Instead of facing another horde of repetitive, mass produced crafts: let the guns of silver shoot the souls of men.

Let Hiroshi Iuchi's pleas for games to be more then entertainment burn this market. Akin to his statements when asked about Radiant Silvergun's meaning:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080419104927/http://www.emuxhaven.net/~silver/Link%20Stage%20Explanation.html

Let this be a testament to what games should do at their best: an iconoclastic scream of hatred, aimed at all that is passionless and intentionless.

In the ludic age of franchises, collabs, excessive marketing, services and compulsive behavior, let this roar of disgust be eternally heard.

So that all of those who persist on giving this medium the chance of being more than digital pornography can keep on. Even if a vocal majority keeps dragging this entire art form into self-destruction.

Very fortunate that GoufyGoggs posted this review yesterday, eloquently saving me the trouble of having to write a bunch of thoughts about what it means to embark on the noble endeavour of trying to beat a shmup. Treasure's are particularly difficult beasts to grapple with, because they lure you in with flawless aesthetics and ideals and high-concepts that make you really, truly want to dedicate weeks of your life to learning and surviving a single bullet-beautifhell stage. Try as you might to master one of these things, there's only so many times us mere mortals can scrape past our white whales with x00 ships remaining, breathing in a sigh of relief and then discovering we were floating in the kiddie pool when we're pounded into pixellated dust by the first enemy on the next level. The only other option is to continue plugging fake coins into virtual slots, and that hurts so much more than the indignity of bowing out from Ikaruga at the start of the third stage.

Which is why the inclusion of a Story Mode in Radiant Silvergun is so welcome. There is no fuckin' chance I'm ever beating a shmup that's four times the length of Ikaruga with any legitimacy in this lifetime, so a mode that compromises for casuals by allowing me to play with a 1cc mindset but the gradually-building resources of a veteran is a great way to let me see every sleek sprite, bastard boss and pretentiously awe-inspiring cutscene that Peak Treasure had to offer the world. You almost tricked me into thinking I earned this glory, you mad masochistic masters!

Shoutouts to Microsoft and Treasure for giving this away for free on the first day of the year - a humbling experience that we all needed, a reminder that 1st January 2022 is just another Stage 01 after we all ran out of quarters on the last level last year, crashing and burning out of 2021’s wicked game. Let's get back to it, then... Maybe this run will be different...

One of the best uses of ludonarrative I've seen. Every cultural subtext about the context of the game industry at that time — which unfortunately remains current — intrinsically connected in the narrative and gameplay.

I gave you lives.
So that you make good progress.
But you couldn't understand.
You must do it over again.
Why can't you see?

Against the self-destructive gaming industry, a symbolic and apotheotic representation of the Earth and the cycle of warfare and violence that we insist on perpetuating.
Let's be better people.

1: Be praying
2: Be praying
3: Be praying

Radiant Silvergun, like it's close cousin Alien Soldier, (another of my all-time favorite games) is what I call a solution-shooter; which is to say, it playfully hides a "correct" playstyle for a boss, or a level, or even a singular piece of a level, behind a slew of various weapon options and possible pathways and approaches. There are many different WORKABLE ways to play, and to defeat bosses, to be sure... but there is almost always, I have found, an EASIEST way--such that, if you study, then uncover, and then string together all of the Easiest Ways through the entire game, it would transform a seemingly impossible, WRETCHEDLY-difficult experience into a surprisingly simply completable one.

For a very primitive example: sure, you could try and grit your way through a boss encounter dodging everything on the bottom of the screen, utilizing your straight-ahead cannon for maximum damage, as though it were a CAVE shmup... but have you tried swooping around and to the left (out of the way, perhaps, of most of the bullet-hell), and utilizing your side-shot instead?

It's this simple mechanism that not only keeps Radiant Silvergun from becoming frustrating, but that makes it feel so awash in fascinating possibility. Like a Soulsborne game, it sheds layers of difficulty upon every death and continue, not because you got better at twitch movement (but, hey, maybe you did), but because you learned stuff that will legitimately help you the next time--and not just simple bullet patterns, but the effectiveness of different combinations of weapons, the value of an offensive or defensive strategy (like Ikaruga, the entire game can be beaten without firing a shot), and much more.

This style of gameplay necessitates countless trial and error runs, which never feel grindy because, again, you're not just attempting to get 'gud' at the game (that is to say, to master its core movement and shooting mechanics); you're attempting to gain knowledge about its design. For this reason, the optimal way to play Radiant Silvergun initially is in a Saturn emulator, utilizing savestates to study every individual encounter. Treasure knew this, and so, while they didn't provide the ability to literally save one's state, they did thankfully include a stage select in the Saturn port that breaks the game up into 20-30 minute chunks. (That anyone could have learned this game in the arcade is mind-boggling.)

I completely understand complaints about the difficulty. The final gauntlet of bosses, especially, is almost hilariously grueling, even after many studious playthroughs. But that's extremely important to the other, major thing Radiant Silvergun has going for it over almost any other shmup that I've played: meaningful narrative stakes.

There's a story here. There's symbolism; there's camaraderie, and sacrifice, and redemption. There's the entire world to save, and the game makes us FEEL that, with a huge orchestral score, and movie-quality voice acting. When bosses are raining hellfire on you toward the end of the game, and you desperately wonder how you'll ever make it, you're doing so in tandem with the game's characters in its story, which feels insanely unique in a shmup, even all these years later.

(If you find the game too difficult to enjoy, I would honestly recommend just watching a Let's Play as though it were a movie, and basking in the sheer visual- and design-audacity of some of these fucking boss fights (ESPECIALLY Xiga)).

As I did with Alien Soldier, I'm putting a 1CC of Radiant Silvergun on my bucket list. It's a game that I'll happily return to, over and over, to find just one more of those Easiest Ways--a new nook away from the bullets, a new weapon strategy, a new ship path, a new boss weakness. I could watch experts and just attempt to mimic them, of course, but to do so would be to miss the entire point, and the ultimate beauty, of this game.

Ikaruga is a game I respect. While the brilliant simplicity and genius of its polarity mechanic and the way it intrisically threads Ikaruga's aesthetic with the game's challenge and scoring is a craft I'm deeply fascinated with, its art remains inaccessible to someone like me who is incapable of conquering its methodical demanding difficulty reserved only for the greatest of masochists. By stage 3 my grip on the controller is long gone, as the synapses of my small brain fail to register the assault of shifting color threat and I'm inevitably resigned to abuse the unlimited continues boon that ultimately turns Ikaruga into a vacuous theme park ride devoid of its initial purpose.

While Radiant Silvergun doesn't at all abandon the Ikaruga ethos of being a near impenetrable gauntlet of overwhelming enemy and boss patterns to be decoded with twitch precision, the versatility of its weaponry lend the player a level of expression, freedom and puzzle solving that avoids the pitfalls of its spiritual successor that would constrict you into an eternal scrolling of repeating mistakes and hardships that deplete all your lives in the same recurring manner. Added to that, the Story Mode provides a clever compromise over an unlimited continues system that has the difficulty scaling towards you in unison, giving the illusion of progress and personal improvement instead of feeling like outright cheating.

But Arcade Mode is of course where Radiant Silvergun truly shines. Unlike the immediacy of other shmups where the road to success mostly lies in the ability to dodge and shoot everything, mastering the color chain scoring is a requirement you will be forced to engage with in order to level up your weapons and diminish the chances of imminent death, a prospect that finally reveals the link between Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga, in addition to the counter intuitive Destruction scoring where you allow the bosses to last longer and strike harder for a chance at a higher score.

Treasure have a natural talent for taking any genre and making it their own, and Radiant Silvergun is no exception. The unique mechanics and challenge of Radiant Silvergun are accompanied by an ever crescending orchestral bombastic soundtrack and beautifully 32bit backgrounds that elevate the scope and portentousness of its exhausting and rewarding apocalypse to a league beyond most shmups, allowing the noobest of noobs like me to feel fullfillment with the completion of Easy Mode.

PEAK FICTION
Radiant Silvergun es una experiencia tan única que ha resonado conmigo de una forma en la que muy pocos juegos lo han hecho, palabras me faltan para expresar lo mucho que amo este título.
Legítimamente una de las experiencias más originales que ofrece el medio del videojuego, un juego que aprovecha al máximo su propia simpleza para ofrecer un reto sin igual, en el cual gracias a su mecánica de 7 armas, da consigo un sinfín de difurcaciones a la manera de afrontar los desafíos que el juego presenta, haciendo que el jugador experimente con las diferentes armas y combinaciones, dando posibilidades infinitas a como se juega el juego; podría hablar mas a fondo de sus aspectos jugables tan únicos, pero la verdad, siento que todo esto se aprecía mucho mejor jugándolo uno mismo.
Un juego que definitivamente recomiendo ya no solo a entusiastas de los shoot em' ups, sino a cualquiera que guste del medio en general, una obra que desborda pasión en todos aspectos como muy pocos lo han hecho, un título difícil de replicar y que vale la pena vivir, un juego del cual estoy completamente agradecido de haber podido experimentar.
There is life everywhere...

A primeira vez que toquei nesse jogo, fiquei de certa forma decepcionado. A nave se movia muito devagar, os tiros eram fracos e o jogo não tinha bombas. Isso acabou dando aquela sensação de que ele era muito superestimado. Mas eu decidi jogar mais um pouco e entender suas mecânicas, então aí que o jogo acabou roubando a minha alma e me viciou nele... peak demais.

Por mais estranho que pareça, além de um shoot 'em up, RSG também compartilha de um sistema de RPG dentro dele, permitindo a evolução de sua nave enquanto você vai jogando. Ao invés de ter aquela clássica tela de selecionar uma nave, a daqui é só uma e ela possui 6 tiros diferentes, que são muito úteis em várias situações específicas, tendo 3 tiros principais, o tiro reto padrão, o tiro teleguiado, e o tiro mais forte que se divide para dois lados na diagonal. Os outros 3 são combinações desses mesmos 3, o raio que possui um sensor para perseguir o inimigo, o tiro para trás e o radar que atira em todos os inimigos dentro de sua área. Todos eles são úteis de sua forma, nenhum vai ficar de lado a não ser que tu saiba se virar muito bem com outros. A nave também possui uma espada, capaz de anular tiros roxos, com a recompensa de coletar vários tiros sendo um grande ataque capaz de dar um dano imenso. A organização desses recursos muda de acordo com o modo que você joga, Saturn ou arcade.

O modo Saturn te dá fichas limitadas, mas quando você morre, aparece uma opção de salvar o progresso de sua nave, agora tu podendo reiniciar o jogo com o mesmo nível em que estava na última jogada. O empurrão maior ainda é o aumento da quantidade de créditos, dando mais aquela sensação de evolução e cada vez você indo mais e mais longe (minha forma preferida). O modo saturn também adiciona um estágio extra, novos chefes pra te fuder- e te obriga a ir em todas as fases do game.

O modo arcade por outro lado, te dá infinitos créditos, mas agora você não consegue salvar o progresso de sua nave, tendo que zerar o jogo inteiro na raça. Pode parecer mais chato, porém o modo arcade é mais curto, pela seleção de duas rotas e menor quantidade de chefes comparado ao de saturn. O que mais brilha nesse modo mesmo, é a estratégia de evoluir a arma e a diferente forma de aumentar os pontos do jogador, por conta de um sistema chamado "chain". Chain funciona pela divisão de cores que ocorre nos inimigos, sendo elas vermelhas, azuis e amarelas. Quanto mais inimigos você matar da mesma cor, mais pontos você ganha, mudando a forma agitada de tentar sobreviver, para uma forma de se focar à jogar de uma maneira calculada, ao invés de focar em sobreviver. Outro método bobinho de pegar pontos, é usando a arma de radar para achar cachorros escondidos pelas fases, ajudando bastante na pontuação também, no modo saturn anotando quantos cachorros você pegou. Por último, os pontos (e xp) também se desenvolvem pelos chefes.

os chefes em si, não são uma grande massa para atirar, e sim uma máquina com vários pedaços responsáveis pelos seus ataques. Logo, em uma luta de chefe, o foco não é matar ele, e sim cortar cada pedaço do seu corpo, para ganhar xp ou tirar perfect com o intuito de ter mais pontos... você também pode só matar ele pelo ponto fraco, mas lá pra frente tu vai acabar se prejudicando. Seus ataques são bem variáveis e cada boss se diferencia do outro, não são apenas naves na parte de cima da tela atirando, são maquinarios te cercando com paredes, inimigos de grande tamanho se movendo tendo a fraqueza na cabeça, etc. São várias criaturas criativas que vão te pegar desprevenido. Claro, chefes comuns que apenas atiram em você ainda existem, mas ele também possui suas mecânicas para agitar a luta. Agora juntando isso com o sistema de espada e várias armas para serem usadas em momentos específicos, torna essas lutas bem divertidas.

O level design do jogo também se destaca aqui, não apenas te jogando inimigos, mas sim tendo um level design diferente em algumas, mudando aquela repetição de sempre ser uma linha reta, sendo sessões bem desafiadoras que vão te exigir atenção.

A trilha sonora daqui é bem no estilo mais clássica, sem muito daquela animação sonora que tem em outros jogos do gênero. Por mais chato que pareça, ela funciona muito bem, principalmente combinando com a tensão gerada pela estética e pelos desafios do jogo. Com as mais especiais sendo as 3 últimas melodias do jogo, cinema total. Não recomendo escutar elas no YouTube, e sim jogar o jogo logo, seu fi de rapariga 😡. Assim como a história, infelizmente sofrendo por conta do jogo só ter lançado no Japão originalmente, então tu depois vai ter que ir em site de 2010 pra ver tradução de falas do jogo, não sendo muito necessário também, o jogo consegue explicar bem o que está acontecendo e o final te pega de jeito.

Por mais que esse tipo de jogo afaste muitas pessoas, ele tem 5 opções de dificuldade, indo do very easy até o very hard, com cada uma adicionando inimigos pela fase e dando mais uma habilidade para o chefe te pegar desprevenido, e também pode alterar a quantidade de vidas por crédito. Eu recomendo mais a versão de saturn por ser mais grudenta, por outro lado, o modo arcade não perde seu peso e ainda continua muito divertida.

Radiant silvergun agora tem meu respeito e tá na minha lista de jogos que tenho que obrigatoriamente rejogar a cada período de tempo, ele é uma grande masterpiece e vai te cativar com certeza. Mesmo o emulador de saturn sendo uma droga, caso não queria comprar a versão da steam, ele vale cada segundo. porra, mermão, tem como jogar de dois aqui, como tu deixa uma pedrada dessas passar? Agora irei chamar todos os meus amigos para jogá-lo... ah, esqueci de tomar meus remédios.

What's most impressive about Treasure's games is how they marry spectacle with variety. Their games are comprised of front-to-back exceptional set pieces that end as quickly as they appear, being replaced by a moment even flashier than the last. A Treasure game never content to say in one place too long.

This is absolutely the case of Radiant Silvergun, whose huge bosses are rendered in such painstaking detail and scale, buttressing each stage with an encounter as tense as the ride to it. More manageable than Ikaruga but challenging no doubt, I really enjoyed my two days grinding story mode. The approach to difficulty here, allowing you to accumulate both power and knowledge between attempts, helps to stem the frustration of being forced to complete the campaign with no continues. Having now done it, I wouldn't have it any other way.

"The 11th born son of this world shoots at the soul of man with guns of silver."

Some background on this game for me. When I was at the end of my high school years, Sega Saturn emulation started reaching major breakthroughs, and Mednafen was our new saviour. I've always been more of a Sega fan than any other console developer, but the Saturn was a massive blindspot to me. So one fateful summer, I went on a binge through the Sega Saturn's library while focusing on its major exclusive, discovering one of my new top 3 game systems.

Ever since I was a young child, Treasure games had truly blown me away. Dynamite Headdy had the inventive setting and powerups to really make the player feel like a wacky action hero. Gunstar Heroes had the weapon combination system and truly out there stages like the board game level. Astro Boy Omega Factor was perhaps the most ambitious GBA game of all time with amazing love for the source material. To say they were always my favourite developers would be an understatement. Naturally, when I discovered they made 3 games for the Saturn, those were my top priority.

At the time I played Radiant Silvergun, I was still a while away from getting into 1cc culture. I would credit feed shmups to just take in the aesthetic. So, I focused all my time into Silvergun's story mode. Everything about it was simply stunning in how it perfectly blended RPG elements with a shmup. The story emphasis, the hidden dog collectibles, and of course the weapons which level up. It was all so much to take in. In a genre where the player usually has to choose between a set of powerups, Radiant Silvergun instead threw in one of the biggest toolkits out there at all times. There's so much to master and I always felt so accomplished discovering new strategies for killing bosses. For example, the lock-on spread shot racked up crazy points against Nasu while allowing the player to dodge.

Story mode was a real crowd pleaser in my eyes. I felt so accomplished for bashing my head against a wall so to speak, restarting a million times with stronger weapons until finally I killed the Stonelike. And for years, that was good enough for me.

However, this year with the release of the PC port, I decided to get into 1ccing the arcade mode. After ~50-60 hours of practice, I went from being overwhelmed by chaining the first area in the game to achieving a truly impossible run where I chained almost every area except the train, finishing with 3 spare lives. Radiant Silvergun is not a forgiving game in the slightest, but it really makes the player feel like a badass.

The usage of leitmotifs for the soundtrack is amazing to boot. The story about how the characters are stuck in a time loop really helps the tone, for it's almost like a dark parody of the shmup genre where the whole joke is about how much the player needs to continue endlessly to achieve their goal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kGWHANcOnY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVuWvEXS8Es

Over the last 3 or 4 years, I've gone from never 1ccing any shmup in my life to 1ccing roughly 40 games. Silvergun perfectly characterizes my growth and realization that routing is god in this genre. Anything is achievable if one perseveres enough.

All in all Radiant Silvergun is a very special game to me that represents just why Treasure was top dog. In an era where 2D games were slowly being phased out for a while to make way for 3D, Treasure made a game that felt like the ultimate love letter to its genre full of countless homages to other shmups and even tokusatsus like Ultraman and Gamera. This game will make you its bitch, and I'm all for it. It's the kind of game only the Saturn would have, the kind of game only Treasure could've made.

The world is dead. A weird eldritch diamond thingy has killed all but 4 humans and 1 robot, who now descend upon earth in a final desperate attack, facing a ludicrous barrage of bosses, enemies, and other hazards in their fighters which have 7 unique weapons, all of which are a bit weird. It's non linear, it's super serious, there's level-ups, the scoring is utterly bizzare and even long time shmupers are liable to see the game over screen before the end of stage 3 (which is actually the first stage) is done. All the while, Hitoshi Sakimoto rings church bells and the screen blares out NO REFUGE to really hammer it in - that you are particularly fucked.

It's a lot.

That, in itself, is almost a hallmark of Treasure. Alien Soldier is a game that begins with a 4 minute opening crawl of nonsense followed by a ludicrously intense first level matched unconventional controls. It's something their presence as a wobbly middle ground between arcade and home console development really thrived at doing. Almost all of their good games take a few attempts to really click.

And Radiant Silvergun really takes it up a notch. The increased focus on narrative, partiuclarly heavy emphasis on boss encounters and a level of subtext and nuance - it feels like an utter behemoth.

Miraculously though, it's all really, really great.

The core gameplay appeal of silvergun is how it's 7 weapons interact with a whole pile of bosses - 26 of the damn things in the story mode, and they will easily take up over half of the game's playtime. And they're almost universally fantastic. In true treasure fashion they're made out of loads of contorting arms and guns, and you're encouraged to tear them apart piece by piece, which works particularly well with the weapon selection you have. Many bosses are placed essentially inside setpieces - notably Gollets and SBS-130KI, and not a single one feels like filler, especially in the arcade mode.

The gameplay is marred by one serious problem though. The scoring. It's terrible. It's basically identical to ikaruga's except you can't swap colours between chains of 3 enemies, and it just ends up feeling really awkward, as optimal strategies involve clumsily ignoring huge amounts of enemies. Sadly, you also need to score, because your weapons power up significantly based on the amount of score you have achieved with each one, and if you don't score, Stage 5 and 6 in particular become and absolute nightmare. The Story mode which is probably the more popular way to play sidesteps this by keeping weapon exp through playthroughs, but in Arcade it almost ruins the game for me, and RSG is very fortunate to have the Ikaruga chain mode included in the 360 and Switch ports, which honestly the game feels more suited to than the original despite not being designed for it. With it, the game's routing isn't quite as harsh and lame, and it becomes far more approachable, and heresy as it may be to suggest veering from the original vision - i highly reccomend everyone use it no matter what mode they play.

So the gameplay's great and leans on Treasure's existing strengths to make for a unique, boss filled game. On it's own, that would be enough, but it's really RSG's presentation and narrative elements that push it to the legendary level it has now attained. To put it simply and to avoid spoilers, Silvergun's narrative is just great. It's this tragic, interesting sci-fi tale that has great planting and payoff, and a particularly incredible ending sequence. And director Hiroshi Iuchi (who would later go on to do Ikaruga and Gradius V) has a fantastic eye for setpieces and pacing, with great use of sweeping camer angles, background elements, and how to throw in all of this game's billion bosses at just the right time.

Hitoshi Sakimoto also really puts in a shift here. The soundtrack to RSG isn't exactly one of those things you'd listen to on it's own, but it perfectly accompanies the game, and the instrument choice is great. The reoccurring motif and the use of church bells in particular really hammers home how "epic" it all is.

One of the things that's gone a bit lost over the years with relation to RSG is it's subext and one of the things it's going at. This is, granted, partially because the story in the straight up text is worthwhile and who's looking for subtext in a Shmup, but it's definetly there. Essentially, RSG is kind of a comment on the game industry and it's nature of recycling tropes, series and how it's being held back. Almost all of the bosses in RSG are a reference to something, usually old shmups, which are implied to be the spawn of past cycles of humanity, and the ending sequence in the story mode contains snippets of speeches from executive board meetings meddling with developers and consumers. And the name of that one robot "CREATOR" is a bit... on the nose when you consider it's role in the story. It's a really neat element to the game and thanks to it's emphasis on replays and it's references generally being a bit more subtle than say, Zeroranger, it's surprisingly really interesting. (More details from the horses mouth can be found here)[http://web.archive.org/web/20080419104927/http://www.emuxhaven.net/~silver/Link%20Stage%20Explanation.html].

I think it's fair to say the end result is a little messy and occasionally confused, and I wouldn't be amazed if some people even found it a little pretentious. I've barely even mentioned quite how hard it is and it's amount of secrets, and I expect even this review will be a little confusing to people who havent seen at least snippets of the game. There's just so much to digest here.

But it is, in my opinion unquestionably special. It doesn't quite come together as much as Iuchi's later work Ikaruga, but itis an experience that leverages all of Treasure's existing strengths, and piles incredible presentation and a truly great narrative on top of it. And even though now it has come to be imitated plenty itself - in the realm of what it does, it remains completely unmatched.

Saturn emulation is unfortunate in its current state. Through RetroArch I couldn't get this running with any of the available Saturn cores except for Yabause, which fucked up the sound horribly and had a lot of lag.

The game itself is excruciatingly difficult, has absurd mechanics for the genre that are tough to get used to, and the Saturn version was never translated so I struggled to wrap my head around what was going on in terms of plot, save for a very basic understanding. Everything about it for me was pretty much a struggle.

But you know what? It's still as good as people say. Style, substance and overall presentation can go a long fucking way.

Shmups are games where you move around the screen and shoot at stuff. Shmups/STGs are often seen as an overly-simple, "disposable" genre among many in the gaming world. A relic of a bygone era where games were confined to "simple" genres, where games were fated to be nothing but "quarter munchers", unlike the "enlightened" AAA Everything-Game Life Simulators of today.

Radiant Silvergun heroically rejects this notion, introducing gameplay mechanics that are inherently and obviously deep, engaging and complex even to complete newcomers to the genre, while still capturing the raw appeal of intense shmup gameplay for those experienced in the genre. Not just that, Radiant Silvergun is a game that asks a lot of the player, perhaps even more than its successor Ikaruga. There are 7 weapons in your arsenal, more than any other shmup I know of. And all of them have their situational advantages and disadvantages that you must become familiar with in order to progress. In order to stand a reasonable chance against this game's many, many bosses, you must level up your A, B and C weapon categories, and to level up your weapons you must chain and go for full boss destructions, and collect secret Merry dogs, because simply put, your score is your experience points.

No particular part of this game is really all that hard in isolation, at least on normal difficulty, but it's the process of putting it all together, chaining through each section just like how Treasure wanted you to, not just destroying but dominating the bosses, utilising and leveling your weapons in perfect harmony, and accounting for every single hazard and niche interaction that might get you killed. If you show that you have what this game asks of you, it's an extremely rewarding and satisfying experience, a feeling that is boosted further by Radiant Silvergun's excellent presentation, the bloodrush "Treasure pacing" I love which just constantly throws new boss fights and setpieces at you every minute, and riveting story with existential themes.

I also wanna shout out Radiant Silvergun's story mode as well. It's such a clever use of the game's weapon levelling mechanic and is an excellent compromise between a "pure" 1cc and carelessly credit feeding through a shmup, which many other shmups suffer from in terms of their popular reception of being "quarter munchers". You must 1cc story mode in order to clear, but you can save your weapon progress and earn extra starting lives between runs, basically gradually rigging the game further and further in your favour that just about any player can win with enough dedication. But here's the kicker - even with those extra level ups and lives, you still have to learn the game, and take the stages and bosses seriously. This is one of the main things that makes non-shmup players more aligned to this game, and RS' story mode is absolutely something every other shmup developer should be looking towards for inspiration.

Radiant Silvergun is a real videogame, shooting at the soul of man with guns of silver.

seeing as I’ve played Ikaruga, it was only a matter of time before I came face-to-face with its spiritual predecessor. I’ve heard that Radiant Silvergun is one of the best shmups out there, so to find out Treasure was able to pull this off with their first attempt in the genre is absolutely astonishing. then again I really shouldn’t be surprised this is the same company that created Wario World for the Nintendo GameCube these guys know their stuff

what makes Radiant Silvergun stand out is that there’s no powerups in this game, but instead the game offers you seven different weapon types that you can freely switch through depending on what button (or button combination if you’re playing the arcade version) you press. you have the Vulcan which is your standard forward shot, Homing which isn’t too powerful but in turn homes into nearby enemies, Spread which leaves you open to enemies from the front yet allows you to easily take care of enemies from your left and right, Homing Plasma that homes into two enemies and increasingly gets stronger for the duration, Back Wide which shoots out spread shots from behind, and Homing Spread which aims around at a certain range of your ship. last but not least, you have the Radiant Sword. yeah that’s right baby, your ship can spawn a big ass sword and slice things up! you can spin it around in a circle, let it linger around, and absorb the pink bullets that enemies can shoot at you. let it absorb ten pink bullets and it will turn into the Hyper Sword. the next time you use it, two giant Radiant Swords pop out to swing at everything in front of its path. as a bonus, it leaves your ship invincible during the attack’s duration. you might think that’s a lot to keep track of….well it is, but as you play on you’ll eventually get used to the wide variety at your disposal and learn which ones to use in the right circumstances, not only that but they’ll also gain experience and level up the more you utilize them so there’s a sense of progression as well.

now as for the other stuff, the score system is based on the type of enemies you defeat. there’s red ones, blue ones, and yellow ones. if you destroy three of the same color in a row, you’ll get bonus points. continuing to destroy enemies of the color you chose will stack up the points until you break the chain by attacking a different color. if you’re playing the Switch version like I did, beating the game once gives you the option to use Ikaruga’s scoring system, where you can switch to a different color after each third combo. I'd recommend leaving this on as soon as you can access it as it makes scoring much easier. finally, the bosses you face can also net you more points depending on how you defeat them. these guys are jumbo big and have many other segments to them that you can attack. if you’re able to successfully dismantle all their parts one by one, you get a very nice “Destruction Bonus”. while on the topic, hoo boy there’s a lot of bosses in this game, and I mean a lot. most of this game’s play time is pretty much section-boss-section-boss-section-boss. hey I’m not complaining though because these bosses are really rad. one of the first bosses GALLOP is already out here firing diagonal and circular lasers at you while setting the walls to your left and right on fire. NASU is a big ass metallic serpent flying around the place, DAIKAI-10 completely surrounds you as it blasts out bullets and lasers, 17VA-50 traps you in a rectangular space and fires out multicolored bullets that bounce around like a chaotic game of billiards, DAN-564 just does whatever it wants. rolling up into a giant sphere, firing out missiles in a circular pattern, chasing you down and going on the offensive, you got it! and holy crap that final boss….I thought Ikaruga had a climatic final boss but here’s Radiant Silvergun with the huge BTFO. you really need to experience facing this final boss for yourself to get what I’m talking about because….wow. god these boss fights are so cool….

I should finish the gameplay talk by quickly mentioning Story Mode. it’s a bit different from the default Arcade Mode as you’re given no continues (at least in the modern releases) but in turn you get to keep your weapon’s level progress for your future attempts as well as gaining more default lives the longer you play. theoretically you can get to the point where you’ll have 99 lives and Level 33 (the max level) for all your weapons at the beginning of a session, which is pretty epic by the way. on top of that, instead of choosing between Stage 2 or Stage 4 like in Arcade Mode, you’ll instead have to go through both, which means you’re going through all the Stages in this mode. Stage 6 also gets upgraded to a full-on boss gauntlet so have fun getting that 1cc!!! oh yeah you also get to see the cutscenes in this mode, it is Story Mode after all. speaking of….

where do I even begin? nothing good happens in this story. I repeat: nothing good happens. to clarify, I don’t mean it in the way of “oh it sucks it’s poorly written”, I’m more talking about the fact that the story for this game is a complete downer. it starts off rather goofy with the 90s anime opening cutscene with some brief light-hearted comedy, but it quickly (very quickly I might add) takes a turn when the Stone-Like is brought into the picture. once this octahedron rears its ugly faces in, it makes its first impression by wiping out every living being on Earth with a world ending explosion. the only survivors are four crew members of the ship “Tetra”, along with a robot onboard nicknamed “Creator” a year passes and they inevitably run out of all their remaining food and resources, leaving them no other choice but to return to what remains of Earth and cross paths with the Stone-Like in a near-hopeless final stand. Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t end well, like not even close. it’s probably one of the worst outcomes that can even happen, maybe the worst if you really think about it. normally I’d tell you to play the game to find out what happens, but this game’s hard AF! I suppose you should just look up a Story Mode playthrough if you really don’t want to go through the journey yourself.

so how’s the soundtrack? pretty damn nice I should say. the composer for this game is Hitoshi Sakimoto, who also composed the music for Final Fantasy Tactics. I haven’t really heard the music from that game as of the time this has been posted, but I can say for certain that Radiant Silvergun’s soundtrack definitely gives me Tactics vibes. I’ll admit, I didn’t care for it as much at first, but as I continued to listen to it as I was typing out this review, it’s been growing on me. that said, Ikaruga’s soundtrack is still more to my liking, some of the tracks there are just too iconic and legendary. if you want to know my favorite tracks, they’d have to be Debris, Reminiscence, Evasion, Penta, Origin and The Stone-Like. the sound effects are alright I guess, but the one you hear when the warning screen appears….that goes hard. oddly enough, I actually find myself more interested in how this game looks rather than how it sounds. Radiant Silvergun can look a bit rough in some places, especially if you’re using the original graphics, nevertheless I still find this game’s looks to be very charming. 2D sprites in 3D backgrounds? hella cool aesthetic (even if all the bosses are huge 3D models). I love the warning screen’s seizure-inducing visuals that lead into the line “NO REFUGE” and then concludes by giving you nonsensical Engrish advice for the boss you’re facing, peak schizo. the militaristic metal tags that pop in to show your results each time you defeat a boss is also great as well. going through the nighttime 3D cities during the flashback with that menacing blue hue before fighting KOTETSU with the moon ominous spinning around in the background, love it. then at the beginning of Stage 5 you return to where the ending of Stage 2 took place and there’s now this ugly orange fog of death looming about throughout the entire stage, really shows how far Earth has fallen since the explosion. and of course, the boss fights are going to use the graphics to their advantage. UNDO is fought in a spinning circular arena, you fight UE2A-GAL as you continue ascending an endless skyscraper, during the GEDO-O battle the visual turn into WIREFRAMES during the whole thing, then when facing PENTA you can get a great view of the sky throughout the battle, and SBS-130’s final phase has the screen slowly rotating around for the remainder of the fight. once again, epic boss fights

okay maybe I should start wrapping things up, this is a lot of talk for an hour long game. I must confess that I am not skilled at Radiant Silvergun, not even close. there’s no way I’m going to be able to beat this game without Free Play, I unfortunately do not have the time and capability to do so, I’m sorry. I know that’s blasphemy for all the shmup superplayers out here but that’s just how I roll. and yes I’m aware four and a half stars is very generous for a game I’m absolutely terrible at but I don’t care this game’s oozing with soul. I definitely overuse the word “soul” a lot, but I genuinely mean it this time I swear. now the real question here is do I prefer this over Ikaruga? the two are very close, but I must admit I think I like Radiant Silvergun a little more. while I do prefer Ikaruga’s soundtrack, ending, warning siren, and just being a big fan of its polarity system, I think Radiant Silvergun beats it at everything else. the more eye-catching environments, the awesome boss fights, having a story that’s in the actual game, yeah, I’d say good game. I could definitely see myself continue to improve my skills with Radiant Silvergun in another timeline, unfortunately this isn’t that timeline so I can only dream. in my Ikaruga review I said if there was only one bullet hell game you should play it was that. let me rephrase what I meant; if there’s only two bullet hell games you can play, make it this and that. heck, play Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga in one sitting, what’s going to stop you? an orange floating stone?

hahaha, dear reader, stones don’t float….

Fun weapon system and ingenious boss encounters. Accuracy is required with shooting to keep kill chains going. Scoring is tied to survival via leveling up weapons.

As a negative has a slow pace at many parts which can get tedious on repeat playthroughs. Often highly praised by people who don't know many shmups, but I genuinely enjoy it a lot. It certainly plays differently from most shooters so makes sense that it stood out back in the day.

It's interesting that the director thought that shmups were dead at the time and this was meant to be some kind of revision of them. He worked on Gunstar Heroes at treasure before this.

I think the implementation of RSG's scoring system is inferior to Ikaruga but I never enjoyed that game as much despite seeming to be more perfect in mechanics and design.