thanius

Turrican 2: The Final Fight is one of the best run-and-gun games on the classic Amiga and C64. Just hearing the title music by Chris Hülsbeck brings many a joyful tear to their eyes. This version is not a simple AGA patch, but rather a labour of love by a single developer who has reprogrammed the game from scratch using the 256-colour graphics from the DOS port, while adding some unique features and fixing some of the shortcomings of the PC version.

This version has all the bells and whistles of the original Amiga release, with all the levels, enemy placements and boss difficulty kept intact, while adding quality-of-life features such as a save function which records your progress for each stage, so that you don't have to restart the game every time. It also includes 3 hidden drones on each stage, which not only adds extended gameplay as you try to find all the drones and achieve full completion when beating the final boss, but also extends the stage timer whenever one of the secrets is found and picked up.

The game still consists of five worlds with a combined total of 11 stages, with increasing difficulty. World 3 is also special in that it not only consists of 3 stages, but also differs in that they are all presented as a horizontal (and on one occasion, multi-scroll) shoot-'em-up. The speed tunnel is actually one of the hardest stages in the entire game and requires a whole lot of lives accumulated before attempting it.

I've had a blast trying to complete this game, and it took me about two and a half hours from start to finish when I finally managed it. I still love the labyrinthine stage design where you need to find each exit to progress, and the added value of hidden drones kept me looking for all the hidden nooks and crannies - which often rewarded me with a couple of 1-ups.

My only gripe with the game is that all but the final boss are quite easy to beat (which I assume should hold true in the original, as well) and there's not much variety in defeating them. You basically need to avoid being hit by their weapons or body attacks while hitting their weak spot, which is often in or near the head area of the enemy.

If you think the game would be easy because of this, think again though! This game can be hard as nails if you haven't picked up enough extra lives, and is the reason I've had to retry multiple times to beat it (I kept running out of retries!) You can always crank up the difficulty to 'hard mode', should you think the game is a breeze. Playing the game with a CD32 controller was a godsend, as there are so many actions Turrican can perform that I can only imagine trying to beat it on a regular old Tac-2 makes it even harder!

If you like hard Euro-platformers and shoot-'em-ups, you'll love this game whether or not you've played the original. The AGA version has the feel and play of Turrican 2 with all the looks of the MSDOS version, further improved with quality of life additions. It is simply a great addition to the Amiga catalogue. In other words, you have absolute no reason not to get it. Did I mention it's totally free?

Get it now.

I give it 4 out of 5 rolled-up spike Turricans.

Download the game from Itch.io