Tyrian 2000

I didn't expect much but good lord. This is one awesome vertical shmups. Maybe one of the best. It's pretty good, got awesome graphics and amazing music. It got it all rocking. But on top of it all it got PC features, so to say. Story mode with saving. Said story mode also includes lore that you can grab during gameplay, most of which extremely amusing. And then you can upgrade your ships, while having to make sure to upgrade generators so you can have shields regenerating while shooting just fine. Trying out different builds is fun, you can 'sell' items for same price after all, so to say. The game is also fairly forgiving. It got a regenerating shield. So it's just like Call of Duty. HA! The original game had only three episodes, so it really feels this way. The next version of a game came with Episode 4, which is super long. It goes and goes and goes until devs give up on sanity and it gets ludicrous. Glorious. And latest 2000 version added short Episode 5, which is awkward and nothing much special. There are two flaws that take away from five stars rating. First, you upgrade too quickly. By Episode 3 I was running my favourite build with no incetive to change much. Second, it's too long for arcade mode, just doesn't pace too well to beat it this way, so console shmups are better this way. Oh, and keyboard controls. Why do I have to press button to use weak weapon? When I only have to hold button to fire main weapons continuously. Plus, you know, ghosting or something. But eh. Great. Super awesome for a free game!

free. epic. comes with dosbox wich needs a bit of tweaking but generally awesome

I had a blast reliving the glory days and blasting enemies out of the sky! An absolute classic game with an awesome soundtrack.

This is a top-down vertical space shooter that has good writing, good soundtrack, an impressive source port, comes with so much guns that it might as well be classified as "Texas: The Game", gives you a multitude of defense options so that you don't die in one hit, has an arcade mode as well as a story mode, as well as support for both manual and automatic saves. And it's free.

This is one of the games I truly loved as child (I played shareware version of Tyrian many years ago) and I truly love it even now. It's amazing how game so rich in content: lots of weapons, ships, mini-games, different game modes, episodes of story mode and bonuses, can be also FREE. I will forever remember the first time I discovered carrot ship, hot dog weapons and some other stuff I don't want to spoil for everyone :-) If you want to jump into SHMUP genre, or if you are a fan of it but you are looking for something great, you MUST play Tyrian.