 Salamander / Lifeforce
The Salamander series is a sort of parallel to the Gradius series. When Salamander first appeared, it seemed to be the sequel to Nemesis / Gradius. However the next game after Salamander was Vulcan Venture / Gradius II. To add to the confusion there are the two Lifeforce variants (US and Japanese), and then Salamander 2 turned up quite recently. Weapons Like the Gradius games, Salamander features a heroic spacecraft battling the evil forces of ghastly horridness. You show your moral superiority to these fiends by frying them with assorted forms of laser death. Amongst your weaponry are such diverse elements as :-
Salamander differs from the Gradius games in several ways. There is no power meter (weapons are picked up directly like in most other games), the levels alternate between horizontal and vertical scrolling and there is a co-operative two player mode. Salamander also has some top speech, with unforgettable lines like "This whole chamber is empty" and "An intruder has penetrated our forcefield". They just don't write them like that anymore. Variants The Lifeforce games are variants of Salamander. The basic idea behind them is an extension of Salamander's 'organic' first level. Both games are meant to be set inside a 'bio-mechanical' lifeform, and the player must destroy sources of 'infection' inside. Both versions have a bit more speech than their 'parent', none of it particularly meaningful. The US Lifeforce has only a few cosmetic differences from Salamander. The scrolling starfields on levels 2,3 & 5 are replaced with the 'web' background from level 1, there is a description of the 'plot' during the attract mode, and the weapons have different names ('speed up' becomes 'hyper speed', 'missile' becomes 'destruct missile'). The Japanese Lifeforce is more interesting. A Gradius-style power meter is present, and aliens now leave behind power gems rather than the weapons themselves. This makes the game quite a bit harder, as it takes longer to assemble the full complement of weaponry. Also, quite a lot of the graphics have changed. The bosses of levels 2 & 5 have changed into more organic forms, and many of the basic aliens are different-looking, although their behaviour is unchanged. Emulation All three games are emulated by Mame and Sparcade. Mame plays them directly, Sparcade requires a bit of fiddling with RAT files to make them work. Sparcade has the edge in terms of speed, although it's sound support isn't as comprehensive as Mame's. See Also: |
