Mini-Review: Radiant Silvergun Remains A Classic Shmup

Treasure made some truly amazing games over the years, such as Sin & Punishment for Nintendo, Gunstar Heroes for Sega and legendary shmups such as Ikaruga and its spiritual predecessor Radiant Silvergun. Radiant SIlvergun was a different beast altogether for a shmup and still stands out today for its unique nature. A game that has been limited to its original release and an Xbox 360 remaster, the game has now seen a new release on the Nintendo Switch thanks to Livewire.

The unique hook to Radiant Silvergun is its gimmick, where, unlike Ikaruga where the gimmick was the ability to alternate between polarities and you did not even need to destroy enemies to win, Radiant SIlvergun’s gimmick is that there are no powerups. You start out with all weapons available to you, such as blasts, shots, a sword, a power beam and more. There is no need for a cooldown meter or a limit to the weapons but you are far from overpowered as the game is brutal in its difficulty.

This is a punishing bullet hell game, where death awaits at every turn. You need to power up to survive and the way to do that is through the scoring system, which is based on the enemy’s colour. Enemies come in red, blue, or yellow, and if you destroy three enemies of the same colour in a row, you will get a scoring bonus that increases if you kill another set of the same colour increases the bonus but the next kill on a different colour will reset it. This is not just about increasing your high score, since chaining your attacks on the same colour will power up the weapon used to destroy them for the rest of the game. That said, there is an option for a scoring mode based on the latter game Ikaruga that is included in this remaster as well.

But how well does this fare as a remaster? Well, the game has around 5 frames of lag, which while not the best, is still very playable and a skilled player should have no issue. The real issue is that some of the music does not loop correctly, but hopefully that can be fixed in a future patch. Otherwise, everything from the 360 version is here, from the aforementioned Ikaruga mode to online co-op to go with offline co-op. The story mode and arcade mode both shine and you will need to prepare to die constantly in arcade mode, but remember, this is a thinking person’s shmup.

It would have been nice to see more of a visual overhaul for the game like Ikaruga has gotten over the years, but what we have is still good for one of the greatest shoot ’em ups of all time. There is everything here from a surprisingly deep story to intense boss battles that test your limits, to puzzle sections that test your reflexes.  Even the weapons are not as simple as they may seem, since they can be combined in a number of ways to defeat enemies.

Radiant Silvergun is widely regarded as a true classic in the genre and playing it makes it clear why it has this reputation. Even all these years later, there really is nothing quite like it and it holds up beautifully. This is an easy one to recommend for any shoot-em-up fan, but newcomers should be aware of how intense this game can be.