Genre: Action platformer
Developer: Factor 5
Publisher: ININ Games

When the original Turrican demo hit the Commodore 64 scene in 1989, people's minds were blown-- but then the Amiga version struck, and everything about that C64 version exploded to new heights: super smooth scrolling, colorful backgrounds, and meteoric numbers of player animation frames. The sequel, which came out a year later, looked even prettier. The Super Famicom and Mega Drive renditions are noticably lower resolution, especially in the former's case-- but make good use of their respective platform strengths. As for the collection itself, the emulation is not only spot-on and smoother than a baby's bottom, but has a fully-configurable "RetroArch"-esque CRT shader: no small feat considering the Amiga originals are 50Hz PAL games!

For the Amiga adaptations, German composer Chris Huelsbeck was put in the crosshairs, and he delivered a sniper shot right through the bullseye. As skillful as household luminaries Nobuo Uematsu or Yuzo Koshiro were and are, Huelsbeck is probably more talented: he is the master of the key change, as his songs magically shift from somber to happy to somber again in an instant-- lending a level of compositional sophistication which simply isn't heard often in the medium. His skills didn't stop with the Amiga, as his music and sound effect programming on the Super Famicom and Mega Drive are some of the best-ever on those platforms. Sensational!

The first two Turrican games are run-and-gun action platformers with enormous free-roaming levels to explore. The extremely innovative aimable laser cannon adds an extra dimension to the gunplay, while the "Metroid" morph ball mechanic plays a role too. The console games, by contrast, feel somewhat "dumbed down" in the sense that they have more linear stages with "go here" icons all over the place, along a simplified damage system and some slightly dodgy enemy placement-- at the same time though, they still retain the core gunplay feeling of playing a Turrican game, while the newly-introduced mechanics, such as Mega Turrican's grappling hook, make these console adaptations fun changes of pace.

This Turrican Flashback collection may not have all of the series titles contained within, but there is plenty of powder in the box to produce incendiary fireworks anyway, as the four included games are perfectly emulated, have a beautiful CRT filter, and even include modern add-ons like save states and rewind. As games, these classics are like the AK-47 or Colt 1911: timeless; as graphically bewitching as a 4th of July display, audibly as bombastic as Mozart-on-synth, and with worlds just as fun to explore and conquer now as they were in 1990.