Development
Tyrian was developed by a credited total of 11 people, with "three main drivers" — Alexander Brandon (composer and writer), Jason Emery (programmer and level designer), and Daniel Cook (artist and interface designer). For the aforementioned developers, Tyrian was their first commercial video game.
The origins of Tyrian began as an experiment in 1991, with a young Jason Emery showing his friend Alexander Brandon the preliminary workings of a scrolling background. The two continued developing, and eventually decided the work could be shown to a game company. Brandon wrote a proposal document and sent it to the two leading shareware game publishers of the time, Epic MegaGames and Apogee. However, the game lacked any sound or music, and the graphics were "definitely not professional". As such, "neither got overly excited", but both showed interest.
The two developers thought they would never find a publisher. However, after a long wait, Robert Allen—head of Safari Software—considered Tyrian to fit perfectly with their company, which handled smaller scale projects. Robert Allen had word from Cliff Bleszinski that Tyrian was very similar to Zanac, thinking that it should be followed up.
Robert Allen gave leads to sound coders and artists, the first being Bruce Hsu who created interface graphics and character faces. Artist Daniel Cook was hired after composer Alexander Brandon showed interest in his artwork, which was—unbeknown to Cook—"sent around" by a friend. After he was sent a short list of levels, Cook created sample artwork on an Amiga 1200, with a David Letterman episode inspiring "some weird stuff". It was met with praise by the other developers, who asked him to "make some more!". The artwork was completed in a 4 month period.
After work began on graphics, the popularity of Tyrian rose at Epic MegaGames. Arturo Sinclair from Storm Front Studios joined to create rendered artwork for planets and character faces. The developers wanted a "simple and fun solution" for the interface, and changed it at least three times before deciding on a final design. At this point, Tyrian was almost complete; with the "LOUDNESS" sound system, near-completed sound effects, and a marketing plan head by Mark Rein. At this time, Tim Sweeney approached the team and informed them Tyrian was to be published as a full fledged Epic MegaGames product. It was later released in 1995.
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