this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Tyrian. Vertical shooter with top-notch visuals for the time, a ton of secrets, good replay value and an amazing soundtrack (with a jukebox mode)
This is the one. I've been playing Tyrian2k for decades. Honestly I still haven't found a shmup this good. And all the secrets! I remember looking up all the codes to type into the title screen back in the day. Had a sheet printed out and everything haha. It's freeware nowadays if anyone wants to try it. It's also on GOG for like 5 bucks if that's more your thing. Also check out opentyrian2k. It's essentially an enhanced version ported to modern PCs.
Tyrian was great! And also Tyrian 2000 which I was able to play somewhere. Maybe Gametap or some similar service. I remember trying it out as shareware (I think) and thinking it was Epic Games' best published shooter to date. Still holds up, imo.
I loved the upgrades and the fact that you had a health bar instead of a 1 hit kill. Plus all the stuff you said.
Tyrian's data was made freeware, and a modern open-source reimplementation that can use the data was done.
On Debian Linux, it's in apt as
opentyrian.https://github.com/opentyrian/opentyrian
I played Tyrian 2000 a ton as a kid and this was such a fantastic game. It even had a great two player mode which I recall had separate weapons for each ship!
I wish I was old enough at the time to appreciate the data logs you collected because I remember there was fun dialog hidden in some of them.
Typing "DESTROY" into the title screen unlocked like an entire new game with multiplayer and everything.
In fact the multiplayer in that game was great in general. One player on keyboard the other on mouse, and you could dock ships and have one steering while the other shot.
Excellent game, not just for its time
It was great. With crossover from One Must Fall: 2097 in there etc was cool but yeah the core mechanics including multiplayer fun live on. My favourite of those top down scrolling shooters.