Super Turrican (1993)

Super Turrican mixes a little bit of Mega Turrican's core and style with a small bit of stages from older Turricans with a flash of something new. It's not terrible, but it doesn't change much and is a little bit of a downgrade from its predecessor.

The story about the Avalon survivor fighting the Machine is pretty familar, so we'll skip to the levels. The player has access to a spread shot, a straightforward laser, and a bounce shot (much like the original), and a smart bomb is available. Instead of a laser or grappling rope, the player now has a freeze beam, which can stop enemies in their tracks. It's not particularly fun but it's useful. The version of the wheel from Mega Turrican also returns.

The levels make for a fairly short game, consisting of four worlds overall. The first one takes from a lot of Turrican and Turrican II's aesthetic, while the second and third worlds do something original (the freeze world stands out) and the fourth one cribs from Mega Turrican's alien world, right on down to a clone of the final boss. The graphics are a significant downgrade even from the Genesis, making this one a bit of an ugly duckling. The music is serviceable, but not memorable.

Super Turrican still has the powerful core of Mega Turrican but settles for a smaller, less appealing game with a freeze beam to make up for it repeating a lot of familiar elements. It's still decently fun, at least!

Super Turrican, for SNES

Rating: 7.5/10; Good

In this game you go around in power armor called a Turrican, in 2D sidescrolling platformer shooter action. Your standard guns comes in 3 color coded types and has no limit on ammo or firing rate. You get a limited use special that can harm the entire screen, a ghostbusters looking freeze gun that will freeze regular enemies (and can be aimed in 360 degrees using the “left” and “right” buttons), and the ability to morph into a ball and drop mines and bombs just like Metroid. On top of that, one enemy type vaguely resembles a goomba and can be stomped on, while another level has straight up albino xenomorphs, eggs that hatch facehuggers (which are OP because they will kill you if they latch onto your face), and platforms that look exactly like xenomorphs. There are probably other similarities that I missed.

Other than the Metroid ball, I do not have a problem with any of this because the game is fun (the ball just does not seem to fit). The game plays more like a metroidvania because the levels are relatively expansive with multiple paths to take. There is optional loot to find by way of powerups, extra lives and gems. Gems are just for score. Along the way, you will have to deal with a variety of enemies, bosses and platforming challenges. The combat is fairly easy though, and the lack of limits on the freeze gun make regular enemies largely trivial. Bosses are also not that hard, and follow highly scripted patterns. Where you will most likely die is with the platforming. The hazards are not too bad, but some of the jumps (especially near the end) require you to be really on the ball, making leaps of faith from the pixel perfect last possible spot. Not fun. There was one particular jump near the end that I died at least 10 times on. Also annoying are the non lethal jumps where you bump your head and fall due to not being at the pixel perfect edge.

Despite the flaws, lack of replayability and fairly short length, it is a very enjoyable game with good combat.