Games · Gaming

Pyro's Air Ride 2.1

Expanded 2004 upgrade of the top-down shooter Pyro's Air Ride 2.

WindowsWindows Legacy

Overview

Pyro's Air Ride 2.1 was an expanded upgrade of Pyro's Air Ride 2, the top-down shooter sequel PyroSoft released on its community forums in September 2003. Air Ride 2 had brought new graphics, a HUD showing your plane's damage percentage and remaining lives, pilot voice lines, eight-direction controls, new levels and bosses, new secrets, and four Time Trial difficulty levels with a high score table.

Announced in October 2003 as part fix, part add-on, version 2.1 lengthened the game so it could no longer be beaten in 15 minutes, added new secrets, made the final boss beatable, and trimmed size, improved speed and fixed its data and error-log files. It was released on January 14, 2004 as a full download, so players did not need the earlier version.

Highlights

Longer game: no longer beatable in 15 minutes
New secrets on top of the existing ones
Final boss no longer invincible
Smaller, faster build with fixed data and error-log files
Four Time Trial difficulty levels and a high score table (from Air Ride 2)
Damage-percentage HUD, pilot voices and eight-direction controls (from Air Ride 2)

Details

Platforms: Windows
Version: v2.1
First released: Jan 14, 2004
Controls: Arrow keys to fly, Space to fire, M missiles, N nuke (as published for Air Ride 2)
Credits: Mike Rodriguez (lead developer); d2king10 (lead artist); Christian, also known as RayCRP (music)
Status: Retired
Timeline: Jan 2004
Requirements: Published for Air Ride 2: Windows (any version), 8 MB RAM and a Pentium I minimum; 128 MB RAM, 233 MHz processor and a 2 MB video card recommended