Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago

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Salamander 2 is a shmup from Konami that was originally released in Japanese arcades in 1996 and received a port as part of the Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus compilation for Saturn and Playstation exclusively in Japan in 1997. It is a sequel to the original Salamander that was released back in 1986. Most American gamers know the original better as Life Force, particularly from the NES port. Both games are considered to be spinoffs of the Gradius series.

The Salamander games are known for mixing horizontal and vertical shmup gameplay into the same game. They also lack checkpoints, which differentiates these games from mainline Gradius. Power ups are obtained by grabbing a specific item for whatever power up you want, unlike in Gradius where you have to grab enough powerups to get to the item you really want.

Salamander 2 does add some new wrinkles to the gameplay. Particularly, you can shoot your options toward enemies as an attack. It adds twin lasers from Gradius III as an extra weapon option along with the regular laser and ripple laser. The biggest addition to the gameplay is one that you don't see, and it's a complex rank system almost as wild as something you'd see in Zanac or Battle Garegga. This game adopts the same rank system as the Parodius games. Basically, the more powerups you grab, the higher the rank increases, increasing the bullet speeds and aggressiveness of enemies. Speed ups are especially problematic for keeping rank low.

What does bring the rank down is dying, whether you die on accident or intentionally. Suiciding becomes a legitimate strategy in a game like this, especially since recovery is easier here than in most Gradius games as you get a chance to reclaim your options right after dying and do not have checkpoints to deal with. In fact, I found it was best to suicide at the beginning of Stage 5 and right before the last boss, though the latter was more of an accidental death in my case but worked out in the end. In both cases, I had chances to get powered up again right after. Another side note is that the Player 2 ship, Super Cobra, has lower initial rank than the Vic Viper, which is why I played on the P2 side.

As far as the level design goes, it's brilliant stuff. The set pieces are awesome and each stage feels super memorable, with excellent 2D graphics and music. It also pays homage at times to Gradius and the original Salamander, while still feeling like its own game. The difficulty curve is pretty reasonable, as the only real spikes in the first loop outside of the rank system are in Stage 6, the last stage of the first loop. Even the second loop seemed pretty reasonable compared to second loops in other games from the little I've played of it.

The scoring is mostly straightforward, but there are some interesting hidden scoring opportunity. One is that it's possible to kill that larger enemy halfway into Stage 1 if you can somehow get powered up enough. That gives you 100,000 points but I missed it on this run. The second way is to take the first two big ships in Stage 4 without damaging the rear engines in order to reveal a golden ship and if you take out the engine first and then the rest of it, you get another 100,000 points.

Overall, this is definitely the best Konami shmup I've played. I still have some mixed feelings about the rank system because it can get really nasty if you're not trying to manage it, but it does make the game even more interesting than it already is.

0:00 Intro
0:26 Stage 1-1
3:10 Stage 1-2
5:31 Stage 1-3
8:00 Stage 1-4
10:11 Stage 1-5
12:59 Stage 1-6
16:16 Final Boss of Loop 1
18:12 Stage 2-1

#konami #shmups #1cc #shootemups #playstation #salamander #gradius