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Radiant Silvergun, developed by the cult favorite studio Treasure, had nearly everything against it when it was first released. It was an arcade-style shoot-em-up developed in the 90s, an era when shmups were being overtaken by fighting games in the battle for gamers' quarters. Its only home console release was Japan-exclusive, and even if you did manage to import a copy, you could only do so for the ailing Sega Saturn.
Treasure's games were (and are) beloved to a select few, but their legendarily intense difficulty means that few gamers would work up the nerve to play them. And yet, Radiant Silvergun gained a reputation for its high quality, and has since been recognized as an enduring classic. But if you're interested in experiencing it for the first time, there are a few things to keep in mind.
10 It's Not Just A Shoot-Em-Up
Radiant Silvergun 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:features an in-depth story and presentation that's relatively rare in the genre. Shoot-em-ups - particularly the top-down scrolling variant - tend to focus on twitchy, fast-paced action, without worrying too much about plot or characters.
By contrast, Radiant Silvergun brings an anime-flavored story that veers from silly to poignant. It's a shoot-em-up that will actually get you involved with the character piloting your ship.
9 Don't Sleep On The Sword
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One of Radiant Silvergun's most atypical — and awesome — features is the fact that you can wield a sword while you're piloting your ship. Aside from just being cool, the sword is actually one of the most useful tools in your arsenal. It doesn't have the range of your other weapons, but it can be useful for clearing out large groups of enemies who are close in on you.
It can also absorb the pink-colored bullets that enemies fire at you, and if you absorb enough then you'll be able to use a screen-clearing attack that temporarily renders you invincible.
8 ꦛ Color-Code Your A🥀ttacks
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168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Like its spiritual successor Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun marries frenetic action with a puzzle-game approach to scoring. Throughout the game, you'll encounter enemies colored red, blue, and yellow.
If you attack three or more enemies of the same color in a row, you'll start racking up a chain bonus, which will award you a higher score; but you'll end that bonus if you break the chain and attack a different color. You'll need to keep your chains going for as long as possible in order to blast up the scoreboard, because...
7 Higher Scores Mean More Po🦂wer
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Radiant Silvergun substitutes traditional power-ups with a system that ties weapon strength to high scores. As you rack up higher and higher scores with each particular weapon, you'll also upgrade that weapon's strength, and those upgrades will stick with you throughout the game.
In this way, Radiant Silvergun rewards you more and more as you get better at navigating its systems; it's hardest at the beginning, and eases off as you become more proficient.
6 Use Your Laser To Look For Merr🐻y
Another surprisingly useful weapon in your arsenal is your homing laser, which can lock onto and fire at pretty much any of your enemies. Because of its homing capablity, it's also an incredibly weak attack in terms of raw strength. But don't count it out just because it lacks the power of your other projectiles.
If you use it throughout the game's levels, you might find it locking on to some relatively innocuous background elements; fire it, and the laser will reveal a pixelated dog. This is Merry the Debug Dog, and she's hidden throughout each level as an easter egg... who comes with a whopping score bonus.
5 Move With🐟 Preci♛sion
Radiant Silvergun's bullet-hell leanings are one of its most difficult elements for new players to absorb. At any given moment in the game, the screen will be flooded with enemy projectiles, constantly changing the path that your ship can take.
It's easy to get overwhelmed and to move wildly, but that would be a mistake. Your ship is surprisingly agile, and can fit through nearly any small space on the screen; you'll need to use small, precise movements rather than attempting to sprint from one end of the screen to the other.
4 Don't Just Beat Bosses — Dismantle Them
In true arcade-game tradition, Radiant Silvergun does not lack for powerful boss enemies. Each level will feature multiple bosses, each one a screen-filling threat that can fire hundreds of bullets at you. It's tempting to just blast away at these bosses to try and finish them off as quickly as possible, but it pays to be a little more strategic than that.
Each boss in Radiant Silvergun can be di🌟smantled if you focus your fire on specific parts, rather than blindly shooting away; and dismantling bosses earns you extra points. Like the rest of the game, boss battles reward careful and focused play.
3 It Starts In Th✤e Middle
Like Star Wars, Radiant Silvergun actually begins its story in the middle; when you boot it up and play the first stage, you'll notice that the game actually marks this as its third level. This stage finds your pilot and crew returning to Earth for the first time in a year, while the previous two stages are flashbacks that reveal the rest of the plot.
We won't spoil it here, but suffice it to say that this non-linear approach is fascinating in a game like this, and it heavily rewards multiple playthroughs.
2 On👍e Playthrough Is Just The Beginning
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And that's a good thing, because just one run at Radiant Silvergun is not going to be enough to master it. Shoot-em-ups in general - and Treasure games in particular - tend to reward repeat playthroughs because you'll learn enemy patterns, develop new strategies, and understand how the game's systems lock together.
And even beyond this general reward structure, Radiant Silvergun's plot and power-up mechanics basically require multiple playthroughs in order to get better and to understand the story that's unfolding.
1 It's Treasure's First Shmup
Given all of its complexity, its tight design, and its thoughtful evolutions to genre conventions, it's surprising to learn that Radiant Silvergun is actually the first shoot-em-up that Treasure developed. Though they'd made intense action games that flirted with the genre before, all of Treasure's previous work married those ideas with side-scrolling platforming instead.
Radiant Silvergun was co♓nceived as a tribute to the top-down shooters that the development 🙈staff had grown up playing, and their love for the genre shows through in every well-considered pixel.
