Turrican Flashback Review

There are titles from the past that many of us have never even touched, but only know from word of mouth. It is impossible that you haven’t heard of games like Metroid, Contra, Sonic, and even Castlevania. These are games that have really laid the foundations for the development of the medium and that have become immortal, as a symbol of a generation. Maybe over time they got lost along the way, never received further chapters, or completely deviated from their original course. However, fans of a certain age remember those periods very well. A good example of a forgotten title is definitely Turrican.

This game was born in 1990 from the hands of a single person, Manfred Frenz. Surely many of you have never heard of it, and with good reason. The series that resulted from it died unofficially in 1994 with the Super Nintendo version. Over time, various rumors spoke about a glorious return to the series. ININ Games took the opportunity and created a curated collection from the original development team of Factor 5. Here is my Turrican Flashback review on Nintendo Switch.

CYBORG WARRIOR

Turrican Flashback is a remastered collection that contains Turrican, Turrican II: The Final Fight, Mega Turrican, and Super Turrican. If you know this series very well, there is also Super Turrican 2 and the Director’s Cut version. However, these games were probably kept aside to come up with a second compilation. As I have already said at the beginning, Turrican was born in 1990 and tells the story of a cyborg warrior equipped with a good amount of super technological weapons at his disposal.

He can make use of these weapons and destroy machines and hostile aliens. Over the course of the various and rather large levels in ININ Games’ collection, your cyborg can collect a proper variety of upgrades and skills. Throughout these levels, you can also accumulate points that you can bring to the end of the stage. Unlike in Contra, however, you can and must explore the levels of Turrican.

Your protagonist can move both to the right and to the left, he can jump and dodge, and roll as Samus did in Metroid. The levels, as I said, are quite vast and Turrican enormously rewards players who use more time and lives to explore the various stages. Take note that this is actually one factor that, at the time, attracted many onlookers to the series.

QUALITY LEAPS FORWARD

The first chapter in ININ Games’ Turrican Flashback is certainly the worst aged one. This is both in mechanics and in terms of the woodiness of the controls. However, the quality leap forward made with Turrican II is still undoubted. The vastness of upgrades and introducing some technical refinements make it enjoyable, even in 2021.

The developers also added a greater variety in the aesthetics of the enemies, especially with the mammoth bosses. When you play Turrican II, you will understand why fans of the genre had so much passion for this game. We then move on to Turrican III, or rather Mega Turrican. Take note that Mega Turrican released in the now eternally distant 1993 on the Sega Genesis. This chapter of Turrican is a little different from the others in the series.

Mega Turrican is more linear and less exploratory. Yes, the lack of freedom may sound boring, however, that is not the case. They replaced it with a vast amount of new special effects on the screen. This is also thanks to the computational capacity of the Sega Genesis at that time. I would like to say that perhaps, being more linear and less dispersive, this is the chapter that even 30 years later could bring newcomers to the series.

CHEAT CODES AND REWIND

Super Turrican concludes the round of the Turrican Flashback compilation. This chapter also released in 1993 for SNES. Take note that this is a hybrid of all the previous chapters, with a certainly more linear approach than Turrican II. However, it is much more extensive when compared to the title for the Sega Genesis. The amount of action and enemies on the screen makes it certainly difficult to continue, but quite satisfying when you read the enemy’s attack patterns more easily. Be prepared to die repeatedly!

I can summarize the more than small additions that ININ Games have included in the Turrican Flashback compilation in two points: cheat codes and rewind. ININ Games reinserted all the original cheat codes into these remastered versions. It provides a taste of nostalgia that doesn’t hurt.

The cheats also help those that simply just want to advance without spending hours and hours of gameplay. In addition, to help novices, they have inserted the rewind button. Simply by pressing a trigger, your cyborg can take a few steps back to avoid a few shots or a fall. Believe me, this comes in handy!

CONCLUSION

The fundamental problem with this Turrican Flashback compilation from ININ Games, however, is precisely the lack of additions. Don’t get me wrong, I was not expecting big changes on such “old” titles, that’s for sure. However, the lack of any kind of additions in terms of history and curiosity when the original author also took part in the compilation is very disheartening.

In addition, the two titles I mentioned earlier are also missing, the Director’s Cut and Super Turrican II. Yes, they may create another compilation, but the worth of this compilation would have skyrocketed. The price of $30 USD on the Nintendo Switch really seems to me a bit on the expensive side. It is not enough to add an enormous amount of wallpapers and filters to customize your games in the various chapters of Turrican. It is undeniable that for that price this collection should have been much more!

Do you want to try ININ Games’ Turrican Flashback? What do you think of my Turrican Flashback review on Nintendo Switch? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below. Are you interested in more games? Check out our reviews for Little Nightmares 2, Olija, Sword of the Necromancer, Luciform, Project Starship X, The Pedestrian, and Hitman 3.