Salamander

Salamander (沙羅曼蛇), retitled Life Force in North America and in the Japanese arcade re-release (see version differences), 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. Salamander was followed with an o... more

Salamander (沙羅曼蛇), retitled Life Force in North America and in the Japanese arcade re-release (see version differences), 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. Salamander was followed with an official sequel in 1996 entitled Salamander 2. 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 are allowed to continue from where they leave upon death instead of being returned to a predefined checkpoint per Gradius tradition. There are no continues in Salamander's single player mode,... less