Radiant Silvergun

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Radiant Silvergun features a unique and innovative weapons system, with seven weapons available at any time. The player has three buttons to control the weapons; the weapon fired depends on the combination of buttons pressed. The three primary weapons are assigned to the three primary buttons of the pad. The A button fires the standard, forward firing projectiles. The B button fires homing projectiles (versatile but rather weak). The C button fires two lasers with a wide angle that explode on contact. Pressing each of the buttons together will attack with a different weapon! By pressing A and C together will activate a close range targeting system which will launch missiles at anything that comes near you! A and B together will activate another targeting system that fires two lines from the front side of your ship and locks onto enemies electrocuting them! By pressing all three buttons simultaneously another (close range) weapon is activated, the Radiant Sword. This swipes around your ship in a circle and does damages to every close enemy (a very useful weapon for the end-level bosses). Getting score bonus should be your main objective in each level, as there are no standard power-ups to be found but, instead, each of your three weapons is upgraded by your score, depending on which weapons you use to generate the combos. Those combos can be achieved by shooting down three enemies in a row of the same color (oh yes, enemies can be classified as one out of three colors: red, blue, or yellow) and you'll get a score bonus. More score means better firepower via your available weapons system. OK, the gameplay is rather hard. Most of the time you will be forced to weave through corridors of deadly enemy fire, making it almost impossible to avoid a single hit!The story of Radiant Silvergun is only available in the Saturn Mode. The Arcade Mode and the original arcade version of Radiant Silvergun do not include any cut-scenes or dialogues.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Technically, the game is spectacular with all sorts of fancy tricks that push the Saturn's hardware to its limits. You're flying straight through 2D scenery, but occasionally you soar into the sky as the horizon tilts and the ground races beneath you, utilizing 3D polygon effects! This way the 2D world feels like three dimensional! The sprites move fast on screen although the screen scrolling is slow. Radiant Silvergun's sound is equally awesome. The game is pretty long and there are only a handful of music themes that feature strong synthesizer orchestrations along with a plethora of great Sci-Fi sound effects!