Radiant Silvergun
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| Radiant Silvergun | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Treasure |
| Publisher(s) | ESP |
| Release date(s) |  1998 (Arcade) July 23, 1998 (Saturn) |
| Genre(s) | Vertical scrolling shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player, 2 player Co-op |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Sega Saturn |
| Input | 8-way joystick, 3 buttons |
| Arcade cabinet | Upright |
| Arcade system(s) | Sega Titan Video |
| Arcade display | Horizontally oriented, 704 × 513, 6144 palette colors |
Radiant Silvergun is a vertically scrolling shooter video game, developed by Treasure Co. Ltd. It was released in arcades on the ST-V platform in 1998 and subsequently ported to the Sega Saturn, with added cutscenes by noted animation studio GONZO. The game was not released outside of Japan.
The game is considered by many to be the pinnacle of the 'maximalist' school of vertical shooter design. (Contrast this with Ikaruga's studied minimalism.) It features a unique and innovative weapons system, with seven weapons available at any time. The player has three buttons to control the weapons; the weapon fired depends on the combination of buttons pressed.
[edit] Gameplay
The weapons scheme is as follows. Saturn-only button configurations are in italics.
- A: Vulcan: the regular forward gun. A single beam can be fired by tapping A.
- B: Homing: green discs fire at angles and aggressively track the closest enemies.
- C: Spread: two bombs fire out from wide angles and explode on contact. The resultant explosion damages anything within its range.
- BC or X: Lock On Spread: eight probes extend from the ship and move in circles around it. Any enemies that contact a probe are met with a high-speed homing projectile from the ship.
- AC or Y: Back Wide: a variant of the Vulcan, this fires one beam forward and several wide shots toward the back.
- AB or Z: Homing Plasma: two laser beams swing side-by-side from the front of the ship and lock-on to any enemies it connects to, subjecting them to a constant lightning beam attack as long as it is in range. The lasers are not stopped by physical barriers.
- ABC or R: Radiant Sword: a small sword is brandished from the ship and is introduced by moving in a full circle. The player can drag it around and control its direction by moving backward from the desired direction. The sword constantly damages anything it touches.
The sword also can absorb any pink shots enemies fire, absorbing the energy in them to charge up a powerful, screen-clearing attack. This strategy is used a good deal in the game to avoid dying and quickly kill bosses. If a player does not kill a boss in a certain amount of time, the boss self-destructs and the player earns no points. This forces the player to level up their weapons quickly, otherwise the second-to-last boss will self-destruct, and the final boss will be invincible. This results in the bad ending.
Unlike in most other shoot 'em ups, there are no power-ups. All weapons are available from the start. Weapons can 'level up', however, becoming more powerful as the player uses them to score points. (Failure to properly level up the weapons in the early stages leads to a very frustrating, and even impossible, later game.) The game is designed so that there is almost always a 'right' weapon for any situation. Indiscriminate firing is severely punished.
The game rewards players in great ways by "chaining" enemies of just one of three colors (red, blue and yellow). Whenever the player kills enemies that are the same color, while ignoring the other two colors, they get faster upgrades and large score bonuses. This also facilitates faster upgrading of weapons used to do so. The levels are designed so usually, the player can go as far as possible on one color, hit one of another color, and then have the rest of the level as the third color. As such, the game highly rewards memorization.
[edit] Trivia
The game's first level is stage 3. At the end of stage 3, the player can choose to continue at stage 2 or stage 4. Both stages lead to stage 5, then stage 6, and the finale at stage 1. This is true to the story's chronology; for example, the events of stage 2 occurred a year before stage 3. In the Saturn version, the player is forced to play all of the stages, starting at stage 3, to stage 2, then 4 through 6 and 1.
Every boss fight is prefaced with the evocative phrase "NO REFUGE" and some cryptic advice on how to fight the boss in 'steps', alongside the Engrish meme "BE ATTITUDE FOR GAINS". This advice has attained some fame among the game's fans for its Zen obliqueness.
The Saturn release of the game is not particularly rare (unlike Panzer Dragoon Saga), but demand for the game is so high that the title has become the archetypal "eBay darling", with copies changing hands for over £100/$200 on a regular basis. While not as valuable or rare as some Neo-Geo titles, the acclaimed gameplay makes Radiant Silvergun one of the most sought-after and prized titles in gaming history.
According to producer Hiroshi Iuchi, the main inspiration for the game's design was Image Fight. [1]
