Radiant Silvergun (game discussion)

[Kubrick]

There's a translation of the story complete with LOADS of screenshots HERE

(Obviously contains SPOILERS for those who haven't seen the ending)

[Sabreman]

Worth every penny.

[Yakumo]

Ikaruga is a near on piece of **** shooter save some nice graphics, i'd hope RS is a whole lot better, id at least like the chance to play it:/

Don't get your hopes up mate.

Yakumo

[dvdx2]

I bought mine for a fiver in Smithfield market, Belfast. Shame I didnt have a Saturn that could play it, but sold it for a princely ?95 profit.

Everytime i hear this, i let out a chuckle; the women who sold it is a thieving ******* Well done Rab!!

[saturn-gamer]

Radiant Silvergun is imo a good game. Sure, its overpriced (the usual..) but its good. It has 2 different modes, takes long to complete and there is alot to do such as chaining and finding dogs.

The boss designs are fantastic and so is the gameplay. Its just that this game isn't really your hardcore shmup.. its way too slow and the 7 button gameplay might be too deep for people who just want to hold fire and blast.

Oh, i'd also say RSG is like 10 times better than Ikaruga.. Ika feels like some sort of half assed demo. Never really liked that game.

[Sketcz]

RSG had too many buttons, and turned into a button mashing fest for me. 7 weapons? In a shmup? WTF is going on here?

Ikaruga and the Donpachi games wipe the floor with RSG in my humble opinion. For me a shmup needs simplicity in control, so that my mind can melt directly into the control pad. It's no longer me playing the game, I AM the game. I can get very far on Ika with one credit, and I'm fairly good on the first level with regards to score multipliers, but RSG just confuses the hell out of me.

Japanese players have said the same thing, RSG encourages you to NOT kill some enemies, in order to keep the colour combo up. At least with Ika, a good player can wipe everyone out.

I still think Donpachi is the best though, I've also been getting into Gigawing a lot too.

I need simplicity, and intuitivity in a shmup. How the hell do you kill half the bosses in RSG? Some of them take like 5 whole minutes. I once used endless continues to get past RSG, and it took me over an hour to complete. OVER AN HOUR!? Ika can be done in about 40 minutes.

Shmups need to be simple, and easy to get into. Something for a quick blast before the afternoon gin and crumpets. What does RSG do? It gives me a bloody RPG mode where I have level up weapons. Again, WTF were Treasure thinking?!

Sorry to moan, but I hate RSG, and so finally sold it for ?110, thank you very much!

[Sabreman]

Heh, that's one of the reasons I like it so much. It's not so much a twitch shump (though in places it certainly is), but it's a combination of pattern-learning, environment navigation and experimentation with weapons. Honestly, after playing it a few times the weapons became second nature to me - I must say the weapon system makes it much easier to play with a pad than a stick though.

[Sketcz]

I'd agree with you there. The original arcade board I believe only had three buttons, and to activate all the weapons, some buttons had to be pushed simaltaneously.

[eastyy]

Gigawing 2 is probably my most played shooter followed by Mushihimesama then the psyvarier then dodonpachi.Radiant silvergun i have just recently started playing again.I think there is something about radiant silver gun and ikaruga i think its because there more linear in that there is a best way to get a high score and its fun to find it out.Psyvarier and the cave games to me anyway it always feels like you can improve the score even when you think its mastered there might be a something you can do to improve.With ikaruga and silvergun it feels limited.

Not sure if i explained it to well there

[wheelaa]

Ikaruga and the Donpachi games wipe the floor with RSG in my humble opinion. For me a shmup needs simplicity in control, so that my mind can melt directly into the control pad. It's no longer me playing the game, I AM the game. I can get very far on Ika with one credit, and I'm fairly good on the first level with regards to score multipliers, but RSG just confuses the hell out of me.

Japanese players have said the same thing, RSG encourages you to NOT kill some enemies, in order to keep the colour combo up. At least with Ika, a good player can wipe everyone out.

I agree to some extent, simplicity in a shooter is great. But as you allude to there are dozens of fantastic examples of this as it is, so for me the beauty in RS lies in its different approach. Sure you can try and kill everything there is like other shooters, but the selective nature is far more involving and adds a neat twist I think.

Still not a patch on R-Type though.

[Kubrick]

I'd agree with you there. The original arcade board I believe only had three buttons, and to activate all the weapons, some buttons had to be pushed simaltaneously.

This is the case on the Saturn version as well - Use an arcade stick, and it IS the arcade version. This "too many buttons" angle is null-and-void.

[Sketcz]

If I use an arcade stick instead of a Saturn pad, it's even worse. Then I have to mash buttons even more in order to use 1 of the 7 weapons. Then its either A, or B, or C, or A AND B, or maybe A and C, or possibly C and B. Or maybe ALL three!

When I say "too many buttons", I am also implying there are too many weapons. Your argument of using the arcade stick is null-and-void, since it compounds the problem by adding button combinations to the mix, which is even worse than keeping track of 7 individual attack buttons.

Too many things I need to keep track of. It's like I'm playing some kind of flight sim where my brain needs to register each and ever piece of flight data. Nothing wrong with this, I love flight sims. But in shmups, I expect simplicity of control.

3 buttons (or less), no combinations of buttons (unless its for a bomb option), and no more than 3 weapons at any one time.

I can see I will have to explain this too. It's not just the amount of weapons, it's that I have to deal with them all at once. I've played some great shmups for example with dozens of weapons. But I never have more than 1 or 2 at a time. I never have to deal with more than 1 or 2 ways of attacking.

Donpachi exemplifies what I enjoy. 2 buttons. Either tap, or hold to attack. Plus a bomb button. Simple and elegant.

[Kubrick]

You're making it sound as though you need to use the combination weapons all the time though, which really isn't the case.

A (Vulcan), B (Homing) & C (Spread) is all an average player needs most of the time, with occasional use of the A+B+C (Sword) to mop up the pink bullets (or simply map it to a 4th button on the stick...)
A+B (Plasma) is also useful since the beams "look" for and lock-on to targets allowing you to concentrate on dodging bullets/scenery, but the other two weapons don't really get used unless you want to find the "Merry Dogs" or shoot backwards.

It does take a bit of getting used to at first, but the system becomes second-nature with a bit of practice. I'm by no means an expert player and I find it no more difficult to use than other shooters. If anything, Cave shooters confuse me more than RS since the speed of your movement is affected by weapon choice in those.

[eastyy]

How come this game goes for such a huge price?.From what i can gather its not the rarest saturn game by a long shot.

[Sabreman]

It's not the rarest but it's generally considered to be one of the best, so desirability and rareness makes it's price high.

I mean, I wouldn't consider forking out for Stellar Assault but I quite happily handed over the cash for Silvergun.