Silhouette Mirage is an action/platform game that was developed by
Treasure.
It was released in 1997 for the
Sega Saturn in
japan and was later ported to the
PSX and released in the US by
Working Designs. Here's the back-of-the-box description for the Playstation version:
In an apocalyptic future, the Edo computer has gone beserk, dividing
the world’s inhabitants into two mutant classes, Silhouette and Mirage.
Now, the watchguard computer safety system has sent forth the Messenger
of Justice to travel to Edo and repair the damage before the world is
lost forever. As the Messenger, Shyna Nera Shyna, blast, beat, and bash
your way through seven wild and bizarre stages using friendly parasite
weapons to aid your advance against wacky enemies, huge fully-animated
bosses, and devilishly difficult obstacles. Providing the utmost in
playability and replayability, the game wizards at Treasure, the
brilliant minds behind such international hits as Gunstar Heroes,
Dynamite Headdy, Mischief Makers, and Guardian Heroes have come
up with another sure-fire classic that pushes the 2-D capabilities
of your PlayStation game console to its limit, and come up with a hit!
You control Shyna. The easiest visual description I can think of for her is a 6-year old blond girl on
halloween trying to be a feminine version of
two-face from the old saturday morning
Batman cartoons. The game plays like a souped-up version of Gunstar Heroes, but with a few major differences.
Every character in the game has two energy bars(health and weapon power) as well as being aligned either Silhouette (mostly blue) or Mirage (mostly pink). The main exception to this is Shyna, who is either Silhouette or Mirage depending on the direction she's facing. If a character gets hit with an attack of the opposite alignment, they lose health. If they get hit with an attack of the same alignment, they lose weapon power. When they hit 0 health, they explode. At 0 weapon power, they can't attack or can attack very minimally, or in Shyna's case, the weapon dies and is replaced with the next in your stock.
The plot (beyond what's explained in the small blurb above) is extremely complex, so I won't go any deeper into it. If you've read this far, just go rent (or buy) the game and find out for yourself. It's worth it just to see Shyna pick enemies up and beat money out of them using only her hair. In my opinion, SM is one of the best platform games ever created, and well worth the 20$ it goes for on eBay.
Spoiler type information and random factoids below. Stop reading if you haven't beaten the game at least once.
After you've beaten the game four times and seen all four different endings as well as fought Death and won, you gain access to the hidden options in the menu on the main screen, and the SECRET option.
The options unlocked are Difficulty level (easy/normal/hard/insane), Stage select, sound test, and (see below) Scale mode. The main menu option 'SECRET' lets you play the Zohar vs Shyna Core fight in multiplayer mode (the game calls it Super Core Fighter II, go figure)
In the first underground area, there's a hidden rabbit shop in a little alcove before one of the pits you have to fall into to proceed. If you scroll all the way up in the rabbit's inventory (it doesn't loop, keep scrolling) you'll find a maximum-level default weapon for 300 credits. Other rabbit shops in the game have other maximum-level weapons hidden in the same fashion.
In the Saturn version, shooting an enemy of the same alignment doesn't give you any weapon energy.
One small little-known fact about the US port : There are two versions which can be told apart by the character on the disc art. There's only one difference that i've noticed between the two - In the first release of the game (The disc art shows Har) one of the options in the menu is Scale mode. Scale mode is a hell of a lot of fun, it allows you to change Shyna's size anytime during the game by holding L1 and pushing up/down on the control pad. In the second release (The disc art shows Megido) the Scale option is missing. Apparently Treasure didn't like it, so it was removed.
Anyone else know any odd/interesting factoids about the game that I missed?