From the Brain-Scanned Memories of Alex: Tyrian began originally as an experiment. Jason Emery began coding in the early 1980s on his parents' Apple II plus computer. From music to graphics, Jason was engrossed in programming and wrote programs from file organizers to adventure game construction sets. He was also a big game player and writer, having dozens of Apple II games as well as Nintendo titles, and drawing mazes and other games in books. In 1991 or so Jason showed his friend Alexander Brandon his latest creation... he had taken some of his maps created in his "Adventure Construction Set" and made them move, so when a ship was placed on these scrolling maps it looked as though it was flying over them. This was the beginning but neither knew where Tyrian would lead from there. Alex had been doing some graphics for Jason's editor, and music on the new "Adlib" soundcard. Eventually it was decided that they had enough to show a game company. Jason honed the game, then called STARCON.EXE, flatteringly named for the Accolade hit "Star Control". Jason added enemies, shots, and Alex threw some explosions and rendered some cutscene images. Alex then wrote up a proposal document and sent it to the two leading shareware game publishers of the time, Epic Megagames and Apogee. Both showed interest but neither got overly excited. The game after all, had no music or sound (lacking a playback system), and the graphics were definitely not professional in quality. Apogee was already hard at work on "Duke Nukem 3D", and Epic also had its game lineup filling fast with "One Must Fall" and "Jazz Jackrabbit". It seemed as though Tyrian would never find a publisher. Then, one day, Alex received an email from Robert Allen, head of Safari Software (a subsidiary of Epic Megagames). Robert said that Safari was Epic's sister company who handled smaller scale projects, which he said Tyrian could fit into perfectly. Robert had word from Cliff Bleszinski (lead level designer of "Unreal" and "Unreal Tournament") that Tyrian was very similar to one of the leading Nintendo shooter games of the age, "Zanac", and that it had to be followed up. Robert took a long hard look at Tyrian and told Alex what needed to be done to make it a success. Robert gave leads to sound coders and artists as well who worked on the game, the first being Bruce Hsu from China who souped up some interface graphics and did faces for the story elements of the game. Next came Daniel Cook who as it turned out was the backbone of Tyrian. Daniel Cook (aka 'Danc') took the requests from Alex for level designs and enemies and drew the most incredible art Alex had ever seen. Detailed rocks, forests, huge boss ships, all the way down to the smallest soldier fighters were all brilliantly done and Jason and Alec had more than they had hoped for to make "Tyrian" a true shooter. From here the game rose in popularity at Epic. Alex got ahold of an additional artist from "Storm Front Studios" called Arturo Sinclair who had worked on big budget games by Sierra, and helped do additional rendered artwork for planets and faces. Arturo wasn't on the project long for he soon left to work on a Denzel Washington movie, "Virtuosity". The interface for the game and the graphics were changed at least three times before Danc and Jason finally came up with a simple and fun solution. At this point Tyrian was nearly ready. The soundtrack was already beyond most FM based sound systems thanks to the coder Andreas Molnar and his "LOUDNESS" sound system, the sound effects were near completion, and the marketing machine headed up by Epic's Mark Rein was ready, all under the watchful eye of Robert, who was keeping everything in line. But there was still more to come. Epic's Tim Sweeney approached the team and informed them Tyrian was to be published as a full fledged Epic Megagames product! The game had grown to the point where it was to be considered a truly next generation game in its genre. Then came the release. Tyrian was not a hit compared to such games as "Doom" but immediately became a cult classic. It received %87 percent from PC Gamer (one percent below a PC Gamer Editor's Choice award, and one percent ABOVE Tyrian's biggest competition at the time, "Terminal Velocity" by Apogee!), and 4 out of 5 stars from Next Generation magazine, as well as a nomination for "Action Game of the Year" by Computer Gaming World. For a first title, this was excellent and again, far more than Jason Emery and Alexander Brandon had ever hoped for from an experiment. | Origin of Tyrian .