Blank and World Record splits for Arcade mode included in RESOURCSE

I learned a few things about arcade mode (including co-op) the hard way.

Here's a collection of tips that I have - feel free to comment with more tips and I'll amend this post.

1. Twiddles - (yes it's legal) ... All twiddles listed here ( http://members.iinet.net.au/~vannevar/tyrian/suprtwid.html ) - but you only need to know how to repair shields for single player arcade... or maybe even coop. Don't worry about how complicated it sounds ( Hold fire, Down, Release both, Down, Hold fire, Down ) ... in practice, just fire a lot while moving down and you'll get it. It's easy with the mouse. It's a good idea to get your armor to max at the very beginning of every level

2. There is a bonus level after the very first level "Tyrian" that is accessible if you DON'T SHOOT any of the first U-ships... then the final "V" of ships before the boss will have an EXTRA ship at the bottom of the "V" - this one contains the bonus level with a LOT of good weapons (including "laser" which, to my knowledge, is the best weapon in the game). The level takes 1:45 on turbo, but in my opinion it's worth the time loss to get laser early... which allows you to turbo through more levels than you otherwise would be able to

3. Mouse is much easier to control than keyboard. For this reason, unfortunately, it seems to be easier in co-op to combine ships and allow the MOUSE player (player 1) to control the majority of the movements, while player 2 controls aiming his shooter and bombs (atom bombs are awesome)

4. The hardest level in the game (in my opinion), oddly enough, is the "BONUS" level in episode 3 because of two sections where there are baddies moving on either side of the screen firing sonic waves horizontally across the screen. You will lose a LOT of levels here if you don't have the right weapons and abilities. The best situation is to have the REPULSOR, and have a rear weapon that can fire DOWN (like that weapon whose image looks like three blue balls) If you have those two things it's easy. If you don't you will die a lot.

5. If you "quit" and restart a level, you aren't penalized (other than time lost)... and you restart with the same weapons and level that you were when you last started the level. SO - if you lose a level OR get a bad weapon (especially for player 1 during co-op) you might consider restarting.

6. The game is extremely unbalanced in terms of "purple bubble" upgrades. Most of the upgrades in the whole game are accessible in the first half of episode 1... after that it's scarce... so consider restarting (see tip #3) if you lose too many levels, otherwise you'll be entering a vicious cycle

7. Assuming you're playing on the GOG version of the game, you have a file called "DOSBox Configurator" in the folder your game is installed. Here you can tweak a few settings (like resolution, windowed mode, and mouse sensitiity), which will make the game more playable, especially if streaming with a program like OBS.

8. It appears to be faster to hit the ESCAPE key to get past end-of-episode screens than pressing mouse or enter.

For Arcade mode I've been toying around with Zica instead of Laser due to it's higher damage output at lower levels. Since there's no generator and the goal is to get the repulser special, Zica might actually be the better weapon for Arcade. I don't know, in my testing I sort of still prefer the laser.

Here's the damage tables form OpenTyrian that -nic pulled:

Name Lvl Cost Dmg Dly DPS Pwr Pwr/s Special attributes Laser 1 900 0.3 1 10 20 600 Laser 2 1800 0.7 1 20 20 600 Laser 3 4500 1 1 30 20 600 Laser 4 9900 1 1 30 20 600 Laser 5 18900 1.5 1 45 20 600 Laser 6 32400 2 1 60 20 600 Laser 7 51300 2 1 60 20 600 Laser 8 76500 2.5 1 75 20 600 Laser 9 108900 3.5 1 105 20 600 Laser 10 149400 4 1 120 20 600 Laser 11 198900 6 1 180 20 600

Name Lvl Cost Dmg Dly DPS Pwr Pwr/s Special attributes Zica Laser 1 1100 7 10 21 90 270 Zica Laser 2 2200 9 9 30 90 300 Zica Laser 3 5500 11 9 36.7 90 300 Zica Laser 4 12100 13 8 48.8 90 337.5 Zica Laser 5 23100 17 8 63.8 90 337.5 Zica Laser 6 39600 18 8 67.5 90 337.5 Zica Laser 7 62700 20 8 75 90 337.5 Zica Laser 8 93500 30 7 128.6 90 385.7 Zica Laser 9 133100 34 7 145.7 90 385.7 Zica Laser 10 182600 38 8 142.5 90 337.5 Zica Laser 11 243100 44 8 165 90 337.5

Also just a point on #2: you CAN kill most of the U ships and still get a secret level orb spawn. You just can't kill the middle ships in the first line. It's not terribly helpful to do in Arcade though.