Fond Memories: Radiant Silvergun

As advanced and beautiful as games may be these days, it's good to know your history. With over three decades of videogame releases, there are hundreds of titles from yesteryear that still hold a special place in our hearts. Games may be getting longer, prettier, and more complex, but that doesn't take anything away from games we played back in the day, and that's where our Fond Memories come in...


Game: Radiant Silvergun
Platform(s): Arcade, Saturn
Release Date: 1998
Favorite Line: No clue -- it's all in Japanese.
Favorite Moments: When the Stone-Like goes critical, figuring out the best way to 'chain' your weapon upgrades for a specific stage, and every single boss battle.

This Wednesday, Microsoft is releasing Treasure's cult-hit shooter Ikaruga on Xbox Live Arcade. Ikaruga is considered by many to be the "spiritual sequel" to the developer's seminal shooter Radiant Silvergun, a tough-as-nails shooter for arcades and the Saturn that never made it across the Pacific. Over the last ten years, Radiant Silvergun has developed a Holy Grail reputation in the minds of a certain breed of gamer -- namely, the breed that still dismisses the Wii out of hand.

What It Was All About

In my Screw This Game piece regarding Chakan on the Genesis, I lambasted the game for being an unfairly difficult exercise that hardcore gamers have turned into some perverse badges of honor. Radiant Silvergun, an import-only shooter for the Sega Saturn by Treasure, is another title hardcore gamers use for street cred. However, there is a lot of daylight between the two games. Both are extremely difficult, but one is a lovingly crafted thumb-buster with pitch-perfect balance. The other is Chakan.

As a huge Saturn fan, and one that imported a fair number of games for the system, Radiant Silvergun drifted into my orbit. I have never exactly considered myself to be a major shmup fan -- but I certainly have enjoyed a few entries in the category, such as the Gradius series, Darius (the giant fish kill me), and 1942. (And who can leave out River Raid?) I never understood the pleasure in those manic shooters, sometimes called "bullet hells," such as Batsugun. Radiant Silvergun is more of a method shooter, one that rewards a skill other than pixel-perfect ship placement.

When Radiant Silvergun came to the Saturn from the arcade, Treasure hired the animation studio GONZO to create a series of cutscenes to fill in the game's non-linear story. Like Pulp Fiction, you bounce around the chronology of Radiant Silvergun, starting in the middle of the fight before working backward and then rocketing forward. The story charts the discovery of an artifact from space called Stone-Like. Stone-Like activates and ends up destroying all life on earth. The only survivors are the crew of Tetra, an orbiting spaceship. Among the crew are the three pilots of the Silverguns, the titular space fighters.

The story of Radiant Silvergun is actually pretty cool. As you jump around in time, you learn the true purpose of Stone-Like, which is somewhat chilling. The different Silvergun pilots also make some surprising decisions during the game's fractured timeline, but I'm really loathe to ruin any of the plot points here as there is apparently a chance the game could come to XBLA. (Your support of Ikaruga could be a deciding factor in such a decision.)

Gameplay

Radiant Silvergun is a top-down shooter. The game starts you with all available weapons, unlike most shooters that drop you into the meat grinder with a basic cannon and maybe a handful of screen-clearing bombs. The three weapons are: Vulcan (A), Homing (B), and Spread (C). How you use these three weapons together is what makes Radiant Silvergun so unique. In the arcade, you have to press two buttons at the same time to use special weapons. The Saturn version of the game mapped the second tier of attacks to the X, Y, and Z buttons on the controller. So, instead of pressing A and B to unleashing the homing plasma attack, you just pressed Z. Don't think this somehow makes the game any easier -- it really doesn't. It just keeps you from accidentally hitting the wrong button combos.

The Radiant Sword is the most intriguing weapon in the game. This sword pops out of the ship and you can move it around the ship to destroy enemies and absorb incoming fire. (The sword is critical for getting out of tight situations.) Absorb enough bullets with the Radiant Sword and you can unleash the Hyper Sword, a smart-bomb like attack that wipes the screen.


Radiant Silvergun (Sega Saturn) gameplay footage.

The game follows the tradition of specifically colored ships being linking to weapon increases, but Radiant Silvergun takes the concept in a different direction. There are blue, red, and yellow enemies that swarm across the screen. Shooting three ships of a specific color in sequence -- chaining -- improves the effectiveness of the particular weapon used to destroy the 'chain' of enemies. If you mistakenly shoot a different color, you have to start the process over. While Radiant Silvergun doesn't demand the same amount of pattern memorization as some shooters, if you want to go for the highest score possible instead of just surviving, you need to keep track of the rainbow parade during each stage.

Why I Love the Game

I liked Radiant Silvergun for a number of reasons -- I was (and remain) a big Saturn supporter, I think Treasure is an outrageously talented developer (see: Guardian Heroes on Saturn), and Silvergun draws its difficulty from smart design instead of a lack of mercy. And the boss battles? Crazy.


Radiant Silvergun is one of the top ten games for the Saturn, whether you are talking domestic or import. I thought it was a shame the game never came to the States, but tastes were changing in 1998 and definitely not toward the top-down shooter category. The game looked fantastic then and it's still a powerhouse for the Saturn, a system that was built with 2D games still in mind. The score is also a real treat and worth hunting down if you are into game music.

If you have not played the game, I highly recommend you download Ikaruga on XBLA or hunt down a copy of the game for the GameCube. (You can also import the game for the Dreamcast, which is how I first played Ikaruga.) Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun are similar games, but I will be honest here -- Radiant Silvergun is the better shooter. I sincerely hope treasure does get the opportunity to bring the game over to America. XBLA would be a great place for it, as would the PlayStation Network's storefront. Hell, why not a budget Wii game while we're at it?

Special thanks to VGMuseum for the screenshots of Radiant Silvergun.

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