This is a wonderful story that takes place on either side of the Atlantic. A small company called Nintendo was having the best financial turn of events in the company's nearly 100 year history, with a home console called the "Nintendo Entertainment System". Various home computers were having a hard time selling units in the States as consumers seemed reluctant to buy in to the "revolution" they promised. However when Nintendo marketed the NES as a toy, America jumped on board in a big bad way and before they could bat an eye Nintendo had a video game stranglehold over the entire country. Nintendo would knock out simple and cheap to make cartridges, that were however highly addictive and easy to play, and kids from sunny California all the way to the Big Apple would lap it up.
Nintendo however spent less time focusing it's efforts towards Europe, and when I say less time, I mean abosolutely zero. This may have been because the home computing revolution had taken off in Europe. Commodore, Atari, IBM, Sinclair, Vic, BBC Micro, Amstrad had created an army of bedroom programers. There was little concept of waiting eagerly with drooling lips for a games company thousands of miles away to give them something they wanted. There was just a mentality of "well lets just make it". Turrican is a perfect example of this. "Lets take Metroid, R-type and Contra, and make them better, more fluid, with speech and kisk arse sound effects", "er...Sure, why not?". It was this kind of mentality that Nintendo hated and that led to one of the finest ever platformers that no one in the US ever played. Versions for the super nintendo were released years later, but even these were stripped down, chopped up versions of the original. It did however earn its place as the widely recognised finest ever games ever made for the Commodore Amiga, a system that had many, many fine titles. This in part, along with all it's plus points previously mentioned, was it's soundtrack. Anyone who had ever played this game will tell you the same thing, "It had the best soundtrack off all time". Chris Hulsbeck's score is legendary among Amiga and ST owners. It's mix of eclectic mecanical noises and synths really fits the game, to the point that you really feel he belived in the game and wanted to expand the experience not just collect a paycheck.
In short I don't care what you have to do to play this game, you just have to play it. Whether you buy an Amiga 500 and a Turrican 2 diskette, or get an emulator and an illegal copy of it on ebay. You owe it to yourself to play this. Trust me you will stare at that NES and that Metroid cartridge in the corner, and a feeling will wash over you, the blindfold of Nintendo's twenty years of marketing will be pulled from your eyes, and you will be able to start to live your life again.
