Mega Turrican - Development

Development

The German magazine "Amiga Games" published a complete 6 part development diary (The long way from Turrican II to Turrican III) in 1992. The German magazine "Power Play" published an article about the development of Turrican 3 in 1993.

Factor 5 began the work on Turrican III for the Amiga right after Turrican II was released in 1991. They had a working demo that already had some features from the final game. However, around this time, the Amiga market was already in decline and together with Rainbow Arts, it was decided to develop the game for the Sega Mega Drive instead. The game was completely redesigned for the console and it was co-developed by Factor 5 and members of Kaiko. Development of what was already known as Mega Turrican was finished in spring 1993, but Factor 5 was still lacking a publishing agreement for the title at this point, since Rainbow Arts did not perform direct operations on the console business. Factor 5 had then to shift efforts into presenting the game to various Mega Drive/Genesis publishers in hopes they could sign a definite deal, a process that would end a whole year after when Data East agreed with Factor 5 into publishing Mega Turrican in 1994.

Not long after development of Mega Turrican for the Mega Drive was finished, Kaiko approached Rainbow Arts and asked to develop their own version of a third Turrican game for the Amiga. However, development on this version did not get very far and was stopped after a short time. Efforts on a third Amiga version were once again restarted, this time as a conversion of Mega Turrican, which was still an unpublished title on the Mega Drive/Genesis. The programming was done by Peter Thierolf of Neon Studios, formerly of Kaiko (the company was falling apart at the time). This port for the Amiga, rebranded as Turrican 3 (replacing the Roman numerals that the previous Factor 5 project had assigned), was released in Europe in Autumn 1993 by Rainbow Arts and Renegade Software, even before the original version for the Mega Drive/Genesis could find a publishing company for any region.

The main differences between the Mega Drive and Amiga versions are graphics and sound. Notably, the graphical department of the original Mega Drive version was compromised in the porting process to the Amiga, resulting in slight loss of color, some missing backgrounds, and a general lacking of animations and graphical effects. The music and sound effects were ported to the Amiga sound capabilities with readjustments in various track's compositions being made in the process. Not many changes, additions, or cuts were done in gameplay and level design aside from a secret level in the initial world of Mega Turrican becoming a regular level in Turrican 3 and if the user on the Amiga uses a one button joystick/pad have to restore the traditional jumping method back to the up direction and having to hold the fire button in order to use the grappling hook.

In general terms and aside from specific version differences, the game features smaller levels to the original Amiga Turrican games, but compensates these with many new effects and graphical improvements, and a major focus on shooting action. The lightning whip from the first two games is gone and is replaced by a physics-driven grappling hook used to reach higher places in a similar fashion to other games like Bionic Commando.