PlayStation Basement #68 - Silhouette Mirage

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on December 14th, 2019.

Hello once again, and welcome back to the PlayStation Basement. PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasis the review over just a number. Now, let’s go!

We are moving closer and closer to all of the winter holidays around the world. I’m sure that Santa Claus is busy making toys for all of the children at the North Pole with his elves. Thinking about those elves, I have a game that makes me think a bit of elves, though the characters in the game are some kind of robotic/digital creatures with elfin demeanors.

Today’s game is Silhouette Mirage. I had never heard of this game as a kid. I first came across it when I decided to get all of the games published by Working Designs for the PS1 and PS2. Silhouette Mirage was published under their action label, Spaz. It was developed by the cult-favorite Treasure and originally released in Japan on the Sega Saturn in 1997. A PlayStation release followed in 1998 with a North America release not arriving until January of 2000. This North American version includes a bunch of new features and secrets to unlock, but the gameplay was also made more difficult. Though I’ve never played the Japanese version, I feel like this reduced my enjoyment of the game a bit, but we’ll see that in a moment.

First things first, let’s look at the cover art. The original Japanese version, subtitled “Reprogrammed Hope”, shows the main character, Shyna Nera Shyna, rising up as lightning crashes down. Her expression looks mondo weird. The art is also just kind of melodramatic in a very Sephiroth-style way. The American version has the glossy, shiny, Working Designs production and shows various characters posing in front of a brick wall. I like the heavy purple coloration, but everything looks weird. The designs, in general, are just sort of strange; having them just standing around doesn’t help anything. Silhouette Mirage certainly isn’t selling many people on its cover art from how I see it.

The graphics in the game aren’t much different, though seeing things in motion makes the wacky designs make more sense. Silhouette Mirage has the same art style in the game itself, that kind of superflat, cutesy/creepy, psychedelic carnival oddness that we saw on the cover art. The sprites are very well animated with a lot of smooth movement and a variety of motions. Parallax scrolling and sprite scaling effects really add some flair to the many different characters and settings. In addition to the great 2D graphics, there are also a few animated cutscenes and some nice illustrations on loading screens. Silhouette Mirage really looks great.

Silhouette Mirage sounds great too. The musick goes for an electronic pop/rock style that reminds me of a less-heavy Capcom. It fits the graphics very nicely and the quality is good. Sound effects include laser sounds, explosions, thwaps, booms, snaps, and all of those action effects you might expect. There’s some voice acting too that is usually pretty good. Some of the clips play a bit too often during boss battles, for example, that they can get a little stale. It reminds me quite a bit of Treasure’s similar game for Nintendo 64, Mischief Makers. We’ll see more of that in a bit.

Silhoutte Mirage has gameplay that twists the standards of a 2D side-scrolling platformer/shooter into some new shapes. In the world of Silhouette Mirage, a computer called Edo failed and accidentally morphed the inhabitants into two classes of beings: Silhouettes and Mirages. You play as a character who is half of both, Shyna Nera Shyna. This is good, because a being of one type can only be damaged by a being of the other type (Silhouettes can be destroyed by Mirages and vice versa). When I say that Shyna is half of each type, I mean that literally half of her body is one type and the other half is the other type. Silhouettes are creepy, shadowy creatures, and Mirages are cute, doll characters. Shyna is half of both. When she moves left, Shyna is one type, and she is the other type when she moves the other direction. This means that you often have to attack enemies from one side to do damage. You can still do something if you are the same type of being as the enemy though. Attacks of the same type do reduce the power of an enemy by damaging their spirit. You can also reflect attacks back at them. You can always throw enemies around, though this doesn’t do any damage. It’s just one of a few moves that allow Shyna to traverse the stage easier (and another thing that reminds me of Mischief Makers). If you really want to, you can switch your type, reversing the set directions for Silhouette and Mirage.

Unfortunately, switching types and using weapons (only in the North American version) uses up your spirit meter. If it goes down a lot, your attacks are much weaker. It can also be reduced by being hit by an attack of the same type (Shyna functions just like other Silhouettes and Mirages). I’m not sure how much I like this switching system. It’s kind of unique (though a different version of this kind of mechanic can be seen in games like Ikaruga and Outland), but the game feels a bit unnatural to control. The odd ramped difficulty from Working Designs doesn’t help either (neither does the slowdown or Treasure's usual boss-focused gameplay). It’s especially a problem when you consider that stores in the game, which allow you to obtain different weapons, have their prices jacked way up. So now enemies do more damage, you lose spirit power by attacking (and thus do less damage), and it’s really difficult to get enough money to buy new weapons. You either have to try to grind or go without. It’s really a pain.

Despite Silhouette Mirage’s odd shortcomings, I did enjoy playing the game. I really wish that Working Designs had left it alone. It really feels pretty silly to have a store that you can't buy anything from at almost any point, one in which most of your money will go towards refilling health that doesn't replenish between stages.  At first, Silhouette Mirage felt slow, kind of clunky, and a little unfair, but the gameplay became fun and faster once I began to understand movement more. The storyline about computer disasters and strange characters with Biblical names was interesting though perhaps presented somewhat poorly (this, again, reminds me a bit of Mischief Makers). It’s really not the best action-platformer out there, but Silhouette Mirage is unique enough to stand on its own.

Silhouette Mirage receives a Good.

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