Salamander (サラマンダ Saramanda?) is a scrolling shooter arcade game by Konami. Released in 1986 as a spin-off to Gradius, Salamander introduced a simplified power-up system, two-player cooperative gameplay and both horizontally and vertically scrolling stages. Some of these would later become the norm for future Gradius games. The game was later re-titled Life Force in North America and the story and levels were changed.
Salamander was followed with an official sequel in 1996 entitled Salamander 2.
Plot[]
Latis was a planet covered by water with a beautiful sparkle. There, a prophecy of fire has been passed down since a long time ago: Thousands of light years away, when a giant dragon born and living in a sea of flames wakes up, a crazy force will approach, swallowing heaven and earth in the darkness and eventually breaking the light.
Here in planet Latis, the Bacterion cluster continues to spread, beginning its invasion with the Salamander Army. The Latis Army, however, didn't had any way of fighting against Salamander. The prince of Latis threw himself at battle with the Space-Time Fighter Lord British, named after himself, and requested help from the planet Gradius, which was said to have faced and defeated the cluster's forces before.
The Gradius Army receives British's distress call. Extending their support, they fly to the Salamander Army's mother star. Super Space-Time Fighter Vic Viper, launch!!
Gameplay[]
The first player controls Vic Viper and the second player takes the reins of debuting spacecraft Lord British, which is sometimes referred as "Road British" due to the ambiguity of Japanese-to-English Romanization. The game features six stages which alter between horizontal and vertical scrolling.
Players can immediately restart back into the action instead of being pushed back to a predefined checkpoint per Gradius tradition. The buy-in feature is available in single-player mode, and the continuation feature is only available in dual-player mode; but they will both cease to be available once the final stage is reached.
The player gains power-ups by picking up capsules left behind by certain enemies, as opposed to the selection bar used in other Gradius titles.
Ports[]
NES/Famicom[]
Salamander was ported to the Nintendo Famicom in Japan in 1987. Instead of being a direct port of Salamander, elements were taken from both that and Life Force, and some elements, such as levels and bosses, were removed to make way for new content. Most of the level graphics and enemy sprites from Salamander, however, are used in favor of those used in Life Force In addition, this version (and most subsequent ones) made use of the Traditional Gradius power-up bar and capsules. The same year, North America received a port as well for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was practically identical to the Famicom port of Salamander, other than featuring an abbreviated version of the Gradius powerup bar (blocks would appear blank but when highlighted, a box would read what they were), not having the multiple endings and being titled Life Force. These ports make use of the Konami Code, which in this instance increases the number of lives from three to 30.
MSX[]
- Main article: Salamander (MSX)
PC Engine[]
A version for the PC Engine was released on December 12, 1991. Changes include starting from a pre-defined checkpoint upon death in single-player mode, faster enemy animations, and music being somewhat improved from the arcade version.
Home computers[]
Ocean Software on their Imagine label, released licensed versions of Salamander for the Spectrum, Commodore and Amstrad in 1988. The Commodore 64 version was highly praised by the critics of the day, particularly Zzap!64. Despite missing two of the six stages, the simultaneous two player mode and gameplay being much easier than its arcade counterpart, the Commodore port is generally considered to be one of the best arcade conversions on this system.
The Spectrum and Amstrad versions, on the other hand, were unfairly hard, even by Gradius standards, and all for the wrong reasons. These include poor stage design, the fact you do not get a speed up power up until halfway through the first level, with a default speed that is nearly unplayable, and you can only have one, very slow moving bullets on screen at once. Finally, most of the game has been cut, with only the first stage having any layout at all, and the others simply being single screens of enemies. There are also only two boss fights in the game, one of which is a semi-original final boss, the other being a unfair incarnation of the Golem, mostly because it gained the ability to shoot invisible bullets. It is notable that the playing window of the game is also tiny - the rest of what little screen space the Spectrum and Amstrad had being taken up by the game designer credits.
PlayStation and Sega Saturn[]
The US arcade version of Life Force was part of Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus. It also included the original Salamander, Salamander 2 and the Japanese version of Life Force (with the Gradius power-up bar) with a CGI intro.
Mobile Phone[]
The game was released for Mobile Phones on 2002 in Japan.
PlayStation Portable[]
The Japanese arcade version of Life Force is part of the Salamander Portable compilation that was released on January 24, 2007 in Japan. It also includes Salamander, Salamander 2, Xexex and as a special bonus the MSX game Nemesis 2, which is different than the regular Gradius II most people are used to.
Other releases[]
The arcade version was released on 2015 on the PlayStation 4 and later on Nintendo Switch as part of the Arcade Archives.
The TurboGrafx-16 version was included in the list of games available for the PC Engine CoreGrafx Mini in March 19, 2020. It includes a few adds, such as the possibility to unlock Force Gear and TwinBee Returns mini-games which were only available originally through Tokimeki Memorial.
Trivia[]
- Lord British, Firebird, Urg and Golem appear as picture nonograms in the mobile game Pixel Puzzle Collection.
- A sentient version of Lord British joined Takosuke's star team in Gokujō Parodius!
- The Dragon Salamander as seen in the box art of the game, makes a cameo appearance in Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls.
- Lord British, Brain Golem, Giga and Zelos Force makes cameo in Chapter 5 of the Volume 5, Famicom Wolf.
- Lord British appears as cameo in the arcade Pop'n Music 11. The name was misspelled as "LOAD BRITISH". This was corrected in Pop'n Music 12 Iroha.