Welcome back to "When needs to be on XBLA?"! Today we shall talk about one of the best DOS games ever! It was released way back in 1995 by Eclipse Entertainment and Epic Megagames, and that game is Tyrian!
Tyrian is a Vertically scrolling shooter - or Shmup - made specifically for the PC. Shmups tended to be released only in the arcades - and still do - so in order to be suited to that market, the games tended to be short and extremely difficult - Ikaruga for example.
Being a game made for a home platform, Tyrian moves past these "limitations" of the genre and create a full blown game with a whole load of levels, difficulty levels and a lot of play time. And yet can still cater to a hardcore audience through a huge range of difficulty levels.
A game like Tyrian makes Shmups more accessible - gone are the old rules of "You got hit, you're dead, enter more money!" - Tyrian gives your ship a health bar, and shielding to help you continue on your journey. Lives are still a factor, but it takes a whole lot more to die than your usual Shmup - you don't have to completely memorize a level. It's not the only game to ever do this, but it's one of the best.
Upgrades are a huge part of Tyrian - you can upgrade your ship and weaponry by killing enemies - which drop coins. The amount of ways you can upgrade your ship is staggering - there are 11 ships in all, as well as 18 front gun types (Straight ahead), 12 Rear Gun types (Shoot to the side), 11 Shield types, 6 Generators (speed of regaining life), and 30 Sidekick weapons, which you can have two at a time. This, plus 60 levels over 5 chapters with multiple routes.. this game is pretty damn big. Mix and match and you've got hundreds of combinations. But the game never came to consoles!
The game plays in two different modes - Single Player and Arcade. In Single Player, you choose your path through the game, upgrade your ship, and read the story through data cubes you collect within the game, and choose your path in certain sections of the game - completely by your choice. Arcade mode goes back to a more classic style - collecting power ups during levels while still maintaining health and shield bars of Tyrian.
Tyrian also supported Multiplayer! Two people locally or online (In 1995!) could play through Arcade mode together.
Though the graphics are in a low resolution, the game is rich with colour. Everything is clear to the player - you can see ships and the large amount of special effects, bullets, and everything in a small resolution. It was one of the best looking 2D games of the time.
The soundtrack is a treat - it is very memorable, just looking at these youtube videos brings back so many memories of the games music. The CD re-release back in 1999, Tyrian 2000, had new mixes of the music, but I prefer the synthy chip tunes myself. Just have a listen in the videos embedded in this article.
Even with the few Shmups coming up, there is always room for more - especially of this quality. It certainly hasn't stopped the Wii Virtual Console - which has quickly become filled with the wackiest Shooters every released - the Turbografx was full of them!
It would certainly appeal to people on Xbox Live Arcade - people are already hyped by Ikaruga - but I feel it may only get picked up by the "hardcore". Tyrian is skewed a bit more to a little more casual audience - similar in ways to XBLA's own Omega Five - a side scrolling shmup - had an excellent difficulty curve, and knew it was a downloadable game. A demo of Tyrian with the first 3 levels could convince a lot of people to buy it.
The thing with Tyrian is - it's currently available online! For free! The actual game was released by its owner Jason Emery (who originally programmed the game and did the level design) after many years of attempting to bring the game back in some form or another - Game Boy Colour and Game Boy Advance versions were in development at some point or another, but were never able to find themselves a publisher, so those games ended up on the chopping block.
But I feel he may have spoken too soon - the XBLA and DLC services is are the perfect place for such a game to make a comeback. Being free before certainly hasn't stopped Marathon, N+ and many Namco arcade games from appearing on the network. The ability to play Coop online without hassle would also be great. It's a game that was completely missed by most of the console generation, which needs to be corrected!
There is a project currently available called OpenTyrian in which is an open source attempt to revive Tyrian and port it to several systems - currently different developers have made it available to play on Mac OSX, Gamecube, even the PSP! There is certainly some big fans out there - but a focus on the Xbox 360 platform would be fantastic. The current web page for OpenTyrian can be viewed here.
I have attempted to contact Jason Emery, the original programmer and current holder of the rights for Tyrian about the possibility of bringing it to the Xbox platform. However I have not been able to get a response at the time of this article. If he does get the time to respond, I will write a secondary article.
To be just a bit speculative for a second - Emery currently works for Amaze Entertainment, which is a part of the Foundation 9 conglomerate, which Digital Eclipse and Backbone Entertainment is a part of - both huge XBLA contributors with a lot of big projects on hand. Digital Eclipse has been all about Emulation and have dealt with Arcade and SEGA games. While their ports haven't exactly been spectacular, with the right tools and the right director, Tyrian could get the sort of boost something like Bionic Commando or Commando 3 is getting - add Achievements and other features (like Coop) directly into the game, rather than around it.
So in review: Tyrian would absolutely appeal to to the market that the XBLA strives to appeal to - and will also give a poor guy who's been trying to revive his damn game for nearly 10 years the life it so sorely deserves! Make it so!
You can go and download Tyrian for free, right now! Check out this webpage:
http://www.freewebs.com/worldtreegames/ and download it now. And check out the Open Tyrian project. To find out more on Tyrian and Tyrian 2000 go to the Unofficial Tyrian website.
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