Famicom Fanatic: Salamander Review

The 2nd game in this 3 part Gradius Special!

Salamander differs a lot from Gradius and was released between the 1st game and Gradius 2 in 1987.

For instance, in Gradius you would die and start over the stage entirely or at the last checkpoint, but in Salamander the screen just continued scrolling and a new ship that was invournable spawned. You could play 2 player co-op at the same time and in every other stage the screen would scroll vertically insted of the classical horizontal way. Even the cartridge design was different.

The music were a big update as well as the graphics. The plane now had a more smooth animation like when you went either up or down, making a tilt animation on the ship look more realistic than previously. Salamander also replaced the "shield" with a "force field" that could resist some enemy fire no mather were the bullet hit the ship. (Unlike in the 1st game where you were only protected in the front) The "Lazer" weapon even got longer and slower which in my opinion is way better. Also the weapons could get upgraded 2 times which made them stronger and faster. The interesting part is that they switched the buttons around on the "shoot" and "chose weapon" buttons. Gradius 1 used the "A" Button to shoot and "B" to pick items and from Salamander and forward they used "B" to shoot and "A" to pick items. It's more logical to shoot with "B" since every other game had that formula. Perhaps Konami wanted to be different. Speaking of Konami, during that time Konami started to add some really gorey parts and aliens in their games like the final stage of Contra and the entire 1st stage in Salamander where the walls are made out of flesh.

There really isn't much ells to say about Salamander. Its a interesting Gradius experiment / Spin-off that had some nice ideas.