I grew up with Tyrian (mispronouncing it "Ty-ran" as a kid through grade school) and keep revisiting it every couple years and playing through on harder difficulty runs each time. I know in 2005 there was a sequel proposed but nothing came of it; maybe nothing will come of this either, or maybe someone will take this idea and run with it. I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I wanted to share a possible idea I had for a sequel. I own Gamemaker Studio and do want to learn how to use it, but this is not me saying I am developing nor intending to develop this concept into a game. This is simply me sharing my thoughts for feedback/critique by the community. All comments welcome! My ideas to follow, since when I typed them up on here I think they were too long.

"This is Rob Neither with the daily news.

Tyrian Sector Buzzing Over New Rift

Reports have been steadily spreading that an intercepted transmission from none other than General Nortaneous himself, claiming to have just exited a stargate anomaly, only to find himself over 100 years in the future. Nortaneous disappeared entirely after a previous transmission detailed the discovery of anomalies on Tyrian. In this newly intercepted transmission, Nortaneous seems to indicate that this tunnel has bi-directional travel after sending a holo-scout through the same rift and collecting data on the date the scout emerged. How this was accomplished is anyone's guess, but one thing's for certain: whether you want to go forward or back, people love the idea of time-travel."

You are Trent Hawkins, pilot extraordinaire and the hero of the Tyrian sector. You've heard the rumors that are circulating throughout both the sector and from the mainstream Fluxnet 21, and this is an opportunity you hadn't considered before: what if you went back in time to save your Hazudra friend Buce? What if you were able to get your parents to safety before the assassination by Microsol? Your mind races with the thought of a second chance at saving those who were closest to you, and you jump back into the cockpit of your trusty ship once again, strap yourself into your mega soundchair, and fly off to see if you can make your way to the temporal anomaly and save the day all over again!

Gameplay would be similar to OG Tyrian, except ships would have more things that set them apart: some have faster movement with less armor, while other heavier ships would have more armor and less mobility. Smaller ships may only be able to have a front weapon mounted while larger ships can have up to two auxillary (rear) weapons to aid them in combat. Shields could be normal, bouncy (require more energy to recharge but to compensate reflect enemy projectiles), absorptive (incredible energy cost, but repair a small amount of armor on hit), or damage inflicting (if an enemy/object hits you, it might take damage over time or have the shield detonate and have to recharge but destroy everything in a small radius around you). Sidekicks could be ammo based or generator/energy based as in the original game. Some familiar weapons would return and some newer weapons would be available.

There's one of three ways this story could go, and out of the latter two I can't decide which I like the most:
1: Trent finds the rift after a long adventure battling his way to it before going back in time and managing to save Buce and his parents and living happily ever after by striking at Microsol before they can get up to any shenanigans. This ending to me feels sort of boring, where our hero just gets a super happy ending, even though he has to work for it. Curious if this is what people would want, so maybe it could be a secret ending, but not the canonical one.

2: Trent gets to the rift after battling his way there, only to find Nort standing guard over it with a small fleet of loyal soldiers accompanying him and the wreckage of all those who have attempted to enter scattered around him. Trent asks if it's possible to use the rift to go back to save his Hazudra friend or his parents, and Nort just bluntly states that if Trent makes a move for the portal he's history (no pun intended). Queue a long bossfight where, by the skin of his teeth, Trent would win out, and wouldn't kill Nort but leave him incapacitated for a time. Nort would warn Trent about the dangers of changing the timeline and that, via the butterfly effect, the actions he takes differently in the past would end up being disastrous to the future. Trent listens to his words and resolves to be careful and try to do things the same way except for saving his friend and his parents, but with those actions alone Trent's alteration of fate sets a horrific series of events into motion.

By saving Buce, Microsol now begins a hunt for both Trent AND Buce, and you and your sidekick (possibly a gameplay element where he pilots a small ship with you and can fight but can also be destroyed, resulting in a game-over), instead of heading through the asteroid fields right after escaping Tyrian as you had before, decide to go and save the data about the gravitium Buce has from his holographic memory into what amounts to the "Hazudra cloud", a digital databank containing many important pieces of information that the Hazudra collective can access and learn about. In doing so, every Hazudra becomes a target, and Microsol uses their power and influence to convince the planets in the sector that the Hazudra are terrorists and must be destroyed before they can cause any more harm. The wave of destruction brought about by Microsol in this decision leads to the near-extinction of the Hazudra race as the biological signatures of the lizard people are tracked and hunted down.

From Trent's one action of saving his friend, he doomed an entire race to be the target of a genocide event. In doing this, he does indirectly cause Microsol to lose sight of his parents as targets and is able to warn them and have them go into hiding. Dougan and Steffan and other familiar faces show up, and still offer support to Trent, and Trent has to go through the cycle of destroying the Microsol and Vykromod fleet, except this time their forces are much greater since they had planet-wide mobilizations of their armies, and other events from OG Tyrian are accelerated, to the point where Ixmucane is activated much earlier than anticipated, and Trent has no standing relationship with Gencore or Transon, leading to less supplies being available and no support from Gencore when Microsol begins transitioning the planet into a sun. Trent could still go through the planet, but with a much harder time doing so AND would have to make sure he wasn't shot down by Gencore fighters who have no allegiance with him. Through all of it, Trent would fail to completely stop Microsol but survive and look back on everything that had changed, realizing that the death of his friend and parents might have been necessary to prevent the new levels of death and destruction that followed him through this timeline. He then would end up hibernating in cryostasis again for about the same amount of time, not being awoken by the Hazudra collective because they were all but extinct, and instead being found on Earth when its discovery comes to light in the Tyrian sector. Trent would then have to make the hard choice of going back and allowing his friend and family to die, effectively resetting the timeline, or to accept the new future he created for himself here, where his friend is one of the last surviving members of the Hazudra species and Microsol controls everything but the sector is relatively peaceful.

3: Similar to #2, Trent would find the rift, battling to get there, and find Nort guarding it. This time, however, as Trent begins to converse with Nort and wants to enter to save his friend and parents, another, much larger battle cruiser appears and seems to have a dead-set course for the rift. It would be revealed that this ship is commanded by Dana Lohk, the late Transon's daughter. When Trent when into cryostasis, in a last ditch effort to keep Microsol alive, Captain Nob, who had successfully escaped before, led another final assault with a skeleton force against Transon's fleet stationed on Deliani, and while Nob and his mercenaries went out in a blaze of glory in the name of Microsol, they destroyed many ships under Transon's control and mortally wounded Transon himself, who later died of his wounds.

Dana blames Trent for her father's death, convinced Trent took the coward's way out by attempting to flee from his duties, and that if Trent was still close by when Nob attacked her father would still be alive. Trent attempts to explain to Dana what actually happened and how Transon was just using Trent to keep his own hands clean, but Dana refuses to accept this and reveals that at the last stop Trent had made at Deliani, the crew who allowed Trent to upgrade his ship planted a homing device on a very sensitive engine component and that she would detonate the device, knocking out Trent's ship in the process. She attempts to cause an explosion and render Trent unable to do anything, but the device doesn't detonate and instead malfunctions, giving Trent a chance to escape if he wants. Dana remarks that it doesn't matter because she'd crush Trent even if he had engines, and then proceeds to bring her wrath down on Trent and Nort. Nort and Trent hold her off for a bit (this would be an instance where you're meant to lose because her ship would just be so much stronger and tougher than yours) but she wins out, incapacitating Nort's ship and critically damaging yours before preparing to enter the rift and join her father, guiding him in decisions and giving him knowledge of Microsol from in the future to allow Gencore to strike early and destroy Microsol, which in the process makes them as powerful and evil as Microsol was in OG Tyrian.

Before Trent's ship is entirely destroyed and he's killed, Nortaneous has the auto-repair functionality of his ship disabled and launches the module to Trent's ship, initiating it to save Trent's life. Nort then sends Trent into the rift to follow the path Dana took and to stop Gencore from becoming the new Microsol. Just then, as Trent is beginning to use his fully repaired ship, many Gencore ships warp in to stop Trent from leaving and preventing Dana from accomplishing her mission. The auto-repair module discharges from Trent's ship and returns to Nort to begin repairing his ship, and Trent punches it into the rift just as concentrated fire from all of the Gencore ships floods the area. Trent then must go through the past, trying to warn Microsol (or even sometimes fighting on their behalf) to keep them from being completely overrun by Gencore, making Trent public enemy number one for Transon and causing a role-reversal from OG Tyrian. If Gencore succeeds in taking over Microsol in the militaristic way Dana attempts to use, Gencore becomes the new Microsol (that is, the new evil mega corperation that controls everything) and has a significantly easier time completing things that Microsol set out to do, since Microsol would be destroyed and disbanded. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and when Transon gets his first taste of the true power as directed by Dana, he continues to want more until he sees Mircosol fall apart. Trent would sometimes be able to stop Transon's schemes and sometimes be too late.

The final nail in the coffin for Microsol would be Transon being instructed by his daughter to activate Ixmucane, then blame it on Microsol to gain the support of everyone else and cause all of the Tyrian sector to unify against the corperation, allowing Gencore to replace Microsol as the biggest and most influential company. Trent would then have to lead an assault on Deliani and against Dana and Transon, the mission being to kill Transon before Dana can be born in order to ensure she can't come back in time and thus resetting the timeline to the canonically established one in OG Tyrian. In this case either killing Transon or forcing him to realize what he's done wrong and vowing never to have a child would break the timeline and Dana would not cease to exist, but would not be able to come back in time and influence things, leading to both Trent and Dana being warped back to their "present" with the canon intact and Dana becoming incredibly agitated. She'd then realize that both Trent and herself were still in the same position they were when they left, around Deliani, and that she knows exactly where the rift is from here. Her ship, being more advanced than Trent's, allows her to jettison on a direct course back to the rift, leading to a chase sequence where Trent struggles to keep up but they both make it to the rift once again, and Dana smugly says goodbye to Trent as she attempts to enter the rift again and repeat the cycle. However, when she tries to, nothing happens.

Nort, who is still nearby, asks what happened, seeming to still have memories of what's gone on prior to Dana leaving. Dana explains angrily that she was warped back here and was trying to go change the past once again, to which Nort just chuckles and reveals that Dana is unable to pass through because she doesn't exist in anything but the present anymore, meaning going back wouldn't have any body to put her in, and thus her and anything she's physically contacting would simply bounce off the rift and not be able to go into the past or the future. Trent still wishes to save his friend, but realizes that the sector is at complete peace right now, and might not be should he go back to change his own fate, and wisely decides to ask if it's possible to shut the rift. Dana interrupts and is fuming mad, then decides to attack Trent and Nort again, but her anger leads to poor decision making during the battle and both Trent and Nort are ready to go for the rematch, knowing exactly what she's going to throw at them and having a long but winnable bossfight. They end up destroying her ship, and the two of them then focus efforts on closing the rift to avoid any sort of timeline altering again.

I personally like options #2 or #3 better than option #1, but I'm curious what people think. Are there any plotholes I missed? Do these sound like interesting avenues to play through? Are these complete rubbish and do you have a better idea? Please feel free to leave feedback on my ideas or propose your own, this is just something that's been in the front of my mind recently and I wanted to type it all out before I forgot and let the idea die.

~Trex

I think I get the idea, but you really need to consult a manual of style, sections regarding paragraphs.

Do any of these involve the matter of Tyrian 2000?

Edited slightly to break things up more, apologies for the word vomit. Just wanted to get thoughts out before I forgot them. If you have any other formatting tips please do let me know.

As for involving Tyrian 2000, these are ideas for a sequel to the game, for which I am looking for feedback from the Tyrian 2000 community. It wouldn't make as much sense to ask for feedback from people who aren't fans of the game and who don't know about the events that occurred in Tyrian 2000, which is why I've posted it here.