Try as I might, I've never been able to get into European computer games. They're an important part of gaming history, to be sure, but something about their obnoxious art styles, arpeggio-crazy soundtracks, and unreadable fonts make them hard to appreciate for an ignorant American slob like me.
There's something universally appealing about the Turrican series on the Amiga, though. Playing to the console's strengths, the Turrican games are an impressive mix of graphical wizardry and exploration-based platforming, and they're still fun to play today, despite their extreme difficulty and sprawling and intimidating level designs.
Super Turrican successfully bridges the gap between console simplicity and the ridiculous excesses of the Amiga. It's good stuff.
In Super Turrican, you play as a robot...uh, guy, and you have to shoot all these aliens for some reason or another. Gameplay mixes sidescrolling platforming with Contra-styled gunplay, complete with switchable weapons that can be powered up until the screen is constantly filled with delicious candy-like bullets.
Unlike Contra, controls in Super Turrican feel more precise and weighty. Which is a good thing, since Super Turrican contains way more precision jumping and platform-hopping than any game in the Contra series. It kind makes me wish that Contra had tried this approach at some point. Can you imagine Contra as a non-linear, Symphony of the Night-styled adventure-platformer?
Oh. Right.
Super Turrican ditches the sprawling level design that characterized earlier games in the series in favor of more straightforward gameplay progression. It doesn't feel dumbed-down in the least, though. Its streamlined approach to level design means that Super Turrican's action much better-paced and less confusing than in other Turrican games, and the series' characteristic difficulty is still in full effect. The end result is pretty much everything you could ever want in an action game, with almost no filler.
Super Turrican may be the only game to be released on the Shop Channel this week, but it's a good one. Give it a shot. You won't be disappointed.
