****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
What a great way to relive my younger days of gamer glory!As a young adult, I played the daylights out of Turrican and Turrican II, both on the Commodore 64 and Amiga computers. In my 50s, I find I'm not nearly as good at these games as I remember... Give a thumbs up if you feel the same way about many retro games you play today.I have to be honest, in that I'm not going to be playing this game nearly as much as I have anything like Mario Odyssey or BOTW, but this is a really, REALLY great way to go back in time and play these old games in, at least nearly, all their original glory. Knowing Chris Huelsbeck worked hard with the devs to make sure the original soundtracks (super key to the success of these mega hits in the 90s) were PERFECT helped me make the decision to buy this in the first place, and it really paid off.Some nice touches are scaling and shader options, so folks more familiar with the finer elements of emulation will have at least some amount of control over visual styles, including simulating that old tube TV or CRT look, even with rounded edges and curved "bubble" display if you want. But if you want it super crispy, pixelly and flat, you get that too. A small variety of snazzy adjustable backgrounds can also act as a "bezel" around your old 4:3 display if you want. Or you can totally turn all that stuff off.Many of the games go into "attract" or demo mode, and yesterday I had this running for hours just making my house sound like an old arcade, or one of our user group meetings (back when folks used to be able to have those kinds of things). Really enjoyed the atmosphere, and glad they didn't "pare" that stuff off of the games.Controls are completely customizable, there's no complaining that you don't like the configuration of the buttons, even the old "up to jump" if you feel like turning that back on.It's going to take me some time plugging away at this game to get any good at it again, especially on modern controllers vs old school joysticks (who else misses being able to play these games on an Epyx 500XJ/Konix Speedking?), But I'm willing to make that "sacrifice" to enjoy the visual and audio delights that this game offers.I like the interface, I love the games, and though I understand the Anthology version will include a considerable amount of more material and swag, this is just enough to get my old school brain back in time. And the price point is PERFECT.
