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A planet is dying. In an age of darkness, the weak fall prey to the strong and power itself is justice enough. The Machine came in this time and where he walked, destruction followed. The Machine is a mysterious cosmic entity, vastly powerful and almost invincible. It kills without mercy and knows no pity.

The machine would be all set to conquer the universe were it not for a man named Turrican. That one man should stand in the way of a super-being is astonishing enough. That that one man should choose to face the Machine on his own is truly incredible (not to mention a bit daft).

Turrican is a battle-hardened mercenary from the planet Spam. He kills for money and has no morals. Why then when the people of the besieged planet Landorin ask for his assistance does a tear - come to his eye?

"It's not a tear, it's lubricating fluid from my exoskeleton, honest", protests Turrican.

There are two things you need to know about Landorin. One, it's big and two. it's packed full of vicious alien scum. These are the Machine's minions and these are what stands between Turrican and the safety of the Universe.

Turrican 2 looks at first uncannily like Turrican 1. Your immediate response when you first appear on the is to run right, shooting anything that moves. Just as well, 'cause that's the whole point of the game.

Well, actually, there's a bit more to it than that. The planet Landorin is huge, with complex cities above and below ground. Your objective is to reach the end of each level and defeat an end-of-level guardian. Sounds cliched, but getting to the end of a stage is very tricky. The planet is so huge and labyrinthine, you may well get hopelessly lost on the way.

Not to worry, the exploration is great fun, especially when you're armed to the teeth like Turrican. Initially you have a pulse laser, an electric arc beam weapon and three smart bombs. The first fires normally, the second is activated by standing still and holding down the Fire button. A long arc - of blue energy shoots out and can be rotated around you with huge destructive potential. Smart bombs are activated by hitting the Return key.

If that selection sounds too sissy for you, then shooting the pods which float past at various intervals will reveal extra weapons, such as spread shot and bouncing laser cannons. No strategy here whatsoever. just blasting, jumping, killing mayhem. Playing further and further into the game, you will be impressed by the variety of aliens, weaponry, land-scapes and graphics, but in a CPC game, the second part of the game came as something of a shock.

After defeating one end-of-level guardian quite far into the game, it's a bit of a surprise to find Turrican inside a small spacecraft, zooming through a very fast moving alien complex, much like R-Type or Nemesis. The fact that this sub-game out shines both those games in every respect is an indication of the scope and quality of the whole product.

This R-Type section is impressive and would have made a spectacular game on its own merits. It covers a vast area and at times the scrolling changes direction, leading you into a kind of maze. It all becomes claustrophobic and dangerous very quickly. The weapons remain the same as the jumpy/shooty bit, but the gameplay changes dramatically.

Turrican 1 was huge, Turrican 2 is absolutely vast. There is just so much in it! The graphics are also without doubt the best yet seen on a standard CPC. There seems to be an unfeasibly large amount of colour on screen at once. Add to this near-perfect scrolling in eight directions as well as some absolutely massive sprites and you have a game of truly outrageous proportions.

The music during the intro is superb and the sound effects throughout are noisy and brash, suiting the game perfectly. But the best thing about Turrican 2 is the gameplay. It's perfect. A weighty claim indeed, but play it and you'll see it's a justified one.

Turrican 2 literally takes the Amstrad to its limits. It doesn't slow down when there's too much on screen, it uses a very large palette of colours and everything moves like silk. The similarities to the original Turrican are obvious, but it adds to the theme and improves it greatly.

Turrican 2 is a quantum leap in game design on the Amstrad. Rainbow Arts has pulled out all the stops, used real imagination and made Turrican 2 the single best shoot-em-up on the Amstrad ever.

Complete the second level.

Graphics 98%
Probably the best graphics ever on the Amstrad - and about as good as they'll ever be.

Sonics 88%
Perfect sound FX complemented by superb intro music.

Grab Factor 95%
There is no way you can put this down once you've picked it up.

Staying Power 91%
Absolutely huge and the urge to see what comes next is powerful indeed

Rating 95%
One of the best Amstrad games ever and easily the king of shoot-'em-ups.

Turrican 2, apart from having the most incredible graphics ever, is also one of the biggest Amstrad games to date. The scale of the game is hard to appreciate from a mere description; to really get the feel of it, you have to go a-wanderin'.

Programming house Enigma Variations was only too pleased to give us the technical run-down on its masterpiece. Richard Naylor, head honcho and all round good guy, told us that Turrican 2 contains a jaw-dropping 1,500 screens!

Think of it this way - if you laid out 1,500 monitors on their backs on the floor, it would cover an area 9,240 metres square. You can wander around as an inch-high Turrican in an area roughly the size of your entire house!

Enigma Variations had a real headache with this. Eoch level takes up 60K and the programmers had to fit five levels, as well as music and other bits, onto as small an amount of disk space as possible. Incredibly, this house-sized game fits on just one disk!

Amazing.