Code Like It's 198x

Turrican

Manfred Trenz's 1,300-screen shoot-'em-up for the Commodore 64

Classic GamesSource-checked

Turrican is a scrolling run-and-gun game written by Manfred Trenz for the Commodore 64 and published by Rainbow Arts in 1990. It combined huge explorable levels with a rotating lightning weapon and a gyroscope form. ZZAP! gave the C64 original 97% and a Gold Medal, and Factor 5's Amiga version, with music by Chris Hülsbeck, 94%. It led to Turrican II, Turrican 3 and console sequels.

When Rainbow Arts showed Turrican to ZZAP! in the spring of 1990, its representative Nikki Hemming promised it was one of the best Commodore 64 games ever. The reviewer admitted the claim “almost had me laughing” when the game started with a little figure hopping over some hills against a bland background. Then came the waterfalls, the lightning weapon, a giant clenched fist that attacked at speed, a fish monster and a world of Giger-style alien architecture. ZZAP! gave it a Gold Medal and 97%, and said “all the whinging about the 64’s demise is shown up as pathetic drivel.” Manfred Trenz had written it for the C64, and the Amiga and other versions were conversions of his game.

Fast facts

Morgul’s kingdom

The plot is the usual kind. Morgul, a three-headed creature who is the source of mankind’s nightmares, has escaped from the dimension where the hero Devolon banished him, and only one man in an armoured combat suit, the Turrican, is brave enough to fight him. The game is a platform shooter that scrolls in all directions. Its five worlds are split into 13 levels, which ZZAP! reckoned came to 1,300 screens, with hidden rooms full of diamonds and a boss at the end of each section. One level straps a jetpack to the hero and turns into a vertically scrolling shoot-’em-up.

The weapons are what reviewers remembered:

  • Laser or machine gun: a quick press of the fire button. Power-ups give a triple shot or swap the gun for a laser.
  • Lightning: hold the fire button and a beam comes out that the player can rotate around the hero. Power-ups extend it to the width of the screen. ZZAP! called it “one of the best weapons in any game”.
  • Grenades, mines and energy lines: limited stocks. Energy lines, fired with the space bar, act as a smart bomb.
  • Gyroscope: pull down and press space and the hero becomes a spinning wheel that can’t be hurt and fits through narrow gaps. CRASH noted that it could be used three times per life.

Collecting 300 diamonds earned an extra continue, so exploring the levels paid off.

Borrowed ideas

In 2003 Factor 5’s Julian Eggebrecht, who produced the game, told Edge where the ideas came from. The team started from a little-known Data East arcade game, Psycho-Nics Oscar, and added what they liked from elsewhere: “They took the character design and pacing from Psycho Nic, the searching from Metroid and the leaping and exploration from Mario.” The title screen and logo came from the cover of Manowar’s heavy metal album Kings of Metal, and the alien architecture from the work of H. R. Giger. Eggebrecht also named Thalamus’s Hawkeye, then “the most advanced game on the C64”, as an inspiration.

The game was previewed early in 1990 as Hurrican and renamed at Trenz’s request. The voice in the introduction was a joke, Andreas Escher told GO64!: Markus Wiederstein recorded it, and Trenz distorted it and put it in the game.

Four months for the Amiga

Trenz expected to finish the C64 version in March 1990. Then, as Eggebrecht tells it, the decision was taken to launch an Amiga version at the same time. “We had four months,” Eggebrecht told Edge. “Nowadays, to do a port, you can re-use code. Then we couldn’t. We had to do a complete rewrite.” The Games Machine credited the Amiga game to Trenz and Holger Schmidt of Factor 5. Parallax scrolling was hard on the Amiga, and Eggebrecht said that “in the end we built the scrolling from sprites”.

What the magazines said

  • Commodore 64: ZZAP! issue 61, May 1990: Gold Medal, 97% overall, 97% for graphics and 90% for sound. It called the game “an absolutely awesome experience, developed specifically for the C64”.
  • Amiga: ZZAP! gave it 94% in August 1990, calling it “an astounding testimony to the brilliance of the C64 game that a fairly straightforward conversion has resulted in one of the best Amiga games we’ve seen”. CU Amiga gave 90%. The Games Machine was cooler: “Unfortunately not a great improvement over the C64”, although it called the game “the best pure arcade blast released for the 16-bit Commodore so far this year”. For ACE, “the overall feel of Turrican is pure coin-op”.
  • ZX Spectrum: CRASH gave Probe’s conversion 93% in June 1990: “a no holds barred shoot-’em-up that no joystick mangling fan should miss.”
  • Amstrad CPC: Amstrad Action gave 90%.

The sound differed between machines. The C64 game had title music but none during play. The Amiga version had “a different tune per level” by Chris Hülsbeck, and ZZAP! thought the soundtrack “sounds just like something Konami might write”.

The console versions came from outside. Rainbow Arts sold the console rights to Accolade, which published Turrican on the Mega Drive. Eggebrecht told Edge that Factor 5 had been “begging Rainbow Arts to let us do the console” and that “the Genesis version of Turrican actually looks worse than the Amiga version”.

Sequels

Turrican II (1991) reunited Trenz and Escher on the C64, with Katakis-style flying levels, and Factor 5 wrote the Amiga version, for which Hülsbeck built his seven-voice music system. Eggebrecht told Edge that at the pre-launch demonstration in Cologne two people were hurt in the rush for one of 900 copies. Turrican 3 followed on the Amiga in 1993, developed by Factor 5 and published in Britain by Renegade at £25.99; The One called it “definitely the best of the trilogy”. Factor 5 also made Super Turrican for the Super Nintendo. A Turrican 3D by Trenz was announced for 1999 but never released.

Who deserved the credit became a sore point. Andreas Escher, Trenz’s graphic artist, said in 2000 that Factor 5 had earned “a sack of money with the Amiga version and games console sequels of ‘Turrican’ without acknowledging that ‘Turrican’ is Manfred’s product”.

How it was programmed

Two Vault technique entries use Turrican as an example. Sprite multiplexing describes how the C64 game draws the giant fist from 20 sprites, five per row, by rewriting the sprites between rows. Multidirectional scrolling discusses how it scrolls a whole character at a time.

Sources

  • ZZAP! issue 61, May 1990, pp. 8–9: C64 review, Gold Medal (97% overall; graphics 97%, sound 90%, hookability 94%, lastability 98%); story, weapons, 1,300 screens, 300 diamonds, Nikki Hemming.
  • ZZAP! issue 64, August 1990, pp. 72–73: Amiga review, 94%.
  • The Games Machine issue 30, May 1990, pp. 44–45: Amiga review; Trenz and Holger Schmidt of Factor 5.
  • CU Amiga, June 1990: Amiga review, 90%.
  • ACE issue 35, August 1990: Eugene Lacey’s review.
  • CRASH issue 77, June 1990: Spectrum review by Probe, 93%; the gyroscope three times per life.
  • Amstrad Action issue 63, December 1990: CPC version’s 90% (issue 57) recalled in the year’s round-up.
  • ST Format issue 17, December 1990, p. 78: Atari ST review.
  • Edge issue 122, April 2003, pp. 108–111, “The making of… Turrican”: Julian Eggebrecht on the influences, the four-month Amiga rewrite, sprite-built scrolling, Accolade’s versions, the Turrican II launch in Cologne.
  • GO64! August 1999: the C64 game’s lack of in-game music; Turrican II on the C64. April 2000, Andreas Escher interview: the introduction’s voice, Turrican II, Factor 5 and the credit. May 2000, “Nostalgia: Portrait of Rainbow Arts”: Hurrican renamed Turrican.
  • Amiga Power issue 31, November 1993, and Edge issue 2, November 1993: Turrican 3, Renegade, Factor 5, £25.99. The One issue 62, November 1993: review.
  • PC Player, June 1999: Turrican 3D announced.
  • Wikipedia, “Turrican” (web, secondary): Super Turrican by Factor 5 and Turrican 3D halted by THQ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turrican

See also

Checked. Verified against primary sources and signed off by a person.