Flagship Titles
Five games that define the Rainbow Arts legacy. Text-only — see the gallery for visuals and the catalogue for complete credits. Music for all titles is documented on the music page.
Turrican (1990)
Turrican is the game that defined Rainbow Arts. Programmed by Manfred Trenz and scored by Chris Hülsbeck, it arrived on the Commodore 64 and Amiga in 1990 as a demonstration of what dedicated, technically exceptional German software engineering could achieve. The C64 version in particular remains remarkable — a game of genuine scale and visual ambition on hardware that most developers treated as already exhausted.
The game’s design draws from multiple action genres — run-and-gun, exploration platformer, shooter — combining them in a way that felt entirely original. Turrican’s worlds are large and varied; its enemy design is distinctive; its moment-to-moment mechanics are crisp and satisfying. The gyro spark weapon in particular — a deployable ring of energy that rolls across the environment destroying everything it touches — remains one of the great weapon designs in gaming history.
Hülsbeck’s score for both the C64 SID and Amiga OCS versions is career-defining. The C64 soundtrack demonstrates everything the SID chip can do in the hands of a master; the Amiga version extends the compositions into four-channel territory with extraordinary results. Listen on the music page; browse the catalogue for complete platform and credit details.
Turrican was released across multiple platforms, with console ports handled by various developers. The Mega Drive port (Mega Turrican) and SNES version (Super Turrican) are distinct products with their own compositions and mechanics. The C64 and Amiga originals remain the definitive versions, and the ones Hülsbeck and Trenz were directly responsible for.
See also: catalogue entry — soundtrack — Turrican Flashback
Turrican II: The Final Fight (1991)
If Turrican announced Manfred Trenz’s genius, Turrican II: The Final Fight confirmed it. Released in 1991, the sequel surpasses its predecessor in almost every regard — more expansive worlds, more varied enemy encounters, a more cinematic structure, and a score by Chris Hülsbeck that is almost impossibly good for 1991 home computer software.
Turrican II introduces a horizontal shoot-’em-up sequence — an embedded different genre — that demonstrates Trenz’s programming range. The game’s fifth world, in particular, is a technical showcase: a cinematic sequence driven by Hülsbeck’s orchestrated score that has no real precedent in 8-bit or 16-bit gaming. It anticipates what the medium would spend the next decade working towards.
It was Manfred Trenz’s last game for Rainbow Arts. His departure after the game’s completion marked the end of the studio’s creative peak — a fact that became clearer in retrospect than it was at the time. No subsequent Rainbow Arts release matched the ambition or execution of the Turrican series.
The Amiga version of Turrican II is often cited as one of the finest games ever released for that platform — a combination of technical achievement, game design invention, and musical sophistication that has aged remarkably well. The catalogue documents all platform versions; the music page covers Hülsbeck’s score in full.
See also: catalogue entry — soundtrack — Turrican Flashback
The Great Giana Sisters (1987)
The Great Giana Sisters occupies a unique place in Rainbow Arts’s history — and in the broader history of European game development. Programmed by Armin Gessert and scored by Chris Hülsbeck, the game was released for the Commodore 64 in 1987 to immediate commercial and critical success.
Within weeks of release, Nintendo applied legal pressure over the game’s structural similarity to Super Mario Bros. — the world design, the mechanics of running and jumping through horizontally scrolling levels, and specific gameplay elements were close enough to the Nintendo title that Rainbow Arts chose to withdraw the game rather than contest the matter. The withdrawal created instant scarcity and, in time, legend.
The game’s quality is not in question. Hülsbeck’s C64 soundtrack is widely regarded as one of the finest SID compositions ever recorded — the title theme in particular has been covered and remixed hundreds of times in the decades since. Gessert’s programming is technically accomplished: the C64 version scrolls smoothly and has a visual polish unusual for the period.
Giana Sisters became a cultural artefact of a specific kind: a game more people know about than have played, defined as much by its withdrawal as by its quality. The character of Giana herself has been revived in several modern sequels — the “Giana Sisters” series by Black Forest Games — but these are separate productions unconnected to Rainbow Arts.
See also: catalogue entry — Hülsbeck SID score — period reviews
Katakis (1988)
Katakis is the game that introduced Manfred Trenz to the world — and the game that demonstrated, definitively, that Rainbow Arts was capable of producing software that could compete with anything produced globally for the Commodore 64.
Released in 1988, Katakis is a horizontal scrolling shoot-’em-up of extraordinary technical accomplishment. Trenz’s programming extracts performance from the C64 that contemporary reviewers found difficult to believe. The sprite work, the scrolling, the enemy formations — each element is executed at a level beyond what most C64 developers thought achievable. Zzap!64 awarded it one of its highest scores.
Hülsbeck’s SID score for Katakis is another landmark: driving, energetic compositions that match the game’s visual intensity. The title music in particular has become one of the canonical SID compositions, cited alongside the best work of Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway as definitive examples of what the chip could do.
Katakis was later published in some territories as Denaris. The Amiga version extends the game to the 16-bit platform with expanded audio and visual capability. Full platform details are in the catalogue; the score is documented on the music page.
See also: catalogue entry — Hülsbeck SID score — Manfred Trenz
X-Out (1990)
X-Out is the underrated jewel of the Rainbow Arts catalogue — a vertical scrolling shoot-’em-up with a distinctive underwater aesthetic and a score by Matt Furniss that is among his finest work.
Released in 1990 alongside Turrican, X-Out offers a different mode of Rainbow Arts excellence: where Turrican is broad and exploratory, X-Out is focused and intense. The game’s weapon shop system — spending credits between stages on ship upgrades and weapon loadouts — adds a strategic dimension unusual for the genre.
Furniss’s score deserves particular attention. His compositions for X-Out on both the C64 SID and Amiga platforms demonstrate a different musical sensibility from Hülsbeck’s work — heavier, more driving, with a rhythmic urgency that matches the game’s aggressive enemy patterns. Listen via the music page; full platform coverage in the catalogue.
X-Out received a sequel, Z-Out (1991), which extends the underwater aesthetic and continues Furniss’s score work. Both titles are covered in the catalogue and the music page.
See also: catalogue entry — Matt Furniss score — Matt Furniss