[MrFlibble]

When Tyrian was updated and re-released as Tyrian 2000 by XSIV Games (later renamed into Stealth Productions) in the late 90s/early 2000s, there were apparently plans to market localized versions of the game in Europe, with French, German and Spanish translations. The demo version (essentially the shareware episode) was translated into these languages and available from the XSIV Games website (Wayback Machine copy). The files were called TYRIAN2000F.exe, TYRIAN2000G.exe and TYRIAN2000S.exe. However, these files were stored at FTP sites and were not archived by the Wayback Machine. The only trace of these versions is a file containing French in-game interface, which was mistakenly included with the English language SoundBlaster Live! patch for the game:

None of these non-English demo versions seem to be available anywhere on the Internet. I wonder if anyone happens to have any of these version, or knows something about possible full game releases in these languages?

Another rare version is the updated English demo. The first demo of Tyrian 2000 was released in October 1999 and is still widely available now. At some point in 2000, the developer, Eclipse Software, changed their name to World Tree Games. The demo was updated accordingly, with the new logo, copyright information, as well as some fixes. This demo was uploaded in November 2000 at the World Tree Games website and is preserved by the Wayback Machine: Tyrian 2000 Demo.zip.

However it turns out that the developers released an incomplete demo, with some files and the readme missing from the installer. An updated demo version was promptly uploaded to the website:

Quote

::11 - 17 - 00 :: 1:40 :: Tyrian Demo Updated

An incomplete version of the Tyrian demo was uploaded. To download the right version click here. For those who don't know, Tyrian is a PC vertical scrolling shooter that you might as well try out because it's a lot of fun. The demo is quite long and full-featured! [source]

The trick is that exactly this updated demo version was not archived by the Wayback Machine. Again, I wonder if anyone has this version somewhere. Any information will be much appreciated.

The incomplete demo can be assembled into a working version (albeit with the French interface shown above), as described here.

[Daedolon]

Never was a fan of the game, so I never stored any files.

I'd assume that the language specific files could be found on some magazine CDs for each country.

[MrFlibble]

Daedolon, on 30 November 2015 - 03:49 AM, said:

I'd assume that the language specific files could be found on some magazine CDs for each country.

If only that would be the case. We actually have access to a large number of German, French and Italian magazine coverdisks from the era - some stored at archive.org, some in Hallfiry's collection, and some at the French "Abandonware Magazines" website. Many are searcheable online via Hallfiry's gaming magazine coverdisk catalogue. However, to date we have found nothing.

I think that there are two reasons for that. First, Tyrian 2000 was a re-release of a 1995 title which was rather well known and played. In fact, some magazines put the original 1995-96 shareware versions on their CDs as part of the "90s nostalgia" in the early 2000s. Secondly, some magazine had already put the initially released English demo (which is mostly identical to the shareware version of Tyrian), and probably did not bother to waste CD space on localized edition.

There's a slim hope that the demo versions were put on CDs with other games published by XSIV, but those are very few, and rare. The publisher apparently went out of business sometime in the early 2000s, and it is not known if their file archives/FTP content have been preserved to any extent.