American kids got the same cheat code as Contra in exchange for losing some graphics effects, only getting to carry two weapons instead of three, and that awesome-looking see-through Famicom cartridge. But it's peak Konami so you'll probably have a good time either way.
>>12561723typical shmup in that once you have all the power-ups you're almost invincible but if you die, you lose all of them at which point you're fucked and it's pretty much game over. awesome game anyway.
>>12561723Salamander is probably the biggest clusterfuck of the entire Gradius franchise. Every version changes the graphics, the gameplay, the story, the title, etc.
>>12561723the Japanese version uses the VRC3 which was a one-off mapper for this game. it's similar to UNROM but has an IRQ counter and PRG RAM support which Salamander utilizes for the graphics effects like the title screen. for the US version they use standard UNROM so those effects are missing and you have status bar breakup when a lot of stuff is going on, which is often because Konami loved pushing the Famicom to the limit by having metric fucktons of stuff moving on screen so there's lots of slowdown and flicker (their SFC releases also love seeing just how much stuff they can move at once).today of course there's no reason to play the US version as the Japanese version is better, even if on emulation you don't have the cool-looking cartridge.
>>12561723Apparently this game was not that well-liked in Japan because they were unhappy with some of the stuff that was changed from the arcade.
>>12561723Doesn't matter, because neither the Famicom nor the NES had this BGM:https://youtu.be/a-YKcTQpptQWhy?
>>12561753that shit must run at 8 fps
>>12561723the arcade game came out July '86 and it was 14 months before it got a Famicom port which was a little odd. maybe Konami's Famicom teams were too busy with other projects or they had to develop the one-off mapper for this game or both or who knows why?
>>12561723the implied difference between Salamander and Gradius is that the former has both H and V scroll levels while the latter is only H
>>12561723It's still not at all the hardest shmup on the system, Starship Hector and the US version of Star Force are far far worse.
>>12561753>>12561774https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BkYGVqCDyEWell, you tried.
If you used powerups...You didn't beat the game
>>12561723Life Force is sort of meh. The first half of the game is just so ehhh. Complete boring slog with a few bullshit moments, some maybe due to bad programming. Like the stage 2 volcano that can erupt while off screen and hit you from behind... while you need to dodge these asteroid things. Lots of sprite flicker and stage 3 is pretty bullshit with the flares and did not live up to the Moai. But the second half of the game is holy shit incredible. Stage 5 is IMO one of the coolest and best shmup levels ever. Stage 4 was awesome at the end. The final boss was cool and then a speed stage I completely fucked up but stocked enough lives for. I still like Gradius much more though.Besides the obvious horizontal/vertical mix, subtle differences make the game play considerably different than Gradius. Most significantly that it's way more recoverable if you die and you can do it even later in the game. That plus no checkpoints unless you use a continue and you go back to the beginning of the stage IIRC.
>>12561859I think even Silver Surfer is harder than Salamander.
>>12561945as he said, if you manage to not lose your power-ups you can basically flatten everything that gets in your way
>>12561740A lot of earlier Konami titles got chopped down in the US localization because they couldn't use the VRC mappers in them.
>>12561945Silver Surfer obviously stole the alternating horizontal and vertical scrolling stages gimmick from Salamander and Section Z stole other stuff from it.
>>12561873That constant rattling reminds me of some of the Alien sounds in Aliens
>>12561873I wonder what Andrew Glaister and Stuar Ruecroft and doing now?
>>12562165I presume they eventually got some job coding PC or console shovelware.
