Radiant Silvergun

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
Post Reply
User avatar
JaySevenZero
Admin
Posts: 2643
Joined: August 27th, 2012, 4:28 pm
Location: Liverpool, Europe, Earth
Contact:

Radiant Silvergun

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Radiant Silvergun for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
User avatar
TomFum
Member
Posts: 188
Joined: August 29th, 2012, 8:09 pm

Re: 574: Radiant Silvergun

Post by TomFum »

This game was one of the 2 reasons i re-bought a saturn back in 2006. I heard so much about it and saw videos online i had to play it. So i spent £120 to get it along with the official sound track. I spent many many hours on this game until i completed it and WOW what a journey. The story is fantastic, and i got a real sense of loss at the end of it. The graphics are so good, it made the saturn sing, The music is also a highpoint and a regular listen for me as i now have the 12" from Datadisks. This is the king of shmups for me, its difficult but if you learn the game, play over and over so you power up, the game gets alot easier. This is a true legendary game and ive re-bought it recently although it cost me a fair bit that it did all those years ago
User avatar
Alex79
Member
Posts: 8423
Joined: September 2nd, 2012, 12:36 pm
Location: Walsall, UK.
Contact:

Re: 574: Radiant Silvergun

Post by Alex79 »

I need to give this a good go before this show comes out. I always coveted it when I owned a Saturn (many years after they'd been discontinued by Sega) but never managed to get a copy. When it came out for Switch I thought I'd get it for that, but around the same time the game happened to be given away as part of Games With Gold on Xbox. I've had a few quick go's on it, but much like its spiritual twin, Ikaruga, I've never managed to break the back of it. I'm going to try to finish the game before this show comes out - whether or not you can have infinite continues might mean whether I do or not :lol:

From the little I've played, and I'm not trying to be contrary, I'm not sure why Radiant Silvergun is held in such high regard. Not that it's a bad game at all, just not found the reason that other people seem to hold it such higher than any number of other shmups from around the same time.
RetroClarence
Member
Posts: 39
Joined: September 17th, 2019, 8:56 pm

Re: 574: Radiant Silvergun

Post by RetroClarence »

I've also only ever really dabbled with Radiant Silvergun. I did get quite into Ikaruga a couple of years ago so I'm really looking forward to playing it for the show.
User avatar
AndrewElmore
Member
Posts: 26
Joined: October 3rd, 2018, 5:55 am
Location: Seattle, WA
Contact:

Re: 574: Radiant Silvergun

Post by AndrewElmore »

Radiant Silvergun is one of those special cases where a game's spirit and personality rise above even the sum of its excellent parts. It's a Treasure game, it's an STG, it's a Hitoshi Sakimoto score for the ages, it's a legendary Saturn import, it's a triumph of arcade game design, it's a magnificent display of art direction and aesthetics, but it still manages to exist as something above even all of that for the people it really lands with.

STG/shmup design was largely trending towards an emphasis on player memorization and execution in the early to mid '90s. Radiant Silvergun leans all its considerable weight in the other direction, though. Hiroshi Iuchi and co. made a game that isn't concerned with the fractal loop of rewarding high tier play with greater and greater power-ups, opting instead for a set of verbs and abilities availed to the player from moment one, relying on the player's reactive instinct to learn and utilize the tools at their disposal as they see fit in any given situation. Silvergun chooses instead to emphasize player expression and agency through improvisational on-the-fly problem solving. The real genius of the game's forethought however, is the way that said improvisation begins to morph into player-led efficiency training over the long term. If a given player enjoys Radiant Silvergun enough to want to spend the time learning and internalizing its many intricacies, they will begin to develop their own routing and patterns and situational weapon applications over time, rooted in their own organic preferences and reflexes as relates to their individual play style. That's what makes the game truly marvelous in my eyes.
Post Reply