Tyrian story and setting
The year is 20,031. Trent Hawkins, a pilot working on the planet Tyrian, sees his best friend killed by a hostile drone, and the trail leads to MicroSol, the most powerful corporation in the galaxy.
The premise
MicroSol has found Gravitium on Tyrian, a rare material it wants to keep secret. Trent's friend Buce Quesillac warns him with his last breath that the drone was MicroSol's. Now a witness, Trent is a target himself: he takes an armed ship and flees towards Savara, a free world, the start of a war that crosses the whole galaxy.
Premise summarised from Wikipedia. The rest of the plot unfolds in the game's data cubes; this wiki does not reproduce their text.
The five episodes
The episode titles come from the game itself:
| Episode | First released in |
|---|---|
| Episode 1: Escape | the shareware release (1995) |
| Episode 2: Treachery | the registered release (1995) |
| Episode 3: Mission: Suicide | the registered release (1995) |
| Episode 4: An End to Fate | Tyrian 2.0 |
| Episode 5: Hazudra Fodder | Tyrian 2000 (1999) |
Data cubes
Most of the story is told through data cubes: messages, news reports and intercepted files that you pick up during a level and read in the shop's Data menu. The shop holds up to four cubes from the previous level. Some cubes only drop from particular enemies, so a careful pilot learns more of the story. Which cubes each level leads to: Data cubes.
| Episode | Data cubes |
|---|---|
| Episode 1 | 37 |
| Episode 2 | 12 |
| Episode 3 | 21 |
| Episode 4 | 64 |
| Episode 5 | 12 |
Counted from the game's data cube texts.
Places
The navigation map between levels names these destinations:
Tyrian · Asteroid 1 · Asteroid 2 · Asteroid 3 · Soh Jin · Camanis · Gryphon · Savara · Gyges · Deliani · Ixmucane · Torm · Fleet · Botany A · Botany B · AstCity · Gauntlet