Diehard GameFAN: Radiant Silvergun Review

DHGF: So if you’re a fan of shooters, you probably know this, but for those who don’t, Radiant Silvergun is basically the Holy Grail of shooters. Whether it’s the best or not is going to be strictly a matter of personal interest and taste, but it’s certainly one of the most ambitious ever, and disc copies of the Saturn game routinely fetch between one and two hundred dollars on Ebay and similar sites, due in equal parts to a less than optimal print run and its mythical reputation. Microsoft had reportedly been almost begging Treasure to release the game on XBLA for quite some time, which Treasure seemed largely uncertain about doing for various reasons, but it’s hard to keep a good game down, and for the first time in, well, ever, Radiant Silvergun is available to anyone who wants it, at the low price of fifteen dollars. While this is likely to hurt the financial worth of the Saturn original, really, appeasing speculators at the cost of exposing the masses to any potentially great game is asinine, and as such, you too can now own one of the most desirable games, financially if nothing else, in gaming history. So, then, the questions that come up are two: first, is the game itself worth all of the hype that surrounds it, and second, does the XBLA release appropriately emulate the experience of the original?

I could pretty much just say “Yes and yes” and call it a day, but let us press onward all the same.