Year: 1996 |Publisher: Konami |Developer: Konami
Original format: Arcade | Version played: Saturn
This might get my hardcore gamer card confiscated, but I have to say I have a complicated relationship with shoot-‘em-ups. On one level I love them to bits. Their pure arcade action is what classic gaming is all about… Dodge, shoot, keep moving forward. The better you play the more you get to see. To me, the best entries in the genre are those that offer the opportunity to feel good while blasting a path to the right (or up! But the best ones are usually right) as increasingly cool moments of spectacle happen around you, often because of you. I have nothing against score attack play or ultra challenging 1CC runs. I’ve only cleared one shmup in a single credit in my entire life, but really it’s the exciting journey and sense of progression that comes from beating a few scrolling levels that most appeals to me. Difficulty balance plays an important role here. Since the core personal appeal lies in progress and spectacle, anything that gets in the way of a relentless flight can rather spoil the experience.
Nowhere is this more frustrating for me than in the original Salamander, which took the world class formula of Gradius and eliminated its one arguable flaw – where all power-ups are lost upon death, leaving you utterly useless and vulnerable – by generously allowing you to re-collect all your Options when you respawn. Unlike Gradius, Salamander didn’t require you to collect several power-ups before you could earn those Options either. It practically threw them at you from screen one, turning you into a laser death machine. Yet progress is halted in other ways. In most versions, if you lose all your lives you can’t continue, and then there’s that opening stage with its wall of flesh, which re-grows so fast it’s easy to get caught out and absorbed by it if you don’t have an adequate strategy for flying through.
For a man of my average skill, and above average desire to… just… keep… going, Salamander is an experience that has both attracted and repelled me for years. Salamander 2, though, heaps on even more concessions to the player and delivers the Salamander I’ve always wanted.
From what I can tell, Salamander 2 has never been all that popular with either critics or most shmup fans. Released in arcades around a decade after the original, it took advantage of Konami’s fancy new GX Type 2 arcade board with futuristic looking pre-rendered graphics but otherwise failed to innovate. It’s a curiously old-fashioned shooter, even by the standards of the day. Years before, Gradius III allowed players to customise almost every element of the ship’s arsenal, while a year later Gradius Gaiden offered similar options with a choice of four different ships. Yet in Salamander 2 you get one ship, with no customisation. There’s a small handful of collectible weapons, which increase in power if you collect the same one consecutively, and there’s a nice addition that allows you to charge up and fire off your Options in a special homing attack. But that’s about all there is to it.
There are six levels in total – four horizontal and two vertical – and the whole thing can be rushed through in a little under 20 minutes, especially since the game allows for infinite continues and, like the original, allows players to pick up exactly where they left off upon death and scoop up all their Options to boot!
With this distinct lack of challenge or innovation, Salamander 2 seems to have become the black sheep of Konami’s Gradius family. 24 years later, it has still never received a standalone home conversion of any kind – not even one of Hamster’s no-frills Arcade Archives jobs – and has only ever been included in just two compilations, the last of which released 13 years ago! Given how much the other games in the series have been re-issued over the decades, you have to wonder if Konami has a problem with Salamander 2…
On that question we can only speculate, but history clearly shows that the critical reception has not been all that favourable to Salamander 2. In its 1997 review, EDGE magazine gave the Salamander Deluxe Pack release a 6/10. With an extra point thrown on top of Salamander 2’s 5/10 for the inclusion of the original Salamander and Life Force, they deemed Konami’s sequel an average shooter, bemoaned the infinite continues and criticized the lack of innovation. Years later, Hardcore Gaming 101, whose staff love Konami shooters so much they even published a book on the subject, also have little praise left for Salamander 2, ultimately writing it off as “insignificant.” Harsh, but quite possibly true.
Objectively, it’s hard to disagree with the critical consensus. There is something about Salamander 2 that feels like Konami on autopilot. But on a personal level, it ticks a lot of boxes. The relative simplicity feels refreshing to return to amid the modern dominance of bullet hell shooters and their opaque score mechanics, while the forgiving gameplay concessions fit into a busy lifestyle rather nicely. Want a shmup of a certain quality with a guarantee that you can blast through it in a few minutes then get on with your life? This is definitely the one.
As a parade of great moments to blast through in a lunch break, Salamander 2 does not disappoint. Right from the off, it makes a great impression. The colourful pre-rendered sprites and dreamy hand-painted backgrounds make the game feel suitably otherworldly and evoke the organic, “inner space” theme even better than the original game’s “Life Force” incarnation did. Most stages feature at least one great set-piece moment and, as a Konami shooter, there’s no shortage of clever references to past glories.
Stage 1’s mid level boss, for example, is a variation on the original game’s first boss – the floating brain-like Golem – only this time it fires lots of baby brains at you before comically retreating all the way back to the end of the stage. Catch up to it for the final showdown and after a brief fight, the giant eel Biter shows up and swallows Golem to take its place as the real boss. There’s always a bigger fish! Similarly, the vertically scrolling stage 2 features metallic planetoids that burst into flames when shot at – a clever spin on the fiery planets seen throughout the Gradius/Salamander series.
Some may write off these nods and winks as lazy recycling of old ideas, but I prefer to think of them as Konami’s leitmotifs. These games just wouldn’t feel the same without them, and they’re actually part of the fun. The more you play of the whole series and the more references you spot, the greater your appreciation grows. To quote George Lucas again for the second time in as many paragraphs… It’s like poetry!
Other highlights include stage 3’s assault through an entire fleet of giant starships. It may not be particularly original; its trick is one that goes all the way back to 1987’s R-Type. But as you fly over, around and under giant space hulks, blasting entire sections of ships away as you go, it’s hard to deny how cool this genre staple is. Then there are the obligatory “shoot the core” bosses. One is a riff on the first game’s Tetran boss, a multi-armed ship with a central weak point, but now with a rotating concentric shell that needs to line up perfectly before the core can be shot. The other, an entire wall of cores guarded by a shield-like ship, seems like a tough one before you realize you have to shoot past the apparent boss at the cores in the wall.
Finally, a vertical sprint across the top of the astral battleship Doom Fortress, pits you against not one but two bosses and ends with a bullet hell showdown that I imagine would have been quite novel in ’96 when the sub-genre was in its infancy. Even now, it feels strangely out of place in a shooter from Konami, the vanguard of classic style shmups.
Aside from this flirtation with the new, Salamander 2 is an otherwise regressive shooter, and one that poses little challenge at that. Completing the game does unlock “Loop 2” however. This harder, single-credit run is arguably where the real longevity lies, and unlike a lot of other shmups, a 1CC clear feels like it might just be achievable for a man of my considerably so-so talents. One for the bucket list!
It may not have garnered critical acclaim, it may not be a fan favourite and it even appears that the developer doesn’t care for it that much, but Salamander 2 represents an unusually accessible cross section of Konami’s finely honed shoot-‘em-up formula, condensed down into a zero resistance 20-minute rush, and that’s good enough for me!
FOUR LITTLE THINGS ABOUT SALAMANDER 2 THAT I RATHER LIKED
1. It wouldn’t be a Konami shmup without an Easter Island statue. This one is pretty well hidden and only appears if you blast away a panel on the second vertical stage.
2. The final stretch of Salamander 2 goes a little HR Giger, and honestly feels a lot more Irem than Konami. Another way in which the final stage feels a little out of character for the series.
3. The music in Salamander 2 is sadly not up to Konami’s usual high standard, in my opinion, but there are some hidden treats. Loop 2 features a couple of remixed tracks from the first game, and the Sound Test even includes some unused tracks, which I understand were featured in a pre-release trade show demo.
4. The original Salamander is included on the same Saturn disc as its sequel, and I really liked this fun addition to it. Use the Saturn’s “soft reset” function (hit A,B,C & Start together) to return to the menu and you’re treated to this nice little dissolve effect as you literally destroy the title screen.
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