The origins of Tyrian date back to October 1995, when it hit the market courtesy of Eclipse Software and, at that time, Epic MegaGames. Full of action and with a fabulous soundtrack, the game became a classic, and it entered the open source universe in 2007 under the OpenTyrian project. Although nothing prevents us from downloading a copy and running it locally, GitHub user 'midzer' decided to create a fork that works in the browser, with all the graphics and sounds intact.
In the 'story mode' of Tyrian, you play Trent Hawkins, a pilot and war veteran who, in the year 20,031, seeks a quieter life working on the terraforming project of planet Tyrian. Obviously, Trent's plans go up in smoke when his friend Buce Quesillac is killed by a drone from the Microsol corporation.
Why? Because Trent and Buce accidentally discovered the existence of Gravitium, a mineral that Microsol wants to control absolutely, which includes killing its own employees… and their families. That's right: Trent's own parents are eliminated by Microsol, and besides surviving its forces, there is also a score to settle for revenge. Want to know the rest of the story? Now you can experience it at your own pace, directly in the browser.
OpenTyrian, now in your browser
The original version of Tyrian became freeware in 2004, but three years later, Jason Emery and Daniel Cook (designer and artist respectively) released both the code and part of its visual resources. Alexander Brandon (writer and composer) shared the complete soundtrack in 2010, and with that detail, today we can enjoy a complete OpenTyrian. The work of user 'midzer' on GitHub focuses on this online version which includes special graphics modes to optimize aspect ratio, scalers that reduce quality loss (you can use integer scaling if you want pure pixels), and of course, access to the jukebox to play all the music.
I should also mention that OpenTyrian is not the only game 'midzer' transferred to the browser. On his official page we can find links to other similar projects, notably the shareware editions of Descent and Doom, Raptor: Call of the Shadows (another great scroller similar to Tyrian), and the very same Prince of Persia.
OpenTyrian in the browser: Click here
Other ports by 'midzer': Click here
