul was banished by the hero Devolon to an unknown dimension. The reason for this feat was that Morgul tormented the mankind with fears and nightmares. After Morgul's banishment fear and sleepless nights disappeared out of peoples lives. But since lately the people suffer again from a serious state of dread and fear and the nightmares come back. The apprehension is great that Morgul has returned to his kingdom. So armed with the latest weapons and technical equipment the player has to find and destroy Morgul in his kingdom.

An alternate story is given in the Genesis/TurboGrafx-16 versions: Here is Morgul (Multiple-Organism-Unit-Link) a powerfull ecosystem generation network which the early colonists used to render the world of Alterra inhabitable. After a cataclysmic quake all system interface functions were severed and Morgul rebelled. He twisted all lifeforms of Alterra to his brutal, destructive purposes. To recapture Alterra genetic scientists created Turrican, a bio-engineered mutant warrior. Turricans task is to eliminate hostile organisms from Alterras five colonies and to destroy the three faces of Morgul.