After developing a port of Turrican (1989) for the SEGA Mega Drive, The Code Monkeys began work on a Mega Drive port of Turrican II: The Final Fight (1991); but after Ballistic obtained the license to make a game based on Universal Soldier (1992), the developers were tasked with taking the work they had done on the almost completed console port of Turrican II and quickly altering aspects of the game, such as changing the sprite of the main character to resemble Luc Deveraux, replacing several bosses with giant Sgt. Andrew Scott look-a-likes, and adding three new levels based on scenes from the movie, in an attempt to re-brand Turrican II into a movie tie-in game.
The in-game credits list neither Manfred Trenz, the creator of Turrican (1989), nor Chris Huelsbeck, the composer of Turrican and Turrican II: The Final Fight (1991) on the Commodore Amiga. The lack of a credit given to Hülsbeck is especially odd since the music used in Universal Soldier (1992) is identical to the original Commodore Amiga soundtrack composed by Hülsbeck, despite being reworked for the SEGA Mega Drive sound chip.
A SNES version was in development. It received coverage in gaming magazines like Nintendo Power where it was stated that the game was 95% complete. Box art was even created for the SNES version, but for unknown reasons, the port was ultimately scrapped. A working prototype ROM was later found and dumped online.