Radiant Silvergun

Radiant Silvergun is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up. The player is given a wide arsenal from the start of the game featuring three primary weapons: strong forward laser, weak homing projectiles, and a spread gun which fires pairs of exploding projectiles at a wide angle. Combining any of these weapons with another will result in one of three new types of attack: a rear firing laser (laser + spread), an auto-targeting plasma beam (laser + homing), and a close range missile targeting system (homing + spread). Using all 3 weapons together activates a sword that can be swung around the ship to damage nearby enemies and defensively absorb a common type of enemy projectile.

Absorbing enemy fire charges up the sword for a screen-clearing special attack. The stages are methodically and tightly paced with carefully crafted scenarios that can be approached differently with the varying weapons.

The story of Radiant Silvergun is told non-linearly through animated videos and scripted dialogue between stages. In the year 2520, scientists on Earth have unearthed a giant crystal along with an ancient robot bearing the same serial number as another robot called "Creator" on the Tetra spaceship orbiting around Earth. The crystal creates a massive explosion, engulfing the Earth and killing all humans except for the remaining four on the spaceship. One year later, exhausted of supplies, they return to Earth in fighter jets known as Silverguns, fighting through hordes of enemies until they reach the crystal, which is referred to as “the Stone-Like”.

After battling the Stone-Like and failing to destroy it, it brings the last two remaining pilots 100,000 years into the past, and tells them that it is the guardian of the Earth and destroyed humans in order to protect the planet, before destroying the last two humans in another explosion. 20 years later, still in the distant past, the Creator uses DNA from the pilots of the Silverguns to create clones and start humanity anew before the Creator finally breaks down for good, bringing the story into a loop.

Since the company's inception, Treasure had primarily been a developer of action and platform games for home consoles. Sega had repeatedly asked the company to develop an arcade game for them, but Treasure president Masato Maegawa was concerned the shrinking arcade business would be too risky from a business perspective and arcade goers would not appreciate the effort placed into their game. Despite this concern the team had wanted to develop a 2D arcade style shoot 'em up for some time. Much of the staff were fans of the genre, having grown up during the genre's golden age, but entering their careers after fighting games started filling arcades.

Director Hiroshi Iuchi was especially passionate about starting the project. Although the team was eager to develop the game, there were still concerns. Maegawa believed that the shoot 'em up genre was dying, and was risky from a sales perspective. Iuchi was also concerned there would be no place for a 2D shooter in an arcade space that was advancing more towards large and specialized 3D game machines.

In July 1998, Game Machine listed the game as being the fifth most popular arcade game in Japan at the time.

The Sega Saturn port of Radiant Silvergun received critical acclaim, with some calling it one of the best shoot 'em ups ever made. Critics agreed that Treasure successfully revived and redefined the shooter genre following a period of stagnation in the wake of the advent of fighting games during the 16-bit era.

In retrospective reviews, Radiant Silvergun is considered one of the greatest shooters of all time, and one of the best Sega Saturn games. IGN called Radiant Silvergun a "milestone in shooter design" and in 2008 listed it as their number one classic shoot 'em up. In 2005, IGN also compiled all their reader's review ratings of the 31,000 games in their database, among which Radiant Silvergun reached the twelfth spot. Because of the game's limited availability, it soon became an expensive and sought after collector's item, selling for at least US$150 by 2011.

The game received a spiritual successor in the form of Ikaruga (2001), which was originally subtitled Radiant Silvergun 2. It was first released on the Sega NAOMI arcade platform until later being ported to the Dreamcast and GameCube. Like its predecessor, Ikaruga gained a reputation as one of the greatest shooters ever made. It was rereleased in 2008 on the Xbox 360.