Turrican

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Parent Category: Music
Category: Remix of Chip Music
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Amiga game from 1990
Composer: Chris Hülsbeck

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Turrican II for the Amiga was a game I thought was awesome at that time, created by Manfred Trenz. It felt new and fresh with great graphics and large open levels. The background music suited very well which that alone would have been enough to blast your way through. But unfortunately I did not play beyond about halfway into the game, it was either too long for me, or because I got a little tired. Perhaps a combination of both. On the other hand, there were not many games I managed to complete anyways.

Turrican was otherwise a very popular game series with its technical performance, graphics and the large open levels where you could move freely in all directions all of which many thought was impossible when it first came to the Commodore 64 (C64). The game was also developed at the same time for the Amiga with major improvements.
Below in the video playlist, you can see the platforms which Chris Hüslbeck has composed the music for - Amiga, C64, Mega Drive and SNES, and a video about the history of the game.

 
     

The composer Chris Hülsbeck is a living legend who has made a lot of good and well-known game music and Turrican is no exception. The music in the title screen is one of the most famous on Amiga. The one in Turrican II seems to be the most popular to remix. Although Chris Hülsbeck has composed the music for both Amiga and C64 aswell as for Megadrive and Super Nes there are songs that are specific to its own platform. He has succeeded in shaping the music to a good theme that sounds unique to this game. The exception is the music for C64 which distinguishes itself a little compared to the other platforms.
On C64 the background music is only played a few tracks, because the graphics and the size of the levels took too much space and Turrican III has instead only background music and no sound effects at all.

One can thank Chris Hülsbeck for the game's huge success, the music was acually That good, especially for the Amiga where he could utilize full potential of the sound chip called "Paula". He was also one of the few composers who could master the architecture of the Genesis sound chip to the Mega Drive and produce some of the best music that has ever been heard to that console.

Below I have selected the best soundtracks from the Turrican game series. It was not an easy task to go through 100+ songs from the Amiga, C64, Mega Drive and SNES, all composed by Chris Hüslbeck. Even after I excluded all the boss soundtracks and other short sounds. Number of remixes will be much more to go through.

Turrican (1990)

Turrican II (1991)

Turrican III (1992)

Enjoy my favorite selected remixes below, several remakes and electronic trance-style, but also other styles which adds a little contrast.
When this article was created there were about 15 remixes, now after a few intensive days of sorting and a new updated article it lands on 100+.

- Remixes

Which remix do you like the most?
Don't forget you can vote on nearly all remizes by clicking the green arrow which is visible during playback. (Registration is needed, free of charge of course)

Interesting quick facts:

The music for Turrican is still popular so Chris Hülsbeck has renewed his old soundtrack with the help of funding from Kickstarter. The first project was completed in late 2013 - The Turrican Soundtrack Anthology
Vol.1 Vol.2 Vol.3 Vol.4
Read also the interview with Chris Hülsbeck before the production of this masterpiece.

Chris Hülsbeck worked with Trenz for the first time with the game R-Type in 1987.

The game creator Manfred Trenz got the name Turrican from an Italian surname, Turricano, in a telephone catalogue in Germany, Dusseldorf.

Manfred Trenz was inspired from Metroid 1986.
The image in the Title Screen of Turrican 1 (1990) is striking similiar from the album, Manowar released in 1988.

The game company Rainbow Arts insisted a change to the name Hurricane when the demo was released in 1989.

Amiga became the main platform when Turrican II was released the following year (1991) which was much better planned and finally earned its background story, which was missing in the prequel. It was also this year Turrican was ported to even more platforms (see Official Turrican Games). Hereafter it has escalated to various clones and shapes.

Much more info and facts can be read on this dedicated web site Turrican which is still active when this article was created.
Even more info from this site Hardcoregaming

More about the Turrican game series can be read here on Hardcoregaming and a dedicated page whith also updated news and rumors are available here Turrican SETA.