Turrican II was also released for the CDTV, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum, and later for DOS, and also for the Mega Drive/Genesis and Game Boy rebranded as Universal Soldier.

Somehow, with some unknown technology, the enemy battlecruiser, with a flash of blinding light, neutralizes every defence system on the Avalon 1.

The sound of an explosion fills the air as an airlock of the ship disintegrates and mutants begin to pour through.

One of the Avalon 1 soldiers, Bren McGuire, with tears in his eyes, fires the last of his phaser bolts, downing a mutant and diving to the ground as a chunk of structure falls from above.

After an intense fight that wipes out all tripulants of the ship, there is silence as the evil emperor known as The Machine, half-man, half-robot enters the airlock and commands his mutants back to the battle-cruiser.

The Machine surveys the carnage, steps forward and comes to halt with one foot on the prone body of Bren McGuire.

Realizing that he is the only one left to combat the evil of the invaders and restore peace and freedom to the galaxy, he gets up and hurries to the equipment room.

The game is divided into five distinct "worlds", split across eleven levels, each with its own themed music provided by Chris Huelsbeck, plus a final showdown with the boss known as "The Machine".

In 2016 Chris Huelsbeck created a limited Collector's Edition Box Set featuring new live orchestra recordings of music from Turrican II.

The Amiga and Atari ST versions of Turrican II, as published by Rainbow Arts, began development in May 1990, and were released in February 1991.

[3] Trenz also expressed that some ideas from fans of the original game were incorporated into Turrican II, stating that "So many people wanted so many different things I couldn't please them all.

"[3] Eggbrecht expressed that while the team wanted Turrican II to have 'arcade quality' graphics, he stated that the team tried to avoid "sacrifici[ing] presentation to playability", giving an example of world two having a lower frame rate and less parallax due to the high number of enemies on that level.

[3] The Atari ST version of Turrican II was programmed by Thomas Engel, who managed to get the game running at a 25 Hz frame rate with the same amount of parallax and sound effects as the Amiga version: Eggbrecht stated that this was achieved not through hardware scrolling techniques, but by "using eight buffers and by pre-shifting all the enemies in memory.

The rest of the original Turrican II stages are still present and remain mostly intact in overall design, though some of them appear in a different order, along with the three new levels scattered through them.

In the end, Accolade only released the Mega Drive/Genesis and Game Boy versions in both North America and Europe.