Silpheed

About Silpheed

Silpheed (1986) is Game Arts' 3D polygon shoot 'em up for the PC-8801, brought to the US by Sierra On-Line and later remade for the Sega CD with pre-rendered video backgrounds that made it a showcase for the system.

Silpheed in Depth

Silpheed is a vertical shooter seen from an oblique angle, with enemies and objects shrinking as they move up the screen. The player flies the SA-08 Silpheed, deployed by the supercomputer Yggdrassil against the terrorist Xacalite, who has stolen "planetary buster" missiles and the battleship Gloire. With the fleet too far away to reach Earth in time, the experimental prototype must destroy Gloire. The ship moves freely around the screen, destroying enemies and dodging their fire, and shooting red orbs gives one of five weapon types, including homing missiles, an auto-aiming shot and a "phalanx" spread laser, which can be fitted to either side of the ship. The story is set after an alien ship discovered in 3032 led to rapid advances that let humans colonise space.

The 1986 original drew 3D polygon graphics over a tilted third-person backdrop. The 1993 Sega CD remake put polygon ships over pre-rendered full-motion video backgrounds, a technique Namco had used in Galaxian 3 and Starblade, and its story has Xacalite hack Earth's mother computer to seize the Solar System's space weapons, leaving a squadron of SA-77 Silpheeds as the last hope.

Making Silpheed

Game Arts released Silpheed for the PC-8801 on 5 December 1986 and the FM-7 in March 1988, and Sierra On-Line brought it to the United States, releasing a DOS version in April 1989 and other ports. Dragon gave the DOS version five stars, calling it "highly addictive, extremely colorful", Computer Gaming World praised its music, and ACE scored it 905 out of 1000. A Sega CD prototype with fewer enemies was shown at the Winter CES in January 1993. The Sega CD version was a bestseller in Japan and a runner-up for GamePro's 1993 CD Game of the Year; Music Week rated it the system's second most technically impressive game after Thunderhawk, Consoles+ gave it 93% and Mega ranked it fifth among Mega-CD games. EGM's reviewers praised its backgrounds as "some of the most stunning visuals in a video game" but found it a "rather mundane" shooter, faulting its bosses, power-ups and the lack of interaction with the scenery. Game Arts and Treasure made a sequel, Silpheed: The Lost Planet, for the PlayStation 2 in 2000.