Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!csc.anu.edu.au!manuel!ccadfa!prolix!dac
From: dac@prolix.ccadfa.oz.au (Andrew Clayton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: In defense of Turrican
Message-ID: <186a628d.ARN00674@prolix.ccadfa.oz.au>
Date: 24 Dec 90 14:47:09 GMT
References: <5086.27635370@cc.curtin.edu.au> <1990Dec16.035208.8126@csn.org> 
 <1990Dec18.124704.1696@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <1990Dec22.203220.17380@csn.org>
Reply-To: ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au!Uprolix!Dac
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games
Organization: I'm not an Organization - I'm a person!
Lines: 53

In article <1990Dec22.203220.17380@csn.org>, Stephen Judd writes:

> What are you still doing reading news?!?!  It's Christmas!  You're supposed
> to be home with your families!  What?  Why am >>I<< reading news?  Well, ah,
> er....  Boy, how about them Colorado Buffaloes...
> 
> In article <1990Dec18.124704.1696@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
> >judd@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Stephen Judd) writes:
> >> your posting seems to imply the opposite. So, in all honesty, I want
> >> to know: What is fun about Turrican (and "arcade" games in general,
> >> for that matter)?
> >
> 
> Ah, now we are getting somewhere.  Congratulations, Kent, on being the first
> person to reply in defense of Turrican!
> 
> >Well, I'm not much for arcade games, but am enjoying Turrican a lot. The
> >trick is that if you are playing it as a run, jump, and shoot game, you
> >are missing most of the fun. Turrican is a maze, a puzzle, and an easter
> >egg hunt, which just happens to require running, jumping, and shooting
> >for the solution.  ;-)

I recently rediscovered (prompted by Kent's message) the joys of
Turrican. It's a very SMOOTH game. (Unless you get trapped on
part two of level 4).

You complain that the STYLE of game has been copied too much.
Fair enough. Turrican does what it does WELL. It's much better
than the Great Giana Sisters, or that dumb game where you turn
into a flying robot [Thexder], and it's not quite as difficult as
Emerald Mine.  Plus you can blast things!  Switchable autofire is
just neato!  (Spot the shoot_em_up player!).

Another game that strikes me as being excellently done was
'Viper' - a sort of Galaxians clone, but with MANY different
sorts of attacking spaceship, each with unique initial onscreen
patterns, and attack patterns.  You got entranced by the movement
of the enemy with that game.  It intelligently loaded all the
levels into memory (if you had expansion [why, oh why, do game
designers ignore large free memory pools and INSIST on grungy
floppy disk access?]), and a huge high score table.  A definite
classic.  Don't hear about it much though.

Then again, I'm the sort of person who was amused by Ebonstar.
(Which enters into a whole new realm in four player tournament
mode!)

> 					-Steve

--
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