Turrican Flashback Collection Review (PlayStation 4)
The intergalactic action-adventure that took video games by storm throughout the 1990s, Turrican is heralded around the world as one of the finest examples of action video games of all time. Its unique mix of exploration, atmosphere, and blistering non-stop action pushed the genre forward and set the benchmark for years to come, and since its original release in 1991 has proudly been supported by one of the most enthusiastic and loyal fanbases in the medium. And of course, when talking Turrican, you have to mention the incredible musical score by living legend Chris Huelsbeck which has been echoing in play-rooms, venues, and even symphony halls for three decades,
Pros:
- Original and enhanced graphics.
- 52.83MB download size.
- Platinum trophy.
- Works on Playstation 5.
- Platform shooter gameplay.
- Four games in one- Turrican, Turican II, Mega Turrican and Super Turrican.
- Each game has a brief history and story of the game.
- Game options (for each game) – Paula stereo, display (4:3/1:1/perfect/fullscreen), wallpaper, shader or CRT (mask type/mask intensity/Scanline intensity/sharpness/curvature/trini curve/corner round and CRT gamma), colour (RGB/black and white/BGR/BRG/RBG/GRB and GBR) and rewind speed (1x or 2x).
- The cheats-each game will bring up what you need to do in order to use cheats and what they do.
- Six save state slots for each game.
- Can rebind controls for each game.
- Two game modes in each game (except Super Turrican)-standard or trophy challenge. Standard will allow rewind and state save but no trophies. Trophy challenge has no gimmicks and will earn trophies.
- Full-screen preview button.
- Can restart a game back to the games menu.
- Quit a game back the game selection screen.
- Super Turrican options- 3 difficulties-easy, normal and hard, rapid-fire on/off, and stereo or mono sound mode.
- The rewind feature works flawlessly.
- Find diamonds for score and extra lives.
- Levels are vast and encourage exploration.
- Every level has a time limit.
- Big boss fights.
- Excellent soundtrack.
- Collect health drops.
- Can change display settings on the fly.
- Constant checkpoints.
- Continues but they restart the level.
- Secret/hidden blocks containing pickups and can be used to reach higher parts of the level.
- Many gun types from lasers to widespread bullets and even bouncing bullet guns.
Cons:
- Only 19 trophies for four games.
- Can’t use the gimmicks for trophies.
- Barebones description.
- No bonus art or history.
- Never sure what the icons/icon colors mean.
- No tutorials.
- Graphics - 8/108/10
- Sound - 8/108/10
- Accessibility - 8/108/10
- Length - 8/108/10
- Fun Factor - 9/109/10
Summary
For many years I have longed for a new Turrican game, I had the NES and Snes versions back in the day and I’ve never had a game come closer in terms of gameplay and music. We don’t have a new Turrican, nope not even close. What you get here is a collection of all the games in the series and that is no bad thing, with a wide variety of settings you can upscale the resolution somewhat and change the sound effects. Truth be told we have had a lot of collections of retro games recently and with that, a particular bar has been set. In this here Turrican collection you get a brief description of each game including release date then game-wise you get state saves, resolution options, and aspect ratios. One addition I did like was the cheats, they are all listed there including a paragraph on how to activate them, a shame they disable trophies but cool anyway. If you don’t believe in straight-up cheats then you can have a rewind feature that does exactly what you think it would do and it works flawlessly and seamlessly. Overall I loved coming back to one of the best platformer shooters from my youth, the soundtrack is still banging along with solid yet to beaten gameplay. A mediocre collection of fantastic games.
