Retro gaming is popular among some of us older gamers. We always talk about the glory days of gaming and how much harder games seemed to be back then. There were so many games I played on the NES that I don’t remember ever beating and only a handful that I did. Of course, there were also a ton of games I never played either because I was just a kid and I didn’t have unlimited funds to buy games. One such game was Turrican. Apparently, this was a legendary gaming series back in the 90’s that spawned several sequels. Though I missed them when they first came out, I’m able to check them out now thanks to ININ Games and the recently released, Turrican Flashback. Turrican Flashback is a collection of four classic Turrican games – Turrican, Turrican II, Mega Turrican, and Super Turrican.

Fans of this series will note that these are just straight-up ports. This collection of games have been remastered for the Nintendo Switch. That includes updated graphics, new control schemes, and a new dynamic HUD. There’s even some new music included.

So what is Turrican? Turrican is a side-scrolling, action-packed shooter. Similar to Contra and Metroid to some extent, all the Turrican games were side-scrollers featuring huge levels to explore. At the time, Turrican was heralded for its insane graphics and gameplay. What I find really interesting about a collection like this is that you can really see the evolution Turrican has taken over the years from when it was first introduced to later iterations like Super Turrican. It’s a window back to simpler times when a lot of games were created by either a single person or by very small teams.

I’m not going to go into too much detail into each of the four games that’s included in the Turrican Flashback collection. Instead, I’ll go over some general items you might find interesting. First of all, there is the main menu where you can select the game you want to play and each game has its own submenu and options. Here you can adjust many aspects of the game that you couldn’t really do on the original games, such as changing the aspect ratio from full screen to widescreen, adjusting audio levels, shaders, and rewind speed. The remind mode is probably the most interesting here as you can rewind the game while you’re playing if you make a mistake.

Speaking of which, gameplay in all four games aren’t that much different from each other. The games are thoroughly retro and just as difficult. What I mean by that is that a lot of these old games were really hard to beat and that hasn’t changed. The challenge mainly comes from finite player lives and continues. However, Turrican Flashback does allow for “save states” which means you can save at a certain point and just continue from there. You couldn’t do that originally. This allows you to start again at a certain point instead of all the way back at the beginning.

Gameplay wise, you can see how the game has evolved over the years. The original Turrican is quite an unforgiving game and while it’s pretty good, it contains everything that made games back then so difficult. You had jumps that were hard to control, shots that only shoot at certain directions and angles, and limited lives. It however gets better as you move on to the later games such as Super Turrican. I do suggest playing through them all as this is a really unique experience to have these four games together.

With that said, retro gamers will surely enjoy the Turrican Flashback Collection. I never played these as a kid, but I’m enjoying them now. It’s great being able to look back into the past of what games used to be like and compare them to what games are like now. Of course, we can also appreciate the new quality of life updates that make these retro games even better to play allowing for a whole new audience of players to enjoy.

Turrican Flashback is available now on the Nintendo eShop here. You can also buy the physical edition here on Amazon.

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Received game from developer and/or publisher for coverage purposes.
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