Turbo was a different breed of tortoise. You’d catch him speeding across a series of platforms and bouncing on the heads of enemies one minute, then avoiding spikes, discovering hidden rooms and collecting an abundance of fruit the next. Not bad for a reptile with a reputation for living life in the slow lane and such platforming fun ensured that, when Hi-Tec released Turbo The Tortoise in 1992, the game sped to gamers’ hearts.
Turbo ticked familiar boxes. Cute character: check; get from A to B: check; difficult boss: check. But it did it so very well, producing a game inspired by console titles that, from time to time, had neat ideas, such as being able to zoom around on a jetpack, create ad-hoc platforms by chucking rocks or accessing hidden rooms.
“The initial concept and idea for was mine,” says Dennis Mulliner, the game’s designer who had previously worked on a handful of games including a spoof called in 1987 with programmer Dave Thompson. “I was working in computer retail
