You start out with ten grand and a very basic ship. But what makes Tyrian unique is it’s awesome shop and upgrade system. You fly around the screen trying to blow up all the enemies while avoiding enemy fire. Slug feels as if you’re playing in slow-motion and I would definitely recommend playing at Normal or Turbo speed.Īt first glance this plays like every other vertical shmup. During the game you can adjust the speed of the gameplay which ranges from slug to turbo. Higher difficulties means enemies will have more health, faster bullets, and you’ll need to dodge enemy fire like a maniac. I have yet to punish myself on anything higher than normal and hard. You can enter a code at the title screen that unlocks the hidden “Lord of the Game” difficulty. You have your typical easy, normal, and hard difficulty modes and two hidden difficulties, impossible and suicide. Arcade just has you going from level to level and in timed battle mode you’re given a set time to beat each level. Full Game is the story mode and you there’s even an arcade and timed battle mode. Tyrian 2000 is packed with content and there’s multiple modes to play through. In between levels is a menu where you can upgrade your ship, read data cubes, save or load your game and change other options. There’s even data cubes you can find throughout the levels that flesh out the story and characters further. This is a shmup after all so the story isn’t what kept me playing but it’s there if you want it. In between episodes and certain levels you’ll be greeted with some text that explains what’s happening. There’s five episodes total and each episode consists of about a dozen or so levels, including secret levels, and alternate paths. MicroSol has evil plans and it becomes Trent’s job to stop them. His friend is attacked and killed by the evil corporation MicroSol which controls terraformation on the planet Tyrian. You play as a terraforming pilot named Trent Hawkins in the year 20,031. And I’m guessing this is because it was never developed as an arcade game with a focus on eating your money. There is actually a story going on here which is unusual for a shmup. Finally, Tyrian 3.0, or Tyrian 2000, was released in 1999 and contained an additional fifth episode along with new ships and bug fixes. It also added a Christmas Mode which activates if you play the game in December. Tyrian 2.0 added an additional fourth episode, a two-player mode, new ships and weapons and even a new game mode, Super Tyrian. Eventually Tyrian 1.1 was released with three episodes, a ship editor and was basically a full game. I didn’t really get the chance to play it until now but I’m sure as hell glad that I did because it’s a perfect example of a great shmup with high replay value that doesn’t just rely on memorization.ĭeveloped by World Tree Games, the original Tyrian was a DOS game released in 1995 as shareware containing only the first episode. A little while ago Tyrian 2000 was released on GOG as a free game and naturally I added it to my collection. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I really got into the genre and now I’m always on the lookout for a great shmup. Especially because many of them are hard as hell and require serious memorization. Of course I played some but they never held my attention long enough to keep me coming back. Growing up I never really played a lot of shoot-em-up games, or “shmups” as we call them.
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