Radiant Silvergun has reappeared on the North American eShop a week after its publisher, Live Wire, abruptly pulled it.
Live Wire tweeted just before noon Eastern Daylight Time today that the classic Sega Saturn shmup originally made by Treasure had returned to Americans’ digital Nintendo Switch store.
The reason for its disappearance is apparently an incorrect ESRB rating rather than bugs, as was originally speculated. Live Wire tweeted today in response to someone asking about bugs, saying that the only reason the game was delisted was an incorrect rating.
As can be seen in a screenshot taken last week before the listing was removed, Radiant Silvergun had an E for Everyone rating on the North American eShop.
But the game now has a T for Teen rating, listing qualifiers for blood, fantasy violence and suggestive themes.
The rating now mirrors the one that the Xbox 360 port has.
As Shiro reported, Radiant Silvergun launched in all regions by surprise on the Nintendo Switch on Sept. 13, but 10 hours later, the North American page disappeared. Shortly thereafter, Live Wire acknowledged on Twitter that the game was no longer available to American customers but gave no reason at the time.
Live Wire also said that it was aware of problems with Silvergun’s music and sound effects. Based on their tweets today, a patch to fix those problems in all regions is apparently still forthcoming.
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.
And as measured by The Electric Underground in a YouTube video last week, the Switch port has five frames of lag — one more frame than the Xbox 360 and two more frames than the Saturn.
There’s no word yet on whether Treasure and Live Wire will release Radiant Silvergun on more platforms besides the Switch, although they did acknowledge the demand for a PC version.
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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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