Four years after rumors of a Switch port, the shmup of Treasure finally arrives at Nintendo. Anyone who has never tried to memorize the chain of enemies during the hour and a half that lasts the story mode of Radiant Silver Gun never really knew what the real one was level design millimeter. Far from just shooting at anything that moves, the player is encouraged to destroy enemies based on their color to achieve Chains, an extremely important scoring bonus system.
The level of the three weapons, all of which can be combined to ultimately create six distinct firing modes (in addition to the sword absorbing enemy fire), is directly linked to the scoring system. To progress, you must therefore play the game as the developers intended, meticulously learning each enemy location to gather the maximum points in each level, death of course resulting in the loss of the chain bonus.
Released in arcade then on Saturn in 1998, Radiant Silver Gun had experienced a very interesting adaptation, and rightly noted by Kamui, on Xbox 360 in 2011, with the addition of a training mode. We don’t know if the version released on Switch today is the same, but the presence of an Ikaruga mode in the Nintendo eshop sheet suggests that it is. With an introductory price of €16.99, those desperate for a PC port (including the author of this news) can regain some hope.