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Developed by Eclipse Productions (now World Tree Games) and published in 1995 by [[Epic Megagames]] (now [[Epic Games]]), ''[[Tyrian]]'' is an addictive [[Vertical Scrolling Shooter]].
[[The Future|It is the year 20,031.]] [[Player Character|You are Trent Hawkins
For a game of the genre, ''Tyrian'' actually has a surprising amount of story to it, primarily in the form of datacubes that can be collected from certain enemies and read between levels when you get the opportunity to upgrade your ship in the game's Story Mode. ''Tyrian'' also includes arcade mode for both one and two players on the same computer or over a local network.
With great graphics for its time, addictive gameplay, and catchy music, along with a wide variety of levels, weapons, enemies
Three iterations of the game were released. Version 1.x contained three episodes (with the first being released for free, as was common among shareware publishers in the '90s) and chronicled Trent's escape from Tyrian and his hunt for the Microsol invasion fleet. Version 2.x added a few extra levels to Episode 1 as well as a new fourth episode featuring a raid on the research planet Ixmucane. A later rerelease
It is freeware since 2004. The [http://www.freewebs.com/worldtreegames/ official page of author Jason Emery] is quite sparse, so it's better to refer to [http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/ this excellent fansite]. Even the graphics were released with an open license (check [https://web.archive.org/web/20130927044331/http://www.lostgarden.com/2007/04/free-game-graphics-tyrian-ships-and.html here]). [http://code.google.com/p/opentyrian/ OpenTyrian] is a source port from Pascal to C, with versions for many consoles.
Back around 2005, a small group of fans got the OK from Jason Emery to make a freeware sequel, which would have featured a retired, alcoholic Trent Hawkins fighting against the Zica, who had returned to conquer the sector. Unfortunately, the project seems to have never gotten out of the planning stage
''Tyrian 2000'' has recently been re-released (again for free) on GOG.com, with the game's music encoded into a collection of [[MP3]] files (about 12 times as large, disk-space-wise, as the game itself) as a bonus download. Get it [http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/tyrian_2000 here].
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* [[Abnormal Ammo]]/[[Edible Ammunition]]: The SuperCarrot FoodShip Nine, a [[Captain Obvious|Carrot-shaped vessel]], shoots out food as its main weapons. Not to mention some of the bananas it fires out can cause a [[Sphere of Destruction|really devastating explosion]]...
** There's also a rather weak sidekick which fires out ''bubble gum'' that moves rather erratically and randomly.
** Taken [[Up to Eleven]] with the Hot Dog Front and Rear guns. Yes, they [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|fire hot dogs]]. Bun, mustard
* [[All There in the Manual]]: A lot of players are surprised to hear that the game has a plot, or that the player character has a name (Trent Hawkins).
** Reading the cubes fully can occasionally lead to secret levels or side passages that the player would not have access to normally; the Ixmucane crisis in Episode 4 comes to mind here.
** There are even some that [[Lampshade Hanging|explain]] why a flamethrower would work in space, or how food production equipment could be weaponized.
* [[Apocalypse How]]: Ixmucane in Episode 4, turns into a Class X if
* [[Attack Its Weak Point]]: The boss of Ixmucane is a floating robot encased in rock. The only way to damage it is to hit its core when it is open
** {{spoiler|Javi's}} Dreadnaught in Episode 4. The game actually makes a set of green arrows pointing to the vulnerable part(s). [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by an explanation from one of your allies in a datacube prior to the mission, stating that he has a scanner that is strong enough to transmit the weak point of the Dreadnought to your ship, indicating them with green arrows.
* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: Missiles. All of them. They look and sound very nice, and most of them can deliver splash damage, but for whatever reason, they always seem to do a lot less damage than cheaper and easier-to-find weapons such as the Pulse Cannon that you start out with. The Atomic RailGun, your front gun in Super Tyrian mode, also falls into this category as well, more so given that the [[In Name Only|only good thing going for it is
** ''Tyrian 2000'' gives us the Gencore Solar Shield, which does not draw power from your generator to recharge, but by the time it is available, there is another shield that gives you the same protection for just over half the price, and the drain on the generator isn't really an issue except with constant-fire weapons like the Lightning Cannon and Zica Flamethrower.
* [[Awesome McCoolname]]: Quite a bit of everything in the game has some sort of fancy name to it. The Gencore Phoenix and Maelstrom's not-so-signature [[Healing Factor|armor recovery]] twiddle command, for example, is called "particle redefinition technology".
* [[Awesome Yet Practical]]:
** Heavy Guided Bombs and Guided Micro Bombs. Available from the first level, the weapons start out shite, with slow-moving low-damage projectiles that only vaguely home in on targets. At full power, they combine [[Roboteching]], [[Macross Missile Massacre]], [[Stuff Blowing Up]] and [[Splash Damage]] with a vast amount of damage-per-shot and fairly high fire rate.
** The standard [[Wave Motion Gun|Laser (front weapon)]] certainly qualifies: Incredible DPS when fully upgraded, and the beam follows your ship, allowing you direct the massive damage very precisely. Against bosses, may be considered a [[Game Breaker]] as well. Perhaps the only other front weapon that can hope to match
** The "Sonic Wave", is quite handy as well. Not only can you direct
* [[Battleship Raid]]: Dread-Not is a borderline example.
* [[Beam Spam]]: The Laser and Zica Laser weapons definitely fit this, but the Needle Laser is probably the best example (5-6 lasers in one shot on the highest Power level).
* [[Big Good]]: Transon Lohk, head of the [[Mega Corp|Gencore Tech Alliance]], Microsol's biggest competitor. You get into contact with him early on and he issues you most of your orders for the better part of the game.
* [[Blessed with Suck]]: Your Story Mode game turns into {{spoiler|a Super Tyrian run}} if you are flying The Stalker 21.126 at the end of Episode 4 {{spoiler|and complete Zinglon's Revenge. All your weapons and sidekicks will be replaced by whatever you managed to generate while playing the
** [[Cursed with Awesome]]: However, if you choose to [[Heroic Willpower|just finish the last episode]] and adapt to the quirks of The Stalker 21.126, instead of {{spoiler|reloading your game and skipping Zinglon's Revenge}}, you will be rewarded with {{spoiler|the secret code to use the [[Purposefully Overpowered|Nort Ship Z]] in Super Arcade Mode}}.
* [[Body Horror]]:
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* [[Critical Annoyance]]: A klaxon sounds when your ship is low on armor and gets faster as you get closer to death.
* [[Critical Existence Failure]]: Averted for your character. An ''[[Most Annoying Sound|annoying]]'' warning will occur [[Critical Annoyance|once your armour is low]].
** Also averted for [[Giant Mook|large enemies]] and [[Boss Fight|bosses]]. [[Subsystem Damage|Parts of their
* [[Crosshair Aware]]: Soh Jin in Episode 2. The "Warning! Missile Ships!" sign is quickly followed by rather rapid-firing, damaging ships that look like grey missiles. Fleet, in Episode 3, also has a brief warning for you to get out of the way before a fiery beam from a [[Wave Motion Gun]] pulverizes your ship. Similar things exist in Lava Run, Episode 4.
* [[Deadly Walls]]: Present in some stages, most notably those red walls from the bonus levels Soh Jin and Windy. The first level of Episode 4, Surface, also has rock arches that you can pass under; touching the sides causes you to take damage.
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* [[Disc One Nuke]]: The [[Kill It with Fire|Plasma Storm]]. Obtainable ''before'' the first level, it can completely fry anything, including bosses in a matter of seconds. This is balanced out by its very limited ammo, especially in the newer version.
** On the first level, by taking an [[Guide Dang It|obscure]] detour to [[Secret Level|Soh Jin]], one can obtain the most beefy purchasable shield in the game, provided they sell-off/downgrade enough of their ship components to be able to afford it. Congratulations, you now have some of the best protection in the game, though you'll probably be glad you have it on the [[Harder Than Hard]] difficulties.
* [[Doomed Hometown]]: Failing to kill Trent when they had the chance, Microsol decides to
* [[Earn Your Fun]]: The SHIPEDIT program. What weapons and equipment you can give to any of the ten custom ships available is limited by how far you have progressed into the game, the weapons and equipment you have used for an entire level, and your Destruction percentage at the end of each level. The more weapons you use in any of the game's modes, and the higher your Destruction percentage at the end of each level, the more weapons and better equipment SHIPEDIT will allow you to outfit.
* [[Easter Egg]]: A ''vast'' number of hidden bonus arcade modes, hidden ships, and a hidden ''[[Scorched Earth]]'' type game called ''Destruct''.
* [[Easy Mode Mockery]]: In the serious fashion. Savara in Episode 1 has a drastically different (i.e. more challenging) layout {{spoiler|on Hard difficulty or higher}}. If you play Episode 3 on Easy or Normal difficulty, it ends when you complete Fleet. On Hard difficulty or higher, {{spoiler|you continue on to Tyrian X, Savara Y and New Deli, where you can purchase some of the more powerful weapons in the game and are given an early chance to buy the Prototype Stalker-C, probably the most useful ship in Story Mode and the second strongest in terms of hull strength
* [[Energy Weapon]]: In Story Mode, almost every single weapon fired by the player ship, excluding ammo-based sidekicks, draws power from its generator. This might explain why front- and rear-mounted weapons of mass [[Bottomless Magazines|never run out of ammunition]].
* [[Evil All Along]]:
** {{spoiler|Javi Onukala, Gencore's Security Chief}}, first led Trent on a wild goose chase across many planets to stop him from interfering with Microsol's plans to dominate the entire sector while at the same time planting a homing beacon that [[Fight Magnet|painted Trent as a target to every pirate and organism]]. In Episode 4, he severely crippled the fighting strength of Gencore by turning the defence system of its headquarters on Deliani against itself.
** {{spoiler|Emperor Milktoe
* [[Evolving Attack]]: Most of the weapons have "stages" in their upgrade chains where the weapon gains a fairly terrifying amount of power after being upgraded by a single level. For instance, the [[Gatling Good|Vulcan Cannons]], at one stage, drop their fire rates and upgrade their projectiles to deal twice the damage per hit, and the [[One-Hit Polykill|Mega Cannon]] switches from shooting small peas to launching huge energy pulses at the same rate of fire near the middle of its upgrade chain. Nearly always, the upgrade is accompanied by a change in weapon visuals: pairs of bullets, wider lasers that pulsate, faster missiles that deliver greater splash damage and range, giant sonic waves and so on.
* [[Explosions in Space]]: Justified for the Zica Flamethrower. The weapon works in space due to an energy-based particle field used to generate a flame without any external air or energy source.
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* [[Eye Scream]]: EyeSpy has you fight loads and loads of eyeballs, some of which can spawn ''even more'' eyeballs. The boss of Nose Drip can detach his eyeballs to attack you, and yes, you have to shoot them down.
* [[Faster-Than-Light Travel]]: 'Warping to next level'. Hyperspace is briefly mentioned it seems even escape pods are warp capable.
* [[Flying Seafood Special]]: Coral is a level where ''all'' the enemies are based off aquatic animals. They can fly
* [[Foreshadowing]]: Before the second level of Episode 4, there's a datacube containing a news report with two items. The second, {{spoiler|concerning the imminent destruction of Ixmucane}}, is the only one that seems important, as the first is just a report on the apparent theft of the god Zinglon's nose from a museum. {{spoiler|The final boss of that episode is Vykromod in the form of
* [[Forgotten Fallen Friend]]: Near the end of Episode 4, Trent reminisces on how the assassination of his best friend Buce was what threw him in the middle of his galactic warzone hell.
{{quote|"Dang. Can't even remember his name now."}}
* [[Fruit of the Loon]]: Fruits play a ridiculously prominent role in this ''futuristic space shooter
* [[Gainax Ending]]: The ending to ''Tyrian 2000''.
* [[The Ghost]]: General Nortaneous, owner of one of the most powerful ships in the entire galaxy, has his transmission regarding stargates intercepted by Trent in the first episode, and it is rumoured that Gencore made two custom companion ships for his own use, but he never plays an important role in any of the major events that happened in Story Mode. {{spoiler|However, he does personally send Trent a message allowing the latter to borrow his own ship if Trent makes it to Episode 5 of Super Tyrian mode. If Trent actually completes the game on Super Tyrian mode, the player receives the code to use the Nort Ship Z in Super Arcade Mode
* [[Giant Flyer]]: Gryphon, the [[Final Boss]] of Episode 2, is a blue griffin-dragon hybrid thing. Which can shoot out it's head and re-attach it.
* [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]]: Lord [[ZZT]]/Gopenhagen, the blimp boss in Savara V, attacks civilians on the planet, causing the [[Fridge Horror]] explained above. No explanation is given for this.
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* [[Harder Than Hard]]: ''Tyrian'' has three hidden extra-hard difficulties, with the hardest of them making most levels damn near-impossible to beat.
* [[Harmless Freezing]]: The Ice Beam special weapon does this. It doesn't do any damage, but [[The Paralyzer|it freezes enemies that it hits, preventing them from firing at you]].
* [[Healing Factor]]: The Gencore Phoenix and Maelstrom, as well as the Prototype Stalker-C and {{spoiler|
* [[Hero of Another Story]]: Transon Lohk and Reid aren't just spectators in this game. Each one of them play a major role in some pretty large-scale or important operations. Transon helped to co-ordinate the evacuation efforts on Ixmucane onboard the Gencore flagship Icostar II while Trent was busy blasting his way through Microsol's defences on his way into the planet's core, and Reid led the forces on Savara against an invasion force while Trent was helping Transon to liberate Deliani after {{spoiler|Javi}} turned its defence system on itself.
** Ninja may well be the [[Hero of Another Story|Hero Of]] [[Another Dimension]].
* [[Holiday Mode]]: The game prompts you whether or not to activate it if you start the game during December. Among the many changes, your ship's voice has a new set of sayings and an entirely new, Santa-esque voice.
* [[Homage]]:
* [[Humanoid Aliens]]: Pretty much all of the sentient ones, the most prominent examples being the Hazudra Collectors and Emperor Milktoe.
* [[Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball]]: The {{spoiler|Nortship Spreader B}}, one of the {{spoiler|Nort Ship Z's}} available Super Arcade weapons, shoots massive blue balls that damage and bounce off everything they hit. [[Hilarity Ensues]] if they get wedged between two enemies or a multi-part boss.
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* [[I'm A Humanitarian]]: From one of the datacubes describing the restaurants on Savara:
{{quote|"Many also cater to the more exotic tastes by serving the patrons of competing restaurants, literally!"}}
* [[Impossibly Cool Weapon]]: Front-mounted lightning cannons, rear-mounted fireball launchers, side-mounted wingmen that fire very damaging energy mines
* [[Infinity+1 Sword]]: In one secret level, you can get hooked up with one of two very deadly laser Special Abilities. Collecting one of the floating powerups will give you a short bursts of Level 2 Lasers as your secondary weapon. Collecting the powerup a second time will give you the {{spoiler|[[Macross|SDF]] [[Wave Motion Gun|Main Gun]]}}.
* [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons]]: One of the [[Secret Character|secret characters]] is a dragon that shoots fire and lightning as its main attacks. Also, Torm had [[Our Dragons Are Different|worm-like dragons]] that tried to [[Ramming Always Works|rush the character]] for heavy damage. The final boss of Episode 2 was also a blue griffin-like dragon.
* [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja]]: Another of the [[Secret Character|secret characters]] is a ninja ship that can fire [[Flechette Storm|shurikens]] and [[Deadly Gas|acid gas bombs
* [[Interface Screw]]: On some levels, your perspective flips, or you have to use "headlights" to light up a cone in front of your ship. On [[Harder Than Hard]] levels of difficulty, every level requires you to use headlights.
* [[Invincible Minor Minion]]: Three levels have this little, laser-firing thing that attacks you. The problem? It attacks you from behind and cannot be destroyed. It will go away after a period of time, though.
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** The SuperCarrot is another example. Its [[Abnormal Ammo|food and fruit weapons]] are also quite deadly.
* [[Lethal Joke Item]]: The Banana Bomb. Its firing speed is sub-par, and the projectiles it fires are small and slow, but [[Sphere of Destruction|if it hits...]]
* [[Lightning Bruiser]]: Microsol's plan for most of the game is to create a fleet of these. With their ships' propulsion systems drawing directly on the Gravitium, more reactor power can be allocated to weaponry. {{spoiler|Trent beats the crap out of the fleet anyway
* [[Lizard Folk]]: The Hazudra.
* [[Macross Missile Massacre]]: You can pull this off by equipping your ship with Heavy Missile Launcher as your front weapon, Rear Heavy Missile Launcher as your rear weapon, and Micro/Mega Missiles as your sidekicks.
** Micro missiles do this on their own, though; they burn through their 100 shots - ''each'' - in about twelve seconds of continuous fire.
* [[Meaningful Name]]
** One of the secret levels, MARKERS, railroads your movement by placing many highly visible blocks on the screen to mark out the only paths you can fly through.
** The first level of Episode 3 is called GAUNTLET. Your ship flies through most of this level at high speed while at the same time dodging [[Mook|mooks]], makeshift walls, [[Epic Flail|anti-ship flails]] and [[The Asteroid Thicket]].
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** The level where you confront {{spoiler|Javi}} in his dreadnought is called DREAD-NOT due to the fact that it can be easily destroyed if you [[Attack Its Weak Point|attack its weak points]] [[For Massive Damage]].
** In EYE-SPY, most of the enemies you confront are eyeballs in various sizes. There is also one segment where you have to dodge projectile attacks aimed at you by [[Invincible Minor Minion|indestructible eyeballs]] that momentarily enter the screen from the edges.
** The boss at the end of BRAINIAC is
** The boss of NOSE DRIP is... a giant nose that shoots "snot" as one of its attacks.
* [[The Medic]]: The armor ship, a [[Palette Swap]] of one of the mooks in Torm and Asteroid2, will descend from the top of the screen and hang around for a while whenever you lose enough armor points to reach the [[Critical Annoyance]] klaxon (or if you do not have that much armor to begin with in the first place). Destroying the armor ship will drop a hull integrity bonus which, depending on its color, will repair your armor by up to a third of the maximum armor level possible in the entire game {{spoiler|(that's the blue one)}}. This armor ship will keep making appearances at fairly long intervals until you have recovered enough armor to shut the klaxon off.
* [[Mega Corp]]: Microsol, Gencore and several other unnamed groups. Microsol seems to be lead by the [[Omniscient Council of Vagueness]] and never runs out of leaders. Each episode presents a bigger bad guy.
* [[Mook Maker]]: Surprisingly for a [[Shoot'Em Up]], there are almost none at all. The closest ones would be the eyeball-spawning eyeballs in EyeSpy and the bosses of Fleet and Nose Drip.
* [[More Dakka]]: You can get front and rear Vulcan Cannons with 11 levels of power each, Vulcan Shot Option sidekicks, and the Dual Vulcan special weapon. Without a high-end generator, your ship can't ''handle'' this much Dakka.
* [[New Game+]]: At the end of the final episode, you start back at the first level of the first episode with all your equipment, the difficulty bumped up a notch, and {{spoiler|a [[Randomly Drops]] event occurring}}.
* [[Oh Crap]]: Gencore agent Harble Wom plays this straight and true the very instant he guesses what Microsol is thinking of doing by turning on the Zica computer system deep in the center of Ixmucane.
{{quote|''"I think...
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