Scott at The Controller Online writes: "Warning: No Refuge. Treasure are bringing their Arcade and Sega Saturn hit to the XBLA. Radiant Silvergun brings old school, arcade, flying shooter, action to your couch. You’ll be glad that you’re not pumping quarters into this one in a real arcade as this could possibly be one of the hardest games on the Xbox 360."
"The Tokyo-based (Japan) video games developers Live Wire and TREASURE Co., today announced with great happiness and excitement that the cult classic arcade shoot-em-up "Radiant Silvergun" (the game just celebrated its 25th anniversary), is now available for PC via Steam." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
“It's that time of year again; our Game of the Year Awards have begun and to kick things off, here are the best retro titles from 2022.” - A.J. Maciejewski from Video Chums.
“Radiant Silvergun remains one of my favourite shoot 'em ups of all time with its mind-blowing array of weaponry, steep challenge, and clever mechanics. It's been a long time since it released, though, so I was hoping there would be some new content included here.” - A.J. Maciejewski from Video Chums.
It was much easier on the Saturn.
The slow-down in the really hectic parts actually served to act kind of like a "bullet-time" sort of thing and made it easier to navigate through the hundreds of bullets on the screen. Also, in the Saturn version, the story mode (that's the one that lets you level up your guns and save the progress of them so the next time you play it you start with the same power of your guns as last time you played!) allowed you to increase the number of lives per continue from the default of 3 to up to 10, it allowed you to reduce the number of points required to gain an extra life, and it allowed you set the number of continues that you get up to a higher number.
After a couple of hours of playing the 360 version, I am almost certain by now that you can't do any of that in story mode in this version, I couldn't figure out how to anyway. In Arcade mode, you can do all of that, so I figured if you could do it in Story mode it would be in the same settings menu for Story, but it isn't there. So since you only get a very, very limited number of lives in Story mode, the fact that you can grind your guns to a high level still keeps the game very difficult. You not only have to grind the crap out of your guns before you have a chance of beating the game, but you have to be unbelievably good, as well, because many parts of the game require you to weave in and out of non-destructible obstacles that will cost you many deaths, and again the lack of slow-down is really a removal of "bullet-time" and makes things much, much more difficult. In general, I don't like this version nearly as much as the Saturn version because I've been playing that version for 10 years or more and I'm just so used to having more lives and having that slowdown "bullet-time" to help out in the most hectic parts. As a 10 year veteran of this game, I honestly don't even think I could beat this version of it because they made it so much more difficult.
I wish they hadn't changed it AT ALL. Just a straight port. That would have been awesome. As it stands, I think I'll stick with the Saturn version. A god damn shame. I was hoping I could finally disconnect my Saturn. Whatever.