Salamander - MSX
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Salamander, retitled Life Force in North America and in the Japanese arcade re-release, is a scrolling shooter arcade game by Konami.
Game Summary
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 later became the norm for future Gradius games.
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.
The MSX port of Salamander is significantly different than the original and any other ports. New to this port is a graphical introduction that introduces human pilots for each ship, as well as names for each stage. The levels are notably longer than the arcade original, and the player(s) is(are) forced to start from a pre-defined checkpoint upon death of either pilot, instead of starting where he/she left off. After level two, the player can choose the order of the next three stages. In addition, the player can collect "E" capsules by destroying certain enemies. Collecting fifteen will permanently upgrade one of the available weapons on the power-up bar. Some weapons allow the player ships to merge, one player controlling movements and the second player controlling weapons. Instead of the Vic Viper and the Lord British Space Destroyer, the ships are known as the Sabel Tiger and the Thrasher; piloted by human characters named Iggy Rock and Zowie Scott. The story takes place in the year 6709 A.D and has 2 different endings.
The MSX version was re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in Japan on January 12, 2010.