Radirgy

Radirgy ( ラジルギ ), also known as Radio Allergy, is a vertical shmup from 2005 developed by Milestone and is the company's first foray into the cel-shaded style that will define their shmups' visual identity from that point onward.

Unlike their previous game Chaos Field which was focused on a series of boss battles, Radirgy's design is mostly influenced by older caravan shmups with dynamic enemy wave spawning and fast enemy destruction, albeit with more modern enemy bullet counts and patterns. On top of this foundation, Radirgy adds a focus on regularly using invincibility in order to tear through enemies and boost a score multiplier.

Basic info

 * Vertical orientation, and vertical screen
 * 1 player only
 * 8-direction movement and 3 buttons
 * The player starts with 3 lives
 * Default extends are at 8 and 20 million points
 * No loops. A full run lasts around 30 minutes

Controls

 * A (Hold): Shoot
 * B (Hold): Slash
 * C : Activate the ABS Net and become temporarily invincible. Requires a gauge to be full
 * Not holding A nor B : Deploy a shield

Note : Preemptively holding the C button in order to instantly activate the ABS Net as soon as it becomes available will not work in this game. Half-C presses will not be registered. Activating the ABS Net requires a fresh C press after it becomes ready.

Interface



 * Top left green radio reception signal : Score multiplier indicator


 * Top left horizontal green gauge : Score multiplier gauge


 * Top left battery : Player HP


 * Top right big white number : Player score


 * Top right small white numbers : Score bonuses (is hidden by default, requires a special input to be displayed. Refer to the Unlockable Secrets section for more details)


 * Bottom left blue gauge : ABS Net gauge


 * Top right red gauge : (Mid)boss HP. Only appears during (mid)boss fights

Display additional score information
When playing the game, it is possible to activate an additional text display on the top right of the screen that will appear whenever an enemy is killed or a point item is collected.

When killing an enemy or collecting a floating point item, this scoring indicator shows the base point value, the current multiplier, and the final value. When collecting a ground item, it will also show the total number of ground items collected up until that point. The multiplier will always be 1 for those specific items, so the base and final values will be identical.

Depending on the version and port, the method to display the indicator differs :


 * Arcade : Press Start while holding C
 * GC : Press Z
 * DC : Press Start while holding X
 * Wii : Press Start while holding X
 * PS2 :Press Select

Mecha configuration
Before starting each run, the player can mix-and-match two parameters for the mecha :


 * Shot type. 3 different shots types are available : Wide shot, 123 laser, Bubble shot. More details in (weapons)


 * Speed. 3 speeds can be chosen from, each being assigned a number of stars to denote the speed level :
 * Slow [[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]][[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]]
 * Normal [[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]][[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]][[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]]
 * Fast [[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]][[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]][[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]][[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]][[File:Radirgy - Speed star.png]]

The mecha color will reflect which one of the 9 combinations is used. Once chosen, the combination of shot type and speed cannot be switched during the run, even when using a Continue.



Life system
The player starts with 3 lives, each represented by a green rectangle inside the battery in the HUD.



The mecha can freely move over enemies as there is no collision damage in this game. However, it will lose a life when its brown backpack hits a bullet, a laser, or a flame.

If the player collects an extend while the battery is already at the maximum, the battery will increase in size to accommodate the new life. If the battery has been previously partially emptied due to prior damage, then the extend will only refill one unit of the current battery. The battery can go up to 5 units in size, which can be reached with the two score extends.



One noticeable influence of this mechanic is on a late-game item that can fully refill the life battery. (refer to Scoring->ground item and Milestone logo for more details) If the battery was at its default size of 3, the player is guaranteed to have 3 lives after collecting it, but a battery size of 4 or 5 could increase the life refill potential of this item even more. This can allow the player to tackle the last section of the game with more resources if they collected extends before losing any lives and thus increased the amount of life slots in their battery.

There is no point bonus for remaining lives nor for battery size through the game. Losing a life does not inflict any scoring nor power penalty, and it spawns several point items around the player as well as an ABS Net recharge item in order to assist with recovery.

Weapons
Shot : Holding the shot button will make the player mecha continuously fire. There are three different shot types the player is asked to choose from before starting a run :

Sword : The mecha is equipped with a sword. Its range is much more limited than the shot, but it can inflict powerful damage on the enemies it hits. While holding the dedicated button, the mecha will keep swinging the sword, with very short cooldowns between two swings.

Power-up system : The shot starts at a default power level, and its range and power can be increased 6 times by collecting dedicated items from specific containers.

When taking a hit, or when using a Continue, no power-down penalty is incurred. If the shot and sword are used at the same time, the shot width is reduced.

Shield : When the player doesn't shoot nor slash for a second, the mecha will deploy a shield in front of it. The shield will cancel bullets that touch it (but not flames nor lasers). If the player directly touches an enemy with the shield, said enemy will receive continuous contact damage from it.

ABS Net : A disc-shaped force field that surrounds the player mecha and temporarily makes it invincible.

Activating the ABS Net requires the ABS Net gauge to be full. When the ABS Net is active, it will cancel the bullets and auto-collect the items inside its radius. Enemies that come into contact with the ABS Net will also receive damage, albeit only a very minor amount.

At the end of the ABS Net's duration, two things will happen : A full screen bullet cancel will occur, and every on-screen item will be auto-collected. The player also remains invincible for 3 seconds after the ABSNet ends.

The ABS Net gauge is immediately emptied when an ABS Net is activated, but said gauge can be recharged even when the ABS Net is currently active. This means it is possible to chain multiple ABS Net uses one after the other, provided that it is fully recharged in time.

Hazard types
Hazards in this game can be classified into 4 different categories, depending notably on the possible ways to cancel them.

Items
Radirgy features many item types which can all help the player in a way or another.

Depending on the item type, the method to spawn them will be different. The most common scenario is the regular point item that spawns when killing every enemy in a wave or hitting big enemies in specific spots. Some will appear when destroying specific item carriers, while others require the use of item juggling. Once spawned, items will slowly fall off the screen until they are interacted with or leave the playfield. Transitioning from a level to another will also not migrate the onscreen items to the next stage, and as such, any leftover uncollected item will be discarded.

The game has a juggling mechanic that allows the player to keep some item types on screen by hitting them with the sword. This pushes the item upwards and also has a chance to randomly change it into another item. Items that change due to juggling can only mutate into one of the other item types that can also be juggled.

Additionally, the following pill items are automatically collected. Instead of moving towards the player mecha, they will directly rush towards the respective gauges they fill.

Scoring
Radirgy's scoring was designed with heavy inspiration from caravan shmup scoring and its focus on quickly killing enemy waves. The scoring system also adds several layers of complexity with its multiplier, gauges and item management.

Enemy wave quick-killing
Caravan shmups traditionally feature a dynamic wave spawning system in which an enemy wave being fully destroyed or leaving the screen is what will trigger the next wave's spawn. Radirgy also follows this system, with the additional twist that several sets of enemy waves are simultaneously active and independent from one another, instead of a single set like it usually is the case.

Typically, stages in Radirgy have one set of large enemies, where killing the current on-screen large enemies will spawn the next ones, and several sets of small enemy waves. Since focusing on one enemy wave can come at the cost of the other waves, juggling the destruction of all the enemy waves on screen is one important aspect of the scoring.

The first three bosses in the game will also feature waves of small enemies that fight alongside them. Just like their non-boss variants, they are worth points and can be quick-killed during the boss fight to spawn more enemies, recharge the ABSNet faster, and generate point items.

Multiplier
Radirgy features a multiplier system. The vast majority of points the player can earn are subject to a multiplier that goes from x1 to x16, in increments of powers of 2. This means the multiplier goes from x1 to x2 to x4 to x8 and then x16. Ground items are one of the few things that aren't affected by the multiplier, but other enemy kills or point item collections can have their value multiplied.

The multiplier is set to x1 at the beginning of each stage, and the multiplier gauge will be empty. Whenever the player collects green pills, the multiplier gauge will fill. When the gauge reaches specific thresholds inside this gauge, the multiplier will increase. The radio signal strength indicator in the HUD will also change to reflect the current multiplier.

Killed enemies will also leave a colored multiplier indicator where they were on the playfield, letting the player know the score multiplier obtained for each without necessarily having to look at the HUD.

When not being fed green pills, the gauge will gradually decrease over time. The player thus has to regularly generate green pills at a high enough rate to prevent the multiplier loss. The story dialogues that occur before and after (mid)bosses will freeze the multiplier decrease but will still let it increase.

Losing a life will not impact the multiplier nor incur any direct scoring penalty.

Big enemies weak spots
In order to more easily ensure enemy wave quick-killing and multiplier increase, routinely using the ABSNet is essential, either to provide the invincibility that makes it safer to move across the screen and kill waves quickly, or to generate green pills by canceling bullets.

In both cases, the efficiency of pill collection can be optimized by targeting bigger enemies' weak spots. These spots can provide green pills when the shield or ABS Net is used on top of them, blue pills when the sword is used on them, and a small point item when destroyed. In some cases, destroying a weak spot can also prevent the enemy from shooting some bullets. A destroyed weak spot will emit white smoke clouds.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WUYTwWLsSc ]

Ground items and Milestone logo
Enemy waves and bosses in the game are air-based. However, there are also ground turrets that the player can destroy. Whenever one of those are destroyed, a blue square-shaped item with a picture inside will appear in its place. Collecting it will give the player some additional points.

Most of these turrets are fixed ground objects that simply move alongside the scrolling, but the stage 5 trains also count as such even if they move on their own. Each of their cabins is considered as a turret and will give a floor item when destroyed.

There are 255 turrets like this in the game, and thus 255 icons. The point value for each item collected depends on the total number of items that have already been collected. The formula for ground items' value is as follows :

Where n is the total number of items collected. The ground items' point value is unaffected by the regular multiplier.

If the player collects 250 ground items or more, a Milestone logo can be collected in stage 5. If the player only collects 249 items or less, said logo will not appear. [VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DysH96lZYFQ ]

In order to uncover the logo, the player has to shoot a hidden spot on the ground in the second half of the stage. It is located between the two train tracks when they split and go their own ways. The secret spot is only vulnerable to shots so letting go of the sword when attacking it will uncover it much faster.

Uncovering the Milestone logo grants a 1 million point bonus, and this value can be affected by the multiplier for a maximum of 16 million points.

The logo itself is considered as the 256th ground item. Grabbing said logo afterwards is a separate action from uncovering it. When collected, the logo can perform different actions depending on the current battery size and the number of lives the player currently has :


 * If the player has a battery size of 5 and all their lives intact, the ground item will provide additional points compared to the expected value.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zW6wu3wNV0 ]


 * If the player has a battery size of 3 or 4 and all their lives intact, the battery size will increase by one unit and the ground item will provide points following the same formula as the other ground items.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAts65TVgo8 ]


 * If the player doesn't have all their lives intact, then the item will refill the player's life battery and provide points following the same formula as the other ground items.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1Yr-ADChY ]

Bullet conversion
This advanced strategy exploits the bullet converter item in order to change bullet-heavy sections into lucrative sources of points. When picking up this item, every bullet on screen gets changed into a small point item, and these items can also be juggled in order to change one or several of them into another bullet converter item, thus perpetuating the cycle of converting enemy bullets into point items.

This strategy can provide a noticeable amount of points, especially against bosses and midbosses with heavier bullet patterns. On the other hand, there are several reasons why the strategy in general is advanced and risky :


 * The bullet converter item's random chance of spawning when slashing an item is very low, thus requiring good luck to trigger one. Having access to more items on screen at the same time can boost the chance to have a converter item spawn, though the odds are still low. Besides, bullet converters are one-time-use items, which means a new one needs to be spawned for every single conversion.
 * During extended uses of the conversion trick (such as during boss fights), using the ABS Net causes all the spawned items to be collected, which ends the bullet conversion streak. This means the player will have to avoid using the ABS Net through this scoring trick and dodge bullets that would have been canceled by an ABS Net activation otherwise. As a side-effect, the player will have to regularly spawn and collect multiplier-increasing items to maintain a high multiplier and maximize the value of the point items that this scoring trick will generate.
 * Under some circumstances, having too many items on screen at once can even result in the game freezing or crashing [VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjoA49A6yFY ]

Additional game modes
All of the ports of the game feature a standard Arcade Mode. On top of that, some of the ports provide one of the additional modes : Manpuku and Owakari. These port-exclusive modes feature similar enemy waves and bosses but provide some tweaks to the mechanics.

In both modes, the two extends from Arcade Mode are not available. However, the Milestone logo can still be triggered and will refill the player's battery.

Another shared change is that a remixed version of the soundtrack will play instead of the Arcade OST.

Manpuku
Available on : GC

Manpuku mode's main change is that the multiplier is no longer capped to x16. It instead goes up to x256, once again in powers of 2, from x2 to x4 to x8 to x16 to x32 to x64 to x128 and then x256.

In order to reflect this new cap, the radio signal strength logo can turn red when the multiplier reaches values that are exclusive to this mode.

Owakari
Available on : PS2

Owakari Mode boosts the general difficulty of the game by increasing the speed at which enemy bullets are fired. Some enemies will also replace the bullets they usually fire by bigger ones.

Misc tips and info

 * Before starting a run, the player will be given the option to display story dialogues or completely disable them. If the story dialogues are enabled, the player can either let them play out or can press buttons to go through them faster. These will occur at the beginning of each stage, and before each (mid)boss.

One quirk of this feature is that if the story segments are disabled entirely, some of the bonus enemies that spawn once the midbosses are quick-killed will also get disabled. And since story dialogue popups freeze the multiplier gauge's decrease, the multiplier will instead keep falling with less or no enemies in sight to recharge it. The regular enemy spawns in the later half of the stage that do not require a midboss quick-kill are unaffected by this oversight and will properly appear eventually.

Some ports provide a stage select feature in which story segments can't be enabled. In that scenario, the bonus enemies will also be disabled, with no way to trigger them.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3I6XT4TrlA ]


 * Bosses from stage 1 to 4 have an antenna on top of them. Destroying the antenna will cause all boss parts to be destroyed at once.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdOLJ63bKJU ]


 * Most enemies in the game can be damaged with the shot, sword, shield and ABSNet. When taking damage, they will flash in red. However, if an enemy flashes in yellow, this means it is actually immune to anything but sword attacks. Enemies with this behavior are relatively rare but they exist and will force the player to get closer in order to dispatch them.

This immunity to non-sword attacks can also be a temporary one. This is the case for example with the panel-like enemy that can spawn from stage 3 onwards which can eventually be defeated with the shot after enough time has passed.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VevpzMSGXzM ]


 * One of the enemies the last boss and TLB can summon is a square-ish turret with side handles. This specific enemy does not fire bullets on its own. Instead, it will react to the player's attacks. Using the shot or the shield on this enemy will make it continuously fire counter bullets. However, slashing it with the sword is perfectly fine, and the enemy will remain harmless in this situation.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJfH3cuZ9dY ]


 * Before starting a run, a "How to play" segment is shown to the player. If left unskipped, it will explain general game mechanics. Under unknown circumstances and in some ports of the game (such as the GC version), the mecha movement can be vertically desynced at a specific part of the tutorial, and it will later take unintended damage during this sequence. While the score gained in the tutorial is properly reset afterwards, this life loss will actually be carried over to the player's actual run.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH_2qeCk0uQ ]

Links

 * Archived version of the official Milestone website : https://web.archive.org/web/20111103070604fw_/http://www.mile-stone.co.jp
 * Dedicated page on the Japanese Wikipedia : https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B8%E3%83%AB%E3%82%AE
 * Japanese wiki with story tidbits, character profiles, eyecatches : https://w.atwiki.jp/milestonematome

Record scores
Refer to https://shmups.wiki/library/STG_Hall_of_Records/R#Radirgy

Scoreboards

 * JHA hiscore board : https://wiki.denfaminicogamer.jp/highscore/2005_008_%E3%83%A9%E3%82%B8%E3%83%AB%E3%82%AE
 * System11 hiscore board : https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15847
 * Restart syndrome hiscore board : https://www.restartsyndrome.com/board.php?id=67
 * hiscores.shump.com board : https://hiscores.shmup.com/games/30

Replays
Refer to https://shmups.wiki/library/Radirgy/Video_Index

List of superplay materials
Refer to https://shmups.wiki/library/List_of_superplay_materials#Milestone

Story and characters
[Taken from Milestone Shooting Collection Wii's US localization]

A time when the world was full of personal electronic equipment and electric waves, many suffered allergy-like symptoms.

A company was carrying out important research developping a medecine to counter this allergy when suddenly the building was occupied by terrorists.

The father of Shizuru happened to be there that day working on the project! Shizuru, with the aid of her friend Aita, decided to fight the terrorists in order to save the secret work of the project and rescue her father!

-

Gallery
See Radirgy/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.