Salamander

~ SALAMANDER ~

Konami

HuCard

1991

It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of most of Konami's space shooters--I was one of the few people disappointed with the ballyhooed Gradius II--but I actually love this one. It's fast and exciting (the majority of the others are neither), and its transitions from side-scrolling to vertical stages are absolutely seamless. We get a nice, normal power-up system (rather than Gradius' "innovative" bar-at-the-bottom nonsense) and good, fair checkpoints that let you come up with strategies to get by rather than just requiring you to get lucky like those in certain other games.

The fiery "BURNING CHAOS" level is my favorite. The flames look absolutely amazing, and the music is great. It easily beats the "orange balls and worms" crap in Stage 1 of Gradius II. Also awesome is the "ASTEROID HELL" area, which places you under heavy enemy fire amid a veritable storm of large rocks hurtling through space. It's quite a bit more enjoyable than Gradius II's Stage 3, where you methodically bust up crawling, crumbling crap chunks and evade pellet shots.

While Gradius II's "thrilling" conclusion gives you a "joke" boss that just sits there and doesn't fight back, Salamander's final stretch is a daring escape in the form of a tight, exciting speed run.

And hey, you fight many of the same bosses in Salamander as you do during Gradius II's gauntlet stage, but here they actually go for the kill, and there's no goofy pharoah head to deal with. (Okay, so that fool wasn't in Gradius II, but whatever.)

Salamander is a short game, but I think that's a good thing. Gradius II is long and slow, and as a result, I feel like I'm being hit over the head with its antiquity, as every level is one tired idea after another. Salamander is brief and exciting, and at no point do I even bother to consider that the game is rather archaic visually. I just have a blast.

And no matter how many times you've heard it and how many lesser games it's appeared in, the Salamander boss music will always rule. Always.