Tyrian 2000

Bonus Games

Tyrian is STUFFED with secrets, it's simply amazing. Over a dozen secret levels can be reached, and there's also a secret level which leads to another. There are several levels in which you can get to as much as 3 different secret levels from 3 different places inside the same level!

Also, several (believed to be 3) secret games were added to Tyrian v2.0 (and consequently, Tyrian 2000), the first of which is called Zinglon's Ale. One secret game (see screenshots), which is something of a simultaneous Scorched Earth, was forgotten in the original Tyrian and added to Tyrian V2 (then to Tyrian 2000). To reach it type 'destruct' in the main menu.

Freeware release

This game, along with unreleased ports of it to the GameBoy Colour and GameBoy Advance, were re-released as freeware August 17th, 2004, by the author, Jason Emery.

They can be downloaded at http://www.freewebs.com/worldtreegames/ , or through mirrors at its preeminent fanpage: http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/downloads.html

Logo

Tyrian's logo (in the main menu) can be read both the usual way and upside down!

References

MicroSol, the company which tries to take over the world in Tyrian, is arguably a non-very-small pun at Microsoft. A lot of people are still speculating which company/organization MicroSol's rival, Gencore, represent.

Secret Messages

Epic Megagames, the original distributor of Tyrian, has embedded various messages inside the plot. Among them are: A message from Stephan, one of the characters in Epic's One Must Fall 2097 (and also one of the songs in the game is called "One Mustn't Fall"), another which introduces you to other Epic games such as Jazz Jackrabit and also a message which fits the game's plot, hinting at the prospect that "access to subtitle 'Registered Version' might bring further information".

Epic hasn't made any shortcuts in the game, and even bothered to place a message entitled "Mega Soundchair" in order to explain why Tyrian has sounds of explosions in space. Apparently, having learned from the deaths of many young fighters who were terrified by the silence in space, ship manufacturers devised a way to pick up the minute distrubances caused by sound in space and amplify it a thousandfold.

Secrets

• There are three hidden difficulty levels: Impossible, Suicide and King of the Game. To reach Impossible, press 'shift-}', then to reach Suicide press 'shift-G'. It is believed that King of the Game is only attainable with a special game type. To reach it write 'engage' in the main menu.
• Over a dozen secret ingames exist. The codes to each will be given to you upon completion of the game. The code to the first is 'techno', which has to be written in the main menu.
• There's an unbelievable variety of secret weapons in the game, as well as a ship called "Super Carrot", which adds hotdog attacks and the dreaded superbanana bomb. Fruits are a bizarre aspect of the game, and somewhere down the road you will receive a message explaining "what in the name of Zinglon is all this fruit doing floating about in outer space?"
• Tyrian 2000 features a secret detail level: wild. To access it, enter the setup, go to detail level selection and (without first pressing enter) click 'w'.
• Start up Tyrian 2000 during Christmas and you'll get a message asking if you'd like to enable Christmas mode. Don't say no. The ship, weapons and some audio clips change into Christmas themed gfx and clips.
• Tyrian 2000's extra episode adds over a dozen new weapon types, new character portraits and several new ship types.

Soundtrack

• The Tyrian 2000 CD includes 25 audio tracks of music from the game, recorded at very high quality.
• Tyrian 2000's setup includes a jukebox, which along with very nice lissajious effects has all the songs in the game available for playing.

Information also contributed by glidefan and Pseudo_Intellectual