--- Radiant Silvergun ---

Radiant Silvergun is a milestone--and the introduction of life support--for 2D shooter games.  It introduced the flashy 3D graphics into the shooter, but left the 2D gameplay.  And it also introduced the idea of having to think--actually think, not just react--into the shooter genre. 

This page is actually kind of a placeholder for ALL of Treasure's shooter games.  Treasure is the best shooter developer around.  Their most recent entries are Ikaruga (Leon's favorite shooter ever) and Gradius V (Bruce's favorite).

Radiant Silvergun, though, is kind of special.  It's a bit rare, and if you do find it, it's damn expensive.  Both of us have it in our collection, and we both wish Treasure would take its best aspect--the coolest weapon system ever designed--and make a new game or a sequel with it (Ikaruga is a sequel to RS, but it doesn't use the weapon system.  It uses a cool system, but a completely different one.)

Radiant's weapon system is simple to use, but complex and difficult to master.  It uses just 3 buttons.  Each button is a different weapon, and each combination of buttons is a different weapon as well.  That makes a grand total of 7 weapons, all with just 3 buttons, and all useful in different ways.  To make things trickier, each of them can be upgraded (which is actually a pain in the ass).

Here are a few visuals from the game to help with that description:

The menu to describe how the weapons work.

Here are the first two types, Vulcan (A) and Homing (B).  Vulcan is a normal, straight shooting gun that is fairly powerful.  Homing, as you can guess, homes in on up to 2 targets at a time.

And the next two, Spread (C) and Homing Plasma (A+B).  Spread just shoots at a wide diagonal angle from you, and it creates a bubble when it hits as well.  It's very powerful.  Homing Plasma doesn't really home; the blue lasers track back and forth, and lock on when they encounter a target.  Then they turn red and shoot blue energy into the target.

Here are the last two guns, Back Wide (A+C) and Lock On Spread (B+C).  Back Wide is a useful backwards spreading Vulcan gun that also shoots a half-widtch forward Vulcan.  Lock On Spread is a series of little arrows that rotate in a wide circle around your ship.  Anything they touch, they will lock onto and send a homing laser after. 

And here is the very last weapon, the Radiant Sword.  It's the most powerful weapon, but it's not a gun.  It's a small sword that can 'catch' the small pink 'default' shots from the enemy.  Once it catches enough of them, it becomes a pair of large swords for a single hit.  They're extremely powerful, and your ship in invulnerable while you use that hit.

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