Tyrian 2000

Tyrian 2000 is only one of the best scrollers of all time. You've no reason not to play it.

Tyrian is one of those grand-old-days-of-shareware titles that holds up to modern scrutiny thanks to crisp sprite art and phenomenal music. While far from comparable to today's bullet-hell shmups, Tyrian is approachable to many with an adventure story mode, and pure arcade mode. The arcade sequences will remind you of classics like Raiden and Blazing Lazers. While the adventure mode has a narrative worth reading by those that wish to, and an endless onslaught of enemies and treacherous environments for those who just want to make with the killing. And to supercharge your killing is an ever changing assortment of purchasable primary, secondary, and sidekick weapons, in addition to the ship, shield, and power cores that dish them out. Each individual episode is long enough that you will have built up an armada by the end, and if you continue your game rather than starting fresh, you can carry over your warship in order to cope with the ramped up difficulty. A digital gamepad of some sort is highly recommended to aid your survival without needing severe twitch reflexes. Easter eggs are a hallmark of these shareware games, and Tyrian doesn't spare a chance to laugh at itself. If you are familiar with the Twinbee or Parodius Japanese series of shooters you will love what's on the menu here. For free, you can't pass this game up.

No, seriously. Graphics are what would you expect from a good DOS game: put simply, climatic. Music could be described the same way. As of gameplay, well, it's wonderful. But you probably want to know more? Well, in case of graphics, go and search for screenshots. You can find the music on YouTube I believe. The gameplay, on the other hand, is simple: you flight in a "moving" world and shoot stuff, trying to not be shot yourself. Sounds too simple? Add some nice enemy variation, possibilities of upgrading your ship, fancy 2-player mode and you get something I love. By the way included environment runs game perfectly on Windows 7 x64. So it is stable. Even if nostalgia isn't something which connects you with Tyrian 2000, it isn't in my caase too. I encourage you to try it at least, because it's a solid experience taking quite a while.

Up until recently, shoot-em-ups on the PC have been few and far between. This game was released a good deal of time ago, but remains an absolute classic even today. Many levels, a customisable ship, minigames and a good story, there's nothing this game doesn't do well. If you want some shooting action, you can't get much better than this.

Epic Megagames was on a roll in the '90s even before Unreal. All of their games were guaranteed to be worth the money. I had already purchased the full versions of Epic Pinball and One Must Fall 2097 when Tyrian was released, along with Radix, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Extreme Pinball. Out of all these games, Tyrian is the one I spent the most time playing. Since it is now free, I have OpenTyrian on my Caanoo. I have many fond memories of exploring all the levels and using the Carrot ship and attacking with hot dogs, oranges, and bananas. The game had a lot of reply value and plenty of secrets to discover, like the DESTRUCT mini game. I also love the soundtrack. Tyrian 2000 was a necessary evil because the original Tyrian would not run on newer versions of Windows. It added new levels which spun the story line in a cheesy direction. The ship editor is cool, but there is a transparency glitch with one of the built-in ships. The Beer mini-game is only fun if you like very early shooters such as Galaxian. Also, the color palette in the new levels contains a few out-of-range values, so you start seeing rainbows if you play the game with the detail level set to Wild. All having been said, this is definitely worth playing, all the more so because it is free. I hope GOG releases OMF:2097 soon, which also is freeware since 1999.