Tyrian is a vertically scrolling shooter developed by Eclipse Software for MS-DOS and published in 1995 by Epic MegaGames.

Tyrian was programmed by Jason Emery, illustrated by Daniel Cook, and its music composed by Alexander Brandon and Andras Molnar.

Now on MicroSol's hit list, Trent manages to secure a small, armed spacecraft and set out to the free world of Savara.

Before the player's starship is destroyed it must take enough damage to exhaust several points of shields (which regenerate over time) and armor.

There are three levels of difficulty to choose from: Easy, Medium, and Hard, as well as the hidden options of Impossible, Suicide, and Lord of the Game.

Certain hidden levels are only available at hard difficulty, which provide ample opportunities for unique powerups and upgrades.

Front and rear guns can also be upgraded to the next level by picking up power-up pods, which are found by destroying a specific enemy.

The player can also increase the power of the Dragonwing's weapon by not firing them for short time, letting them to accumulate extra charges.

There are five charge levels for each weapon, and collecting the spherical purple powerups gives the Dragonwing the ability to charge-up faster.

In this mode, available in Tyrian 2000 only, the player chooses from three levels to play in (Deliani, Space station, and Savara).

The player is given a set time to complete the level, while collecting power-ups, fighting off enemies and killing the boss.

When the level is complete, the score is calculated depending on time spent, ship's integrity, destruction caused, and enemies killed.

This mode, which is enabled by typing "engage" at the title screen, disables all cheat codes and command parameters and sets the difficulty to Lord of Game (or Suicide if the Scroll Lock key is held down).

The "headlight effect" is always turned on in Super Tyrian, which can obscure objects that are not within a 90-degree field of view in front of the player's ship.

Destruct is a minigame concealed inside Tyrian, reminiscent of Scorched Earth, with human-vs-human and human-vs-computer modes of play.

[1][2] The origins of Tyrian began as an experiment in 1991, with a young Jason Emery showing his friend Alexander Brandon the preliminary workings of a scrolling background.

Brandon wrote a proposal document and sent it to the two leading shareware game publishers of the time, Epic MegaGames and Apogee.

However, after a long wait, Robert Allen—head of Safari Software—considered Tyrian to fit perfectly with their company, which handled smaller scale projects.

Robert Allen gave leads to sound coders and artists, the first being Bruce Hsu who created interface graphics and character faces.

Artist Daniel Cook was hired after composer Alexander Brandon showed interest in his artwork, which was—unbeknown to Cook—"sent around" by a friend.

Arturo Sinclair from Storm Front Studios joined to create rendered artwork for planets and character faces.

At this time, Tim Sweeney approached the team and informed them Tyrian was to be published as a full-fledged Epic MegaGames product.

The data cubes found in the game's Full Mode contain various references to its parent publishers, including One Must Fall 2097, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Pretzel Pete (Tyrian 2000).

Version 2.01/2.1 fixed some keyboard bugs and includes the "Christmas mode", triggered by starting the game in December.

In February 2007 the Pascal (and x86 assembly) source code for Tyrian was delegated to a small group of developers to re-write it in C, in a project named OpenTyrian, licensed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later.

[citation needed] A reviewer for Next Generation complimented the use of a shop system for acquiring powerups, the ability to save games at any time, and the inclusion of a storyline to provide a reason behind "killing everything you see."

[citation needed] The original developers Jason Emery and Alexander Brandon considered Tyrian's reception "far more" than their expectations.