Players earn upgrades by picking up money from destroyed enemies. Players have a main gun and two support guns that can be upgraded to fit any number of different weapon types.
The core gameplay involves flying over various locations and destroying as many hostile forces as possible. Players control Trent Hawkins, a terraformation pilot whose goal is to uncover the reasons behind the death of his friend, Buce Quesillac. These were finished but ultimately cancelled, however you can get a ROM of the GBC version which is pretty good considering the limitations of the GBC, though the levels are also restructured.Tyrian is an top-down shooter its main points of interest include many different gameplay modes, weapon and ship upgrades. The game was also headed for Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance courtesy of World Tree Games. However what is omitted from the freeware versions are the Red Book Audio tracks that featured on the CD ROM version of the game so some people may want to track down that and run it through DOSBox. Also unlike OpenTyrian, it still has the fifth episode. There is something about the OpenTyrian version that doesn't feel like the original, it places well enough but doesn't seem to be in tune with the controls. This game is now freeware and I recommend downloading it from the GoG website (link below) and it requires zero fath to get up and running.
The sound effects are pretty good, the usual blasts and explosions. The music was neat in places and meh in others but after playing the tunes will still be in your head. Graphically it was really nice, some good transparent effects and it never seemed to slow down at all when there was a ton of crap on the screen (something that can't be said about the more popular SNES shooters sadly). I really liked this feature, it added to the way you play and you can tool the ship up to suit how you play shooters. Throughout the game you will earn credits by shooting enemies and buildings, these credits will then allow you to buy new ships, add better shields, generators & weapons. Also type in ENGAGE on the title screen and you'll get a insane difficulty mode.Īnother great thing about this is the level of customisation you have in the game for your ship. The game wasn't overly hard like some but you can change that with hidden modes, making the game scroll faster etc. The game was originally split into three episode and each lasted just as long as a console shooter. Unlike most shooters you find on the consoles, this is one hell of a lengthy game. If you like shooters, jump in because you'll love it, if you don't.well go away. Tyrian 2000 is a vertical shooter, you pretty much already know the drill control a ship, shoot stuff and defeat a big boss at the end.
In 1999 they re-released it as Tyrian 2000 adding a 5th episode to it and also making it work a lot better with Windows (which was becoming a more dominant OS taking over from DOS).
During the first four years of release, the developers still worked on it, improving aspects, gameplay and even adding a lot of content like a whole new episode, two player modes, bonus games (in v2.0) and also a nice little Xmas mode (V2.1). In 1995 Epic Megagames published one of the best shoot-em-ups on the PC, hell it holds it own against the arcade and console games.