Turrican. The ultimate evergreen among the shoot-em-ups is back.

T2002 is a freeware remake of the original game and was made by Pekaro with friendly permission of THQ (they bought RainbowArts) and the gradmaster of computermusics Chris Hesbeck (who composed the tunes for the original Turricans).

Talking about the original I have to mention that the graphics in T2002 came from the PC- and Amiga Version of Turrican 2. The music was completely take from the Amiga version.

My first contact with the original Turrican was in the early 90s where it took half of my childhood to play it over and over again on my C-64. There is just one word for what the delevloper Manfred Trenz created : a masterpiece and of course a milestone in the genre. Many games tried to copy it but none ever could compete.

The story. You are a fierce hero - equipped with the latest techologie : the Turrican-Combatsuit and must hunt down several monsters. Most of them are robots, e-spiders, e-bats, technobees, asteroids, snakes ... - well everything you expect from a game like this. Markable are the end monsters or intermezzo-monsters. Those are a screenfilling supermonsters that need some more shots that the rest. The nice thing about Turrican is the level design. You must navigate your hero through giantic levels and seek an exit (not like the other shooters where you mostly just had to follow a given path). On your way to this exit you - of course - slay monsters, find hidden caverns with the well knows "1up"s, you find secret boxes filled with power ups and extra weapons and collect diamonds. Every 100 diamonds you gain an extra "continue". With the continued you can restart at the same level you died. If you collect diamonds for 5 continues you can "save" the game by simply quitting from it. Select "continue" at the main menu to start at that level you saved, even if you left the game.

The basic weapon is a miniflamelaserwhatever-shooter. If you hold the fire button you have an autofire minilaser that you can aim in any desired direction. If you collect some powerups the firepower of you weapon increases. Other weapons are a stron laser, a pulsegun with reflecting projectiles (if you hit a wall they return by 135 degrees) and of course a multiminiflamelaserwhatever.

With the optional level-editor Turrican fans can create their own levels!

All in all the game is a very well done remake of the original Turrican.