Turrican 2

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The year is 3025 and after the first defeat of Mogul the world was very calm. United Planets Freedom Forces were responsible to keep peace. But everything changed after the Avalon 1 (one of their spaceships) has been attacked by an unknown battle-cruiser that came from deep space. While being the only survivor from this fight, Bren McGuire (the new Turrican), needs to take his revenge against those who killed all his partners. So the hero must fight, shoot, walk across traps and confront a variety of alien species of different potential and size. Here's where the challenging story begins. Turrican must jump across many platforms, kill the enemies and gather all tokens available since they grant him with energy, extra bombs and new weapons. His main weapons are a rapid-fire assault rifle, an electro-sweeper plus the ability of becoming a rolling sharp razor (which can kill anything in its path) much like its predecessor. Do not forget to keep an eye on the time limit, as it will be an instant death! Unlike other games of its type, Turrican II contains also three levels of horizontal shooter action in the spirit of R-Type.
The action is fun, mindless and absorbing, and the huge range of enemies and bonus pods keeps it that way for hours. This game is a perfect example of "coin-op like" high quality arcade shooter released on every 8bit/16bit platforms.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Atari ST version is great. It surely cannot feature a 64-color mode (like the Amiga) but nevertheless the game shows some ST potential and it's a hallmark of how the ST games should be developed. The sound FX and music scores (especially during the intro of the game) are pure joy and we have another example of the extensive in-game use of the ST Digi-Synth, which added a lot to the already inferior Atari ST home computer.
Note that, a PC (MS-DOS) version released a couple of years later (!) and was better in graphics (256 colored screens) in VGA mode and similar in-quality Amiga sounds (with the use Sound Blaster 16 or a better card).