Stargunner & Tyrian 2000

K. Fields
2019-03-24T17:41:45-04:00
Video Games

As a change of pace, I’ve been playing a couple of PC arcade shooters from the 1990s. The first is Stargunner, a 1996 release from Apogee Software. It is a horizontal side scroller similar to one of my all-time favorites, Jets’n’Guns. As with JnG, you have the ability to customize your ship with various weapons and defenses. That certainly adds to the replay-ability of an arcade genre game, which sometime grows stale with repeated play. For a 20+ year old title, it is definitely a fun game. It hasn’t hooked me like JnG did, however, so I doubt I will complete the entirety of its missions.

The other arcade shooter I’ve been playing is Tyrian 2000. This was an updated version of Tyrian, which was developed by Eclipse Software and published by Epic MegaGames. This game is a vertical scrolling shooter reminiscent of Xevious or Raptor: Call of the Shadows. Also like Stargunner, Tyrian provides for upgrades to ship components such as weapons, shields, and generators. I like Tyrian 2000 about as well as Stargunner. Both games are roughly the same vintage and they each provide a nice diversion when you get the itch for some retro arcade “shmup” (shoot-em-up) action.

Both games are available for free on GOG.