#36: Turrican (Rainbow Arts, Amiga, 1990)

Last time we encountered Manfred Trenz and Chris Hülsbeck, it was with The Great Giana Sisters, a game whose debt to Super Mario Bros. was implicit in its title and only got more obvious from there. Legal consequences obvious. A few Manfred Trenz games later, had he learned his lesson and stayed away from Nintendo properties? Well, Turrican is a sci-fi shooter-platformer that sees you explore a vast, desolate alien world, playing as a person enclosed within a metal suit, equipped with an array of weaponry and the ability to transform into a small, round, extra-mobile form. There’s no helmet-removing reveal of Turrican as a woman, but one wouldn’t completely come as a shock.

As obvious as Turrican‘s similarities to Metroid are, though, it is a very different case to The Great Giana Sisters. Narrative aside, Giana‘s innovations were treated as secondary to ensuring resemblance to Super Mario Bros., purposefully remaining in its shadow (arguably, all the better placed to subvert it). Turrican takes some specific ideas from Metroid and uses them as one element in something new. It’s like sampling a song as opposed to recording an exacting cover version of it.