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Turrican

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This page details pre-release information and/or media for Turrican (Commodore 64).

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Turrican (Genesis).

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Turrican (Game Boy).

To do:
Plenty more out there that could be added here, track it down.

Development Timeline#

1988

1989

  • September 153 - 64'er 1989-10 contains an interview with Manfred Trenz about Katakis. At the end, when asked about his next game, Trenz remains tight-lipped on details, but promises that Katakis fans will love it.4
  • December 155 - 64'er 1990-01 ships with the C64 Hurrican demo. It also says that the finished game will first release March 1990.6

1990

  • February 167 - 64'er 1990-03 reveals that the name is changed from Hurrican to Turrican.8
  • March 8 - Release date of the Amiga version demo.9
  • May - Turrican is released for Commodore 64, Amiga1011, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum12 in Europe.13
  • December - By this month, Turrican is released for Commodore 64 and Amiga in North America.1415

1991

  • May - Accolade tells Electronic Gaming Monthly that Turrican is one of their Ballistic-label titles they're looking to release "shortly".16
  • June 1-417 - Accolade shows the Genesis version at Summer CES, and also announces the TurboGrafx-1618 and Game Boy19 versions. Innerprise happens to show off the computer version at this same event.20
  • July - Turrican is released for Genesis in North America.2122
  • September - Turrican is released for Genesis in Europe.
  • November - Turrican is released for TurboGrafx-1623 and Game Boy24 in North America.
  • November 21 - The date on the files within the CDTV version.
  • Turrican is released for CDTV in Europe.2526

1992

  • April - Turrican is released for Game Boy in Europe.27

Development Overview#

The C64 version was developed first, with the Amiga version being a direct conversion. The development of the game, as well as its graphics tooling, took 13 months.2829

Concepts#

Name#

Manfred Trenz got the name Turrican from "Turricano", an Italian name he found in the Düsseldorf phone book.30 This name was put on a list full of other names he found, and when he asked people to tell him their favorite name, most of the respondents shared his own view of Turrican being the best one. The title of the game ended up being Hurrican for a time before Turrican ultimately won out.

Inspiration#

In addition to Super Mario Bros., which Trenz had already infamously ripped off for Great Giana Sisters, two particular games served as inspiration for the idea of Turrican--Metroid for the NES, which influenced the general gameplay experience, and Data East's arcade run-n-gun Psycho-Nics Oscar, which influenced the visual designs of the player character, weapons, and background graphics.

Gameplay#

Trenz aimed to make something with a different style from Katakis, which was straight-up shooting, and wanted to make the player think. He started programming before he even had the full idea of the gameplay realized.

Levels#

The game was initially set to have 20 levels, but this count ultimately got scaled down to 13 for the final game.

Almighty Metal Fist#

Trenz saw the animated Beatles movie Yellow Submarine shortly after starting to program the game. This led to him adapting the Dreadful Flying Glove from said movie into Level 1-2's boss.

Alternate Julie Bell Art#

Alternate

Final

Julie Bell, the artist for the box art of the Accolade ports (and whose credit was initially for her husband, Boris Vallejo), initially started this alternate version of it in 1991, before the art directors saw it in-progress and suggested it have "more muscles". She ended up finishing off her original painting in 1996, since she was fond of it as it was.

(Source: Turrican Alternate Box Cover Art - Original Video Game Art - (OVGA) Original Video Game Art)

Screenshots#

To do:
Track down the source of the early Amiga gameplay screenshot at http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/turrican/

Early

Final

This screenshot of the Amiga version's title screen from 64'er bears the Hurrican name. There also seem to be some details touched up for the final screen, such as the number of strokes of electricity.

(Source: 64'er 1990-01, pg. 6)

References#

  1. Excerpt from an interview with Julian Eggebrecht/Factor 5 about Turrican↩︎
  2. Amiga Future - Artikeldatenbank - Factor 5↩︎
  3. 64'er 1989-09, pg. 155 - "DIE NÄCHSTE AUSGABE ERSCHEINT AM 15.9.1989"↩︎
  4. 64'er 1989-10, pg. 30 - "64’er: Da gibst Du mir schon wieder ein sehr schönes Stichwort: Wie sieht Dein neuestes Projekt aus? Wird es ähnlich wie »Katakis«?

    Manfred: Psssssst ... Darüber wird noch nichts verraten! Eines kann ich jedoch versprechen: Wer »Katakis« schon gut fand, der wird unser neues Projekt einfach lieben.

    64’er: Na, dann sind wir doch einfach mal gespannt und freuen uns auf die erste Demo-Version fürs 64'er Magazin ..."↩︎
  5. 64'er 1989-12, pg. 155 - "DIE NÄCHSTE AUSGABE ERSCHEINT AM 15.12.1989"↩︎
  6. 64'er 1990-01, pgs. 28-29↩︎
  7. 64'er 1990-02, pg. 131 - "DIE NÄCHSTE AUSGABE ERSCHEINT AM 16.02.1990"↩︎
  8. 64'er 1990-03, pg. 124↩︎
  9. Amiga demo turrican.text↩︎
  10. Zzap!64 #61, May 1990, pgs. 8-9 - "Amiga owners should have only a month to wait to discover the delights of Turrican."↩︎
  11. Amiga Reviews: Turrican 1 - "RELEASED Mid May "↩︎
  12. Your Sinclair #54 (June 1990), pg. 85↩︎
  13. Computer & Video Games #102 (May 1990), pg. 71 - "Turrican will be out during the next couple of months on Amiga, ST, Spectrum and Amstrad."↩︎
  14. .info #35 (December 1990), pg. 9 - "Now Available for Amiga and C64!"↩︎
  15. .info #35 (December 1990), pg. 60 - "The following games have been announced by the game companies listed. Games that had been received in our offices at presstime have been marked with an asterisk (*)." "Innerprise: Turrican*, Time Guardian, Aviators"↩︎
  16. Electronic Gaming Monthly #22 (May 1991) - "As for the Genesis, we’re looking to release Hardball, Onslaught and Turrican shortly, and we’re thinking about a driving game, perhaps something similar to our Test Drive series on the computer format."↩︎
  17. Summer CES 1991 Guide, pg. 10↩︎
  18. TurboPlay #8, August/September 1991, pg. 11↩︎
  19. Game Player's CES Videogame And Computer Game Guide, Summer 1991, pg. 3 - "Mike Ditka Power Football, Turrican, and Test Drive are available for Sega Genesis as part of Accolade’s new Ballistic line of 16-bit videogames along with Hard Ball and Star Control. Turrican is also being introduced for Game Boy."↩︎
  20. Summer CES 1991 Guide, pg. 195 - "Battle Squadron, The Plague, Final Orbit, Globulus, Turrican, Apprentice, Sword of Sodan, Cyberblast, Entity, Aftermath."↩︎
  21. Mega Play - Vol. 2 - No. 4 - Jul-Aug 1991, pg. 62↩︎
  22. Turrican on Sega Retro↩︎
  23. Turrican on NEC Retro↩︎
  24. Game Boy (original) Games↩︎
  25. Turrican Releases - MobyGames↩︎
  26. Official Turrican Games - CDTV↩︎
  27. Turrican NOE (20918) - Informations - Game Boy Database↩︎
  28. News, Facts and Rumours about Turrican - Short MT interview, translated from French↩︎
  29. Revue de Presse JV (Saison 3 : Septembre 2019) on Twitter: "Interview de Manfred Trenz, le papa de #Turrican. C'était dans Joystick n.5 (que je possède encore donc). L'interview est rachitique mais quel bonheur de l'avoir (j'avais 14 piges à l'époque !).…↩︎
  30. Manfred Trenz ASM↩︎