Silhouette Mirage

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OH SHI-

Silhouette Mirage is an Action Game by Treasure, released on the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation. The Playstation version was localized by Working Designs.

Years ago, in the colossal laboratory of Edo, genetic experiments produced the twin attributes of Silhouette and Mirage in a child called Armageddon. The twin attributes were opposite, complementary, and necessary for each other's existence, like yin and yang. Yet due to their very nature, they sundered Armageddon into two beings: Hal, who was all Mirage, and Megido, who was all Silhouette. Once started, this split infected all life on Earth. Many organisms were killed by the transition. The survivors were divided into two factions based on attribute, with Hal and Megido as their leaders.

Responding to the devastation, the artificial intelligence Gehena created Shyna Nera Shyna, the Messenger of Justice (although most seem to know her as the Messenger of Destruction), a member of the rare Proteans, beings who combine the attributes of Silhouette and Mirage. Shyna's mission is to repair Edo's computer system and neutralize the two attributes by re-uniting them, effectively reversing the event that created the world as it currently exists.

With run-and-gun elements in which the attribute of attacks, enemies, and other entities plays a central role in gameplay, it could be considered a different-genre analogue of Ikaruga.

Tropes used in Silhouette Mirage include:

• After the End: The game's setting is after a biological holocaust.
• Ambiguous Gender: Zohar. Justified in that he/she changes gender depending on what form he/she is. Metatron is male, and Sandalphon is female.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Dynamis. Most of her lines are nonsense about flowers.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Zohar is insanely overpowered in cutscenes, but his/her abilities in actual gameplay appear to be on a level with Shyna's. He slices a building in half. Nuff said.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: Zohar. See Your Princess Is in Another Castle below.
• Dark Is Not Evil and Light Is Not Good: The "dark" Silhouettes and "light" Mirages both include friendly and enemy characters.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Bug, a boss encountered early in the game, turns to your side soon after, and becomes the means for traveling between levels.
• Difficulty by Region: Working Designs, in their usual Woolseyism attempts, also deliberately made the game harder by, among other things, making shots of one nature drain power when hitting a target of the same.
• The Dragon: Zohar, to Hal.
• Dumb Muscle: Goliath.
• Emergency Weapon: All of your attacks require Spirit. IF you run out of Spirit, your equipped parasite will be consumed to regain 100 points. If it was your last parasite, you will be given a Sloth (basic shot) parasite as well - however, this only happens once; run out of spirit with just a Sloth left, and you're screwed. This is considerably more annoying in the American version, where Spirit is your Mana Meter, than in the Japanese, where Spirit was only drained by enemy attacks. Although they did grant a mercy that when you were stuck with the Sloth, you never lost it.
• Evolving Weapon: The seven main weapons are all parasites that inhabit Shyna. Each can be leveled up into something bigger and badder several times over the course of the game.
• Gainax Ending: The somewhat vague ending text may propel the game into Mind Screw territory.
  • Bittersweet Ending: That said, some of the endings are like this. One is a borderline Downer Ending.
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: You can be forgiven for not anticipating the out-of-nowhere battle with Hal's jealous daughter Geluve.
  • Just her? Most of the bosses in this game are like this, with some bordering on full-blown Non Sequitur Scene.
• The Grim Reaper: A Skippable Boss appearing about two thirds of the way through the game.
• Grotesque Cute: The Specters, Silhouette Mooks, have heads that look like dark green Jack-o'-Lanterns and Super-Deformed proportions. Conversely, the Polly Peepers, their Mirage equivalents, have ugly faces hidden under blandly cutesy masks. Dynamis, the first of the Guardian Angels you must face, looks like a giant fish with tentacles and a cute little girl's face (pictured above).
• Hollywood Science: Bizarre manglings of genetics and cybernetics are part of the game's plot.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: The game over screen depicts Shyna exploding.
• Little Miss Badass: Shyna looks like a cute little blonde girl with goofy hair and strangely-colored eyes. She is also nicknamed the Messenger of Destruction for a reason.
• Magical Computer: For inadequately explored reasons, the world displays Matrix-like properties as if it's all a big computer program, but as far as anyone can tell, it's the real world.
• Man Behind the Man: While Hal and Megido come from him, it's implied that Clod/Armageddon is now a part of Edo and is thus responsible for most of the world's problems. Restoring Edo, therefore, effectively makes him God.
• Mercy Mode: The easier difficulties only become available once you've completed all five story paths on the game. Better yet, once you enter the newly-unlocked Options menu, you learn that you were playing the second-highest difficulty the entire time.
• Multiple Endings: There are four distinct endings, and which one you get hinges on whether you win or lose against certain bosses, and on which path you choose a certain cutscene.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Marginal example. Ominous Wordless Singing (just "ah", basically) shows up in several music tracks, especially in the track used during Guardian Angel battles.
• One-Winged Angel: Zohar. Played with in that Hal forces Zohar into it.
• Puzzle Boss: Delia's cooking show, and the G.A. Gargantuan, both of which can quickly become That One Boss if one does not pay attention to cut-scenes.
• Recurring Boss: Zohar.
• Reset Button: The goal of Shyna's quest is essentially this. The game allows you to choose not to do this in some endings, allowing the world to continue to exist in its current state.
• Science Is Bad: Possibly. Genetic experiments on a human led to the world's current divided state, and Big Bad (one of them) Hal uses Edo as a base of operations.
• Shout-Out: Aside from all the allusions to the Bible, Shyna's appearance is a Shout-Out to the classical depiction of Hermes, with wings on her cap.
• Spell My Name with an "S": The names of many of the characters and locations in the game are taken from the Bible, and from Christian and Jewish cosmology in general. Most of this was lost in Working Designs's translation to English, either through discrepancies between Japanese and English phonology or through deliberate name changes: Har became Hal (which, admittedly, may have added a reference to a certain famous AI); the seven attacks Shyna can use, named for the Seven Deadly Sins, became arbitrary strings of syllables; Moses became Bug; Delilah became Delia; Cherub became Geluve; etc.
• Summon Magic: Bug. SUMMON BATTLESHIP!!
• This Was His True Form: Inverted at Zohar's Dying as Yourself moment.
• The Unfought: Despite his constant nagging and creation of Guardian Angels, Hal is never fought himself, except, indirectly, when facing Clod/Armageddon. Megido on the other hand...
• Why Am I Ticking?: Gargantuan and Shyna.
• Xanatos Gambit: Once Shyna is activated, all lifeforms with attributes will disappear even if she fails.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Shyna is a textbook example. Her body is actually split down the middle, Mirage on one side and Silhouette on the other. Zohar, another Protean, does it somewhat differently, with alternate Silhouette and Mirage appearances, which also happen to be different genders.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Several characters do this. Zohar threatens Bug with this. Then Hal may or may not do this to Zohar him/her-self, depending on several choices you make. THEN, in another alternate turn of events, Hal's own daughter Geluve does this to him. AND THEN Megido says something similar to Shyna since she has restored Edo. AND FURTHER STILL Clod/Armageddon says this to Shyna before he attempts to kill her.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Zohar attacks you at the Level Complete screen after level 3.