Tyrian history
Tyrian was the first commercial game of a small team that called itself Eclipse Software. It was published by Epic MegaGames in 1995 and kept growing for four years, up to Tyrian 2000.
The team
Three people did most of the work:
- Jason Emery: programming and level design.
- Daniel Cook: art and interface design.
- Alexander Brandon: music and writing, with Andras Molnar as co-composer.
The credits list eleven people in total. Among them, Bruce Hsu drew interface graphics and character faces, Arturo Sinclair of Storm Front Studios rendered planets and faces, and Robert Allen of Safari Software took the project on before Epic MegaGames offered a full publishing deal.
From a scrolling demo to a game
The project began around 1991 as a scrolling-background experiment by Jason Emery. Alexander Brandon pitched it to publishers, who were not convinced at first: it had no sound and rough graphics. Daniel Cook joined after Brandon noticed his work and produced the art in about four months on an Amiga 1200, and the interface was reworked several times. The game openly draws on Compile's shooters, Zanac in particular; two of the soundtrack's tracks even reproduce Zanac songs.
Releases
| Release | Date | What it brought |
|---|---|---|
| Tyrian 1.0 (shareware) | 14 September 1995 | Episode 1. |
| Tyrian 1.1 (registered) | October 1995 | Episodes 1 to 3, bug fixes, and a ship editor later sold separately. |
| Tyrian 2.0 | later | Episode 4, An End to Fate, and new modes including two-player play. Later 2.x updates fixed keyboard issues and added a Christmas mode for games started in December. |
| Tyrian 2000 | 1999 | Released by XSIV Games: episode 5, new ships, fixes and the Timed Battle mode. The CD version also carried an audio soundtrack. |
Dates from the English Wikipedia article. The shmups wiki gives a different, earlier date for the first release.
Reception
Reviews were warm. PC Gamer scored it 87%, Next Generation gave it four stars out of five and praised the shop, the ability to save at any time and the story, and Computer Gaming World nominated it for its action game of the year.
Freeware, open source and OpenTyrian
- The game was later released as freeware. The project's README, the introduction of the Wikipedia article and the Tyrian community wiki give 2004; another section of the Wikipedia article ties a freeware release to 2007.
- In February 2007 the original Pascal and assembly source was handed to volunteers, who rewrote it in C as OpenTyrian, under the GNU GPL.
- In April 2007 Daniel Cook released his Tyrian art under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. According to Wikipedia, his later Game Boy Color and Tyrian 2000 work is not covered.
- In August 2010 Alexander Brandon made the soundtrack available for free (see the track list).
- OpenTyrian2000 forked OpenTyrian to recreate Tyrian 2000 closely, with its fifth episode and extra modes. How the three compare: Tyrian 2000 vs OpenTyrian.
There were also handheld versions by World Tree Games for the Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance, with condensed episodes and redesigned levels. Their publisher closed before release; World Tree Games later released them as freeware.
Trivia
- Announced as a Safari Software game. Tyrian was first meant to come out under Safari Software, the Epic MegaGames label for smaller games such as Highway Hunter. According to a fan site from the 2000s, the ordering screens of Safari's Linewars II and Highway Hunter showed early Tyrian screenshots announcing it as coming soon from Safari Software.
- Two tracks from Zanac. Tracks 31 and 32, Power Up and Secret Level 2 on the track list, are arrangements of music from Compile's Zanac; Wikipedia names them ZANAC3 and ZANAC5. In the original game, as in OpenTyrian, picking up a secret level orb switches the music to the first one, a short jingle; the Enhanced Edition plays a sound effect instead and keeps the level music. In Tyrian 2000 the second one plays after you enter a high score.
- The Game Boy ports. According to Jason Emery, quoted by Hardcore Gaming 101, the Game Boy Color port was nearly ready for release when it was scrapped, while the Game Boy Advance one was at a much earlier stage.
- In the credits. The Tyrian 2000 credits, read from the game's data, list Cayenne Mandua for the Tyrian 2000 artwork, and thank producer Robert Allen for, among other things, the jukebox's starfield concept.
OpenTyrian2000 Enhanced Edition
The Enhanced Edition started from OpenTyrian2000. Its current version is a new engine written in Rust and Godot 4 that plays the Tyrian 2000 data, keeps the original campaign and adds Endless Arcade, co-op, mutators, new display and music options and modding. See what it adds.
Sources for this page: Wikipedia, the shmups wiki, Hardcore Gaming 101, an archived fan site and the game's own data, paraphrased. Links on Sources and credits.