Radiant Silvergun

Genre: Bullet Hell Shmup

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Radiant Silvergun is a Bullet Hell Shmup originally released in Japan in 1998 in Arcades and on Sega Saturn, but not brought to the West because by this point the Sega Saturn was already on its deathbed outside of Japan. It’s a shame too, because importers declared this game an absolute must on the platform, and still to this day it places in top ten lists of the best games the Saturn ever received, and many declare it as one of the greatest Shmups ever made as well, reviving the genre at a time when it had been on something of a downturn. However, here in the West, we wouldn’t get our hands on the game until 13 years later when the game received a HD remaster on the Xbox 360, with a port of this version of the game to Nintendo Switch in 2022, and a port to PC in 2023.

The presentation in Radiant Silvergun uses fairly simple 3D graphics, with some 2D pixel art visuals, and the higher-resolution visuals and smooth framerates make this a fluid experience. While you might expect the low-poly chip models to be uninteresting, it turns out the opposite is true thanks to some wildly-creative ship design, with multi-part bosses where each part acts semi-independently and can be dismantled individually as well. This is backed by an energetic synthesized soundtrack that befits the great action.

A large part of the reason for Radiant Silvergun’s enduring popularity is its creative gameplay, which ditches power-ups that were still common in Shmups at the time in favor of a new multi-weapon gameplay system where players could use three different weapons, combine two of them for three additional weapons, or combine all three for a sword swipe that can clear out some enemy bullet types and charge up a larger screen-clearing weapon.

In modern releases of the game, players don’t need to memorize all the button combinations, with each of the seven different attacks at your disposal assigned to their own button (though you can still do the button combos if you choose). However, while this quality-of-life improvement is much appreciated, it still means at any given moment during the gameplay you’re challenged to choose which of seven weapons is right for the situation, since you can’t use more than one at a time.

And here I will say that like many Shmups, Radiant Silvergun is hard, though players can reduce the challenge in options before starting a game. But in Radiant Silvergun, this challenge always feels offset by the thought of “well, what if I had tried one of the six other weapons at my disposal instead of the one I used?”.

Before ending, I have to take a moment to also applaud the boss design in this game, which is some of the best boss design I have ever seen in a Shmup. There is just a crazy level of creativity here that I couldn’t let go without recognizing it first.

Is Radiant Silvergun going to be for everyone? No. its high challenge level and the level of complexity the game has due to its varied arsenal of weapons makes it a game that more experienced fans of the genre will probably enjoy more than newer players, and it lacks the beautiful elegance of a game like Ikaruga (still my high-water mark for the genre). However, make no mistake – this is still a masterpiece within the Shmup genre, and a game that every Shmup fan should have in their game library.

tl;dr – Radiant Silvergun is a Bullet Hell Shmup that remains one of the greatest games in the genre thanks to its wide selection of weapons, its excellent level design, and its phenomenal boss design. The high challenge level and technical nature of the gameplay may make this less-appealing to newcomers to the genre, but every serious Shmup fan should consider this game an absolute must-have.

Grade: A-

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