Legendary Sega Saturn shmup Radiant Silvergun was released on the Nintendo Switch’s eShop this week — and promptly yanked off of the North American store just hours later.
Its developer, Treasure, teased an announcement the day before it appeared in a Nintendo Direct presentation Tuesday morning. Before the presentation was even finished, Radiant Silvergun was listed on all regions’ eShop digital platforms, with the North American one listing it at US$19.99.
But less than 10 hours later, Silvergun disappeared from the North American eShop. As of the publishing of this story, it remains gone.
The game’s distributor, a small Japanese company named Live Wire, eventually tweeted that evening to acknowledge that the game had disappeared:
Then on Thursday morning, they tweeted in Japanese to give further clarification:
Live Wire’s message translates to:
[Notice of bug]
We have confirmed the following issues with the Radiant Silvergun being distributed.
・BGM fades out.
・There is a sense of incongruity in the volume balance of the SE.The development team is currently investigating to find a solution. Please wait for a moment. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
— Live Wire
In Shiro’s Discord server, BlueMoon95 explained some further problems with the Switch port:
“From what I understand it’s not just the looping that’s an issue compared to the 360 release and STV original/Saturn version. Certain SFX are either wrong for one reason or another, some of the graphical effects/filtering is off, there’s noticeable screen tearing and choppiness. I can only hope they address those issues as well. Honestly they probably should’ve just held off on releasing it in order to iron out those issues.”
— BlueMoon95
Meanwhile, the game remains available on the Japanese and European eShops. Presumably, those regions’ versions of the game suffer from the same issues as the North American one, so it’s a mystery as to why theirs haven’t been pulled down, too.
Either way, owners of the game in those territories — as well as those who bought the game from the North American store before it was wrest away — appear to have a patch to look forward to. Presumably, it’ll coincide with Silvergun’s relisting in the U.S. and Canada.
The problems mar what should be a triumphant return for Radiant Silvergun, a May 1998 arcade game that, besides the Japan-only Saturn release in July 1998, hasn’t been brought to consoles since the Xbox 360 port in September 2011.
The new Switch port appears to be derived from the Xbox 360 one, although there hasn’t been official confirmation of that yet. Both versions feature English subtitles that didn’t appear in the original arcade and Saturn game’s Japanese dialogue. They also both feature a mode to use scoring rules from Ikaruga, Treasure’s most famous shmup that was originally developed for arcades in 2001 and ported to the Sega Dreamcast a year later.
Incidentally, that Xbox 360 version still can be bought from the Xbox marketplace for US$14.99 and played on modern Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles.
There’s no word yet on whether Treasure and Live Wire will release Radiant Silvergun on more platforms besides the Switch.
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
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