Retro spotlight: Salamander/Life Force

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Gradius was celebrated and embraced for being so much different than everything else that was out there, in the same way its vertical equivalent, Xevious, had been a few years prior. Which is part of what makes its sort-of-sequel Salamander fascinating — Salamander, in some ways, was a step back to a less interesting time, one that utilized the weapons upgrade system that Gradius’ team had discarded during the development of the former, which was far more traditional in that you picked up a specific power up, and then your ship powered up in that way. Whereas, in Gradius, you were able to choose your upgrades in your own way, when you wanted to, as a way of sneaking the influence of role-playing games into a shooting game.

Don’t take this to mean that Salamander is boring, though, or overly traditional, because it’s neither of those things. It might have taken a step back with its weapons compared to Gradius, but it decided to intrigue in other ways. Such as it being both a horizontal and a vertical shoot ‘em up, depending on what stage you were in. Salamander is a spin-off to Gradius with occasionally tenuous ties to that series — it’s not a numbered sequel for a reason — but, like with Scramble being the basic template for Gradius, it turned out to be the inspiration for Konami’s later classic, Axelay. Not too shabby.

Salamander has plenty going for it beyond it being tied to Gradius and as the spiritual predecessor of Axelay, however. And much of that is confusing. You see, Salamander first released in Japanese arcades (and then in Europe) and the story was that you, the pilot of the Vic Viper — the ship from Gradius — had to save the planet Latis from the being Zetos. The first level had a bit of a biological flair to it, as, after you flew into the mouth of an enormous creature, you were served with organic backgrounds and growth getting in your way as you traveled through, but otherwise, it was fairly standard in its presentation and fit in with Gradius, albeit all presented with the kind of graphical enhancements that could happen between 1985 and 1986 as the technology and developers’ familiarity with it rapidly improved.

And then came the North American edition, which was renamed Life Force, and is both Salamander and not Salamander at all. That’s because the game’s story was rewritten, and graphics redrawn, so that the entire game now took place inside of that enormous alien creature — your enemies built their headquarters there, basically, and you’re flying around through its stomach and kidneys and so on, until finally you get to the brain, which looks an awful lot like a military complex. Voice clips accompanied the change in location, with you hearing directions about where in the body you are and what you need to avoid as you fly around. Those giant flames that shoot up out of the lava? Well that’s just giant space creature digestion now, and it’ll burn you right up. It’s a brilliant change to give the game more personality, to the point that Konami decided to then release a version of Life Force in Japan, with even further changes, like changing the color of those flames to blue so they seemed more acidic and less fire-like.

Oh, and they also went to the Gradius-style power-up system where you select your power-ups by spending collected orbs, instead of just picking up specific orbs that already have powers attached. So they managed to make a version of Salamander that was somehow far more like Gradius and a lot less like Gradius at the same time.

Then, for the Famicom and NES ports, this version of Life Force was the one released, with the Gradius-style power-ups intact, additional changes to levels, and even more reworked besides in order to make it the best NES game it could be, instead of a lesser port of an arcade game that looked like it was ahead of its time. Kimimi already went into this in detail at her own site, and while you should read the entire thing, here’s a short excerpt so you get the idea:

Life Force on the NES is tremendous, and even retains the simultaneous two-player mode of the arcade edition. The second player’s ship, by the way, is the Lord British, which would go on to become a Gradius-verse staple. Sure, it’s not as lovely as the reworked Japanese edition of Life Force released in 1987, but you’re not going to care even a little bit. The work put into making the NES edition sing like it does is obvious, and it’s without question one of the best shooters on a system that’s got a surprising amount of good ones given the hardware.

Regardless of which version of Salamander/Life Force you end up playing, there are consistencies. The ripple laser is new in this game, and became standard Gradius weaponry going forward. The Lord British, as mentioned, debuts here and sticks around. While Salamander and Life Force are very much their own thing and in spin-off territory for a reason (side note: it’s probably good that Konami didn’t use “Gradius Gaiden” for this one since they ended up needing it over a decade later), they still feel very much like Gradius, in terms of claustrophobia and aesthetically, and that carries over into every version, even as they get more biological and organic. It’s not like the original Gradius avoided those kinds of looks, they just didn’t build the entire game out of them.

What truly separates Salamander (and Life Force) from Gradius, though, are those vertical stages. The horizontal ones are a close match for Gradius, sure, but just by nature of how things are designed, that can’t be true of the vertical stages. Luckily, already Konami understood what made vertical shoot ‘em ups work when they decided to split the stages like this, so neither arrangement feels out of place, and plays like they should. The horizontal levels are always, always busy, and the vertical ones give you a little more breathing room and focus a bit more on waves and patterns instead of pure chaos and claustrophobia.

The transition in between stages is fun to watch, since there’s no blacked out screen and then move to a different viewpoint. Instead, you watch the Vic Viper shift its orientation from traveling horizontally to vertically after each stage, after the boss fight has concluded:

Sure, it’s not the smoothest transition to the horizontal stage, since there’s a bit of a blink as the background color changes, but again. 1986! The game is as old as I am, give it some credit for even attempting anything beyond a full black out transition. Konami should also be forgiven for this given that they bothered to make some exclusive animations just for the vertically oriented version of the Vic Viper, which tilts to the left and right as you move it, so that you can see the side and underbelly of the ship as it glides from side to side. It’s a nifty little touch that shows off their familiarity with this kind of shooter, too.

There’s a rank system in place here across all versions of the game, and you will absolutely feel it when it’s cranked up to increase the difficulty. An example: late in the North American arcade version of Life Force, there’s a section where the game actually becomes more difficult if you aren’t holding down the fire button. Not because you have a lot of things to destroy, because you don’t, but because having fewer bullets on screen causes the action to speed up, which in turn makes it much more difficult to navigate the maze of enemy rounds you have to twist and turn your way through in order to survive. Observe:

Those couple of moments where it looks like I’m using a fast-forward feature? Not at all! That’s the game running at normal speed as the number of bullets and objects on-screen decreases, which is helped along by a pause in my own firing. Granted, this isn’t danmaku-level bullet curtains or anything, but for 1986, in a horizontal shooter? Salamander and Life Force liked to make things difficult for you.

Last thing: rather than one single boss over and over again like Gradius, Salamander/Life Force introduces a different boss in every stage. Don’t worry, though. The last boss is still helpless and just sitting there, though, you have to get through a bunch of Moai statue heads in the base first, and then, to escape the level after defeating the final boss, you have to navigate a maze of walls as you travel at high speeds without crashing into any of them. So it’s not as much of a “reward” for your hard work as the final boss of Gradius was; you’ve still got to earn it in this one.

Now, you can play Salamander and Life Force in the present, on modern hardware, but not all of the versions. The original arcade editions of Salamander (Japan) and Life Force (North America) are available through the Arcade Classics Anniversary Collection that released on Switch, Playstation 4, and Steam. While the similar Castlevania collection includes various home console ports to go with any arcade titles, this is strictly an arcade collection, so, no NES or Famicom Life Force/Salamander there.

In addition, the Japanese version of Life Force is available via Hamster’s Arcade Archives on the Switch and PS4, as part of a package that includes both the original Japanese Salamander as well as the North American Life Force, but not via the Anniversary Collection, and this despite its game selection screen showing off a little bit of text that says the collection is “Powered by Arcade Archives.” That’s pretty annoying if you already have said collection, given two-thirds of the offerings within are already in your possession and potentially even on the same console that you’d buy the Arcade Archives release on, but so it goes, I guess. Much worse is that the NES edition isn’t available anywhere, but at least you can grab a loose cartridge relatively cheaply. Or, you know, the other thing people do when something isn’t available. Even if you’re familiar with the arcade edition of Salamander and/or Life Force, it’s worth digging up the NES version and seeing what’s different, however you need to go about that.

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