LGR - Silpheed - DOS PC Game Review

One of the earlier signs of innovation in the often-overcrowded "shmup" genre, Silpheed is another computer classic from Game Arts and Sierra. Xacalite is a punk. Take back Gloire! Or whatever.

[@jmyers1385]

This game and Thexder were the reason my dad was like "nope, we don't need a Nintendo when we have this 386". This game was so badass, the cover art is incredible, and I had to learn how to type in DOS commands before I knew how to read so I could play it. Worth it.

[@420sakura1]

Your dad must be a cheapskate. You missed out on golden age of gaming.

[@fbswampfox]

Lol a 386 haven’t heard that in a while. I remember is getting a 486 and that was a huge deal

[@TheFormHater]

@@420sakura1 golden age of gaming was at the turn of the millenium

[@biffrapper]

@@420sakura1 Nah, PC gaming was strong in the late 80s and early 90s.

[@VasCorpBetMani]

"How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown?" is a quote from a play by Shakespeare. It fits a certain vision of human expansion into space, though out of context from the play. Very clever to use this to set up the game.

[@QJ89]

It always reminded me of the Prologue to Romeo & Juliet. Maybe the reason it comes from the play Julius Caeser is why it sounds so familiar!

[@TheEmeraldMenOfficial]

I just read Julius Caesar recently... and I missed this quote...

[@empath69]

Funny thing - my dad mentioned it was a quote from Shakespeare's "Julius Ceasar" - I ended up skimming his copy of the play and getting the jist two years before I would study it in school; for daily readings, when we got to that scene, I got Cassius. B) So you could say that a video game furthered my education and even prepared me for school learning! :D

[@vyse128]

I have Silpheed on the Sega CD. Love it.

[@MrBones248]

Yggdrasil is a tree in norse mythology, also called the world tree

[@jeremymercier9477]

Nice catch

[@zenmastakilla]

Yeah, I can't believe he missed that. Pretty disappointed right now.

[@SymbolicSplenetic]

Enslaved taught me this. :D

[@skudzer1985]

@Van V I learned it from Xenogears :-]

[@biffrapper]

Also the name of a starship in the sci-fi classic Hyperion...

[@elbryan42]

Love the new intro! :) I still proudly own Silpheed on both 3.5 and 5.25 disks. I love those old Gamearts games. The Sega CD game is awesome, and so is the PS2 sequel, which is done by Treasure. An excellent series for sure. Since they redid Thexder on the PS3, I'd really like to see Silpheed and Firehawk make a comeback. :)

[@tifforo1]

Made by the same company that made Thexder and Zeliard. They went on to make Grandia and Lunar.

[@todesziege]

Game Arts were awesome.

[@WalrusFPGA]

I was just playing this last night and thought to check if you'd covered it- and sure enough, here it is! Got this back when it released and was lucky to hear it in all it's MT-32 glory. Playing it on MiSTer now with that same great MT-32 sound, via mt32-pi 🙂

[@KokoRicky]

This game was a big part of my childhood back in the early 90s. Great to see someone review it. Even as an adult, I cannot defeat Glorie. It's really frickin' hard.

[@imnotdavidxnsx]

This was the very first video game we ever had on a PC in our household. My dad brought the whole family in and showed it to us. I was hooked from there forward and have been a PC gamer ever since.

[@trex70]

Hey LGR your Videos become Retro as well. Congratulations 🎉

[@CrystalMcNair]

Ahhh, that music... So gorgeous.

[@LGR]

@Ubersnuber There are a lot of sprites used: projectiles, background objects, much of the boss characters. But most of the enemy ships, and Silpheed itself, are indeed composed of polygons.

[@LGR]

@MrShot97 I certainly hope so. It's easily my most-wanted sound hardware, just looking for a good deal on one.

[@BrianPicchi]

One of my all time favorites for sure. Great review. By the way, the intro text a line from Cassius from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and is one of my favorite quotes. It roughly translates to how many years from now will our horrible, but necessary assassination be repeated in countries not yet existing, and languages not yet formed.

[@Phantasma3]

this was one of the like, 10 good games I had on my Sega CD.

[@LGR]

@atombat I LOL’d at that last part, that’s totally how he would sound. A music card on a PC of the time is something like the AdLib or Sound Blaster. And as far as I know, the only versions were for the NEC PC88, Fujitsu FM-7, IBM PC, TRS-80 and Apple IIgs. I know the MSX didn’t get Silpheed (though it got other Game Arts games) and I’ve not seen any reference to an X68000 version.

[@AngusBeer]

I thought i recognised the name- I look at my Sega Mega CD collection and there it is! One of the games that came with my system :D

[@LGR]

@brigcam I concur. I'm sure that would clear up the confusion!

[@speedyblupi]

I've found out the explanation for that "barely comprehensible text". It's not that it's translated from Japanese, it's that it's a direct quote of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" It's just after they've killed him and they're going on about how significant it was historically.

[@GameplayandTalk]

Excellent review. I remember seeing screenshots of this as a kid and have always wondered how it played.

[@Michirin9801]

I LOVE Silpheed on the PC-88 (No I don't have a PC-88 YET, I play it on an emulator) It's one of the better games for the system that I've played, better than it only the Falcom games like Ys 1, 2 and 3, Popful Mail, and what not... (I have yet to play Dragon Slayer, Xanadu and Sorcerian though)

[@MatthewMcGravey]

love the Sega CD version ...need to play this one

[@Zagupi]

This was one of the first games we had when I was just a kid, on our IBM PS/1. It had a sound card that could produce the game's sound FX as well as music. Hearing those songs always brings back the simpler happier times of my life. Could never finish the game, I don't think I even got to the halfway point.

[@LGR]

@weaselfierce Raptor is definitely planned for this year. Ha, I have like a million shooters planned to review, who knows when I'll get to them though.

[@charlesconto3154]

That guy, at 2:10, was just freaking awesome. I want him playing I the corner of my screen as I play silpheed...

[@gPoe]

I remember playing this & Jumpman on my granddad's IBM. Plus Alf, which I think had color issues, & I tried Leather Goddess but never got very far in it. Anyway, I swear that Xacalite had sounded way clearer & his mouth moved when he spoke.

[@Zagupi]

Our IBM PS/1 had a sound card..don't remember the name but it produced much clearer speech too. You could understand what he was saying.

[@LGR]

@TeamRocketReviews From what I remember, yes. I think it's even the exact same selection of ships to name in the manual.

[@SteelbeastsCavalry]

Holy crap... I actually have one of those Sierra demo cassettes!!!!!!!!!

[@zelinski77]

11th ACR?

[@justjoeblow420]

A tip for any one playing this in DOSBox, I suggest MCGA graphics. and Roland MT-32.

[@thedungeondelver]

Little factoid about this game: its code was written such that its gameplay routines were *not* tied to the system's internal CPU clock but to their own timing routines. What this means for the layperson is that if you have a copy of the game, you can basically run it on *any* Microsoft OS for PCs - as long as they're 32 bit. I used to fire it up in Windows XP and it ran fine. Not through DOSBox, mind you: just double-clicking the .exe. Doesn't work on 64-bit OS's.

[@LGR]

@madcapoperator Strangely, no, not that I know of. Seems like it would be a great system to port it to.

[@Thekinggamelon]

Rest in peace, thanks for briging this game to the world, will never forget you...

[@andrewfaraday8918]

I can't have been the only one who ready 'slip head'

[@Shot97]

Fun game, thanks for introducing it to me. Gave it a go with my MT-32, dig the music.

[@rahn45]

One of the interesting things about this game is how it handled damage which was pretty ahead of it's time as well: Sure you could take multiple hits, but once your shields went down it was your upgrades that started taking damage instead; your ship would fall apart with each additional hit, going slower with the engines going down, your weapon systems becoming less effective and your auto fire going out. It would make for some intense moments in where you might come out of a fight by the skin of your teeth with a heavily damaged ship.

[@jkoscak]

Keep up the great man !!!! I find you very entertaining :)

[@LGR]

@mocthezuma Well okay then, it's impossible to pronounce because it's Norse.

[@mista1two]

hah awesome.. the "Sierra Lounge". I'd love to grab a couple drinks and hang out down at the Sierra Lounge.

[@LGR]

@mocthezuma Claiming to know what my tongue can easily pronounce is quite an accomplishment, you must enlighten me as to how you gained this ability :)

[@marvinkmooneyoz]

All of the above! All of the above!!!!

[@jge123]

Extremely cool looking and sounding games that you wanted to have but then the graphics were always lacking a bit in those days, sometimes the music compensated for that but today with the graphics hardware available they could bring these games to life, that cool ship could look exactly like the one on the box art.

[@sird2333]

That intro is still awesome!

[@NPC999]

so far this has been a great friday morning...though I've only been awake for 10 minutes.

[@jasonz7788]

Thanks lgr great work Sir

[@vwestlife]

NEC did at least plan to import the PC88 series to the USA as the PC-8801A ("A" for American model), but I've never seen or heard of one anywhere. NEC soon began selling their own IBM PC clones and laptops here instead, which were really quite good. And anyway, the MT-32 soundtracks for this game are pretty darn awesome indeed!

[@LGR]

@Lachlant1984 I've never seen it show up on eBay. As far as I know it was only available directly from Sierra as a mail/phone order product.

[@QuantumRift]

It will never top "someone set us up the bomb"...and... "All your base are belong to us."

[@MAMECADE]

Great view once again. How do you conduct these reviews without taking a breath! You are an orator of the highest magnitude dude.

[@misswomble]

The voice sounded great on the IBM PS1 1992

[@byZibo]

I used to play on my old Ibm Ps/1 with my first joystick 😍

[@brandonb1681]

That alien sounds like my tummy after Taco Bell at 11pm.

[@knightrider4545]

There is also a PS2 game Sipheed the Lost Planet. Good review very informative and entertaining.

[@MARCOPLAYSDOSGAMES]

Very great review as usual my friend !!! But, are you sure that Uesaka and Godai are the real designers ? In the in-game credits they are not mentioned, while you can find as designer Takeshi Miyaji , the co-founder of the Game Arts. Mistery ... MARCO PLAYS : SILPHEED (Sierra / Game Arts - 1988)

[@Snotnarok]

I played this game back in the day on PC all the time, I recently got the Sega CD version which is mind blowing considering it's a similar game with just a tech jump. Both crazy cool games

[@macg86]

Great review :)

[@Dant2142]

1:38 Heh, I have several sheets like that from my boxed copies of the Space Quest and Quest for Glory games

[@TheIdleCrow]

the game looks cool, I may check it out sometime.

[@ricorodriguez3579]

Maaaan, I miss this game!

[@Cr4z3d]

I think part of the reason for the unintelligibility of the speech is it sounds like the dialog is actually Japanese, on TOP of the really low quality. I was still pretty impressed that they even MANAGED to get digitized speech playing through the PC speaker.

[@LGR]

@TheAndycoll No, I didn't! Man, not long after I made this review, how sad...

[@mocthezuma]

Great review btw

[@downhome7500]

Spent many, many hours playing this game on my brother's Tandy 1000TL. Fucking awesome.

[@atarileaf]

I just bought a CIB copy of this today along with some other CIB Dos and Amiga games. $5 for the whole lot :D

[@LGR]

@ThomasGGebert It runs flawlessly on DOSBox!

[@kurochan101]

Level 7 is a fortress level. You should be doing double-laser cannons since you do not have to worry about attacks from the sides. If you have not collected enough points for it, try to do at least one lase cannon so you have the firepower to more easily destroy Gerdi.

[@TitanSix]

I remember playing Silpheed on my Sega CD. It was a pain to set up the console (Two friggin' power bricks? Eff that!) but it was worth it to play some Android Assault, Corpse Killer, and, of course, Silpheed. Good thing I have my Sega CDX.

[@RosencrantzxGuildenstern]

I've been trying remember the name of a pretty cool shmup for a while now to no avail. It was a shareware title I was playing roughly around 2001, and I'm pretty sure it must've been developed around that time. I remember it taking place in outer space and having a ver basic, vector graphic kind of look to it with enemies that would sometimes look like alien ships and sometimes like demonic bats or chinese dragons (everything was a bit abstract looking though). What really set the game apart from most shmups, however, was that it wasn't simply either horizontal or vertical, but it would switch up the perspective often within the same level. There were even levels with third person segments. I don't remember it having music, and the sound effects were a bit ear rapey, bit they still had a certain charm. Does anyone remember the name of this game?

[@serginietor]

great review, as always. will you be reviewing the new duke nukem game? it's not vintage, but i think an exception could be made ;)

[@benjaminsummers5006]

you need to do a Tyran review

[@LGR]

@sl2mmer Wow, imagine that - I am too!

[@grassulo]

I had the IIgs and also PC versions as a kid. My computer was a IIgs so my dad got me the game for it, and he liked it so much he bought the PC version for his, at the time 286 PC, but the IIgs version has better sound, gotta love that ensoniq sound chip, the IIgs was never used to it's full potential. :(

[@realtrisk]

+grassulo Better unless you've got the MT-32. Then the PC spanks it.

[@HoopleBogart]

I'm glad this game had good music!

[@shanemater589]

you don't ever get sick of playing repetitive games like this when you're a kid. I once flipped asteroids twice. Silpheed as a kid was so much more exciting. Thx for the video

[@djtonyxxx5]

this game comes with my ibm pc three voice. and with that sound card the speacking is not awaful like with adlib. it's clear and fluid. still metallized...

[@speedyblupi]

Yeah, I worked that out about 5 minutes after posting that message actually :P. I'd never unlocked auto aim before, so I tried it on that level to see what it was like: Needless to say, I lost. But I worked out that v beam and laser is an effective combination if you've not unlocked double lasers. I got the idea from seeing a Silpheed drawn with that weapon combination on the FM77 version of Silpheed.

[@sethbramwell]

I remember playing this game as a kid and SUCKING at it. I don't think I ever got past level 2. We must not have had a good sound card at the time because after looking up a few KZbin vids of the game play, I have no memory of the soundtrack apart from the barebones "tone" version.

[@whatamalike]

@phreakindee It most certainly would, looks amiga quality on the pc version so imagine what it'd look like on an amiga!

[@draketungsten74]

3:28 Looks like Sark's carrier from Tron.

[@vibingwithvinyl]

Was the crazy drummer a thing back in 2011 already? Holy crap I'm old.

[@LGR]

@rednight2476 A "copy", yes, but not an original disk. The only retail copy I have is for MS-DOS.

[@moonfiber]

ridiculawesome is now officially my favorite word.

[@philmaurer7191]

For the record the intro is from Julious Ceaser, it is said to Brutus right before they kill Ceaser

[@LGR]

@MrLastkill3r FixedSys. It's the MS-DOS font.

[@LucasRazorBlade]

This game looks amazing! ^_^

[@black516dragon]

@phreakindee Yggdrasil is actually taken from Norse Mythology and is the name of the "World Tree" which supposedly gave birth to the world if memory serves. Its pronounced igg-druh-sil I believe.

[@Allerdyne]

I bought the PS2 version of this game, which was pretty good. Didn't know about the original version. Interesting.

[@black516dragon]

@phreakindee Ah my bad. Didn't look over all the comments, just the first couple pages.

[@matthewhapp8688]

was also an Xbox 360 version too

[@thedungeondelver]

PC Speaker...so lots of square tones. I don't recall as it was able to directly hit the CM-whatever audio chip was on the motherboard. The music is nice enough that it's worth setting up "properly" in DOSBox to get working if you don't have vintage HW like LGR does...

[@UkonRenjishi]

i was gonna correct that, but you did it, thanks :)

[@endofthelinejoel]

You say MSDOS instead of Dos. That earns you two thumbs up for accuracy!

[@jazzkomp]

this remind me of eagle's rider on DOS

[@GamerMGO]

I enjoy silpheed VERY much

[@525Lines]

Loom, I think, was the first big game soundtrack that came out separately.

[@obi_wan_kenobi561]

I must have been good at video games back in the day because I beat this game on my parents tandy 1000 ex computer. My friends always wanted to play this game on my computer because they had regular PCs and not Tandys. The tandys had the enhanced sound card built into the pc so we could have better music while playing on the tandy. Also, the game cut scenes ran faster on the tandy compared to my friends pc. Must have been because of having more video memory in the tandy and i do remember the tandy could display more colors than my friends pc could. I remember the end level was fighting that huge space ship where you have to destroy the shield generators before you can damage the ship.

[@empath69]

The Tandy 1000 series 'compatibles' had essentially a proprietary version of an 16-color EGA graphics card (versus likely either 4-color CGA, OR monochrome gfx), and that gorgeous 4-voice sound card that in some ways was BETTER than the Ad Lib card (but weaker in others). It really was a great 'gaming PC' in the 8-bit era. My friends and I played Pool of Radiance, but they had '100% compatibles' so the first time they came over and I fired the game up, they were puzzled at me not hitting SPACE immediately to get past the title screen...and then the theme music (with *harmonies* ) came on and they fell out of their chairs! And yeah, your reflexes were better than mine - I eventually DID destroy the captured GLOIRE battleship, but it took years of practice, repetition and frustration! :D

[@speedyblupi]

I get stuck at the boss fight against the gerdi on level 7. I wasn't expecting it to shoot massive oblongs at me the first time, and I still can't beat it (or usually, get to it). It's those higgs bosons I bet (it supposedly draws its power from the higgs field) :P

[@davidb1412]

Crusader: No remorse, Cursader: No regret!

[@Lachlant1984]

I want that Live At The Sierra Lounge tape, how easy is it to find on eBay? Did the tape ever come with the game in a bundle like what Nintendo did with Killer Instinct on the Super NES?

[@djtonyxxx5]

and i still remember more than half password to play the game.. gonosu dagar, ecc. what a piece of pupu of game....

[@paulpetroleum]

There is also an freekin amazing sequel on the PS2 that you should totally check out called Silpheed The Lost Planet. PLEASE play this!