I ran across my copy of Tyrian the other day. I don’t know how many of you are old enough to remember (or truly appreciate) some of the incredible titles that Epic MegaGames put out for the PC back in the early 1990′s but let me tell you – Tyrian was the shit. It’s still my favorite forward scrolling space shooter of all time, and I’ve played a lot of games in the genre since first blasting my way through this one back in 1995 when it was released. (Not even Gradius tops it, if you ask me. It’s that good.)

I did some research and found that the original game was actually released as freeware in 2004. Tyrian 2000, the 1999 update that added a fifth episode and fixed bugs, was also released as freeware. I managed to snag a copy. You can download the ZIP here. You’ll need DosBox installed to run it on any modern machine but believe me when I say that it’s well worth the mild irritation generally caused by trying to get everything configured properly.