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Salamander 2 Salamander 2 - Japanese Logo - Katakana / Kanji

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Description

Players blast their way through alien organisms, and space fortresses. Additional weapons such as missiles, lasers, and option units can also be acquired. The game scrolls both horizontally and vertically, depending on the stage.

Salamander 2 was produced by Konami in 1996.

Konami released 434 machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1978. Konami was based in Japan.

Other machines made by Konami during the time period Salamander 2 was produced include: Dance Dance Revolution MegaMix, Susume! Taisen Puzzle Dama, Road Rage, Chicken Dash, Ultra Hockey, Hyper Athlete, Run and Gun 2, Sexy Parodius, Taisen Puzzledama, and Taisen Tokkaedama

Specs

Name Salamander 2
Developer Konami (Japan)
Year 1996
Type Videogame
KLOV/MOG # 9411
Class Wide Release
Genre Shooter
Monitor
Conversion Class Konami GX - JAMMA
# Simultaneous Players 2
# Maximum Players 2
Game Play Joint
Control Panel Layout Multiple Player
Controls
  • Joystick: 8-way
  • Buttons: 2 - Fire|Release Option
Sound Amplified Stereo (two channel)
Cabinet Styles
  • Upright/Standard

Game Play

This game has both horizontal and vertical scrolling style levels. Some levels take place in space, other take place inside an organism. As your pick up more power-ups, your ship becomes more and more powerful. The main items to pick up are weapon upgrades, options, and force shields.

A weapons upgrade can give you lasers (fast firing but very small coverage area), twin lasers (medium firing rate and a slightly enhanced coverage area), and ripple lasers (huge coverage area but slow firing). You can also have missiles addition to your primary weapon. If you have a first level laser, for example, you can "upgrade" it into a more powerful laser by collecting another laser powerup. But should you collect a ripple laser powerup after that, you will begin again with a first level ripple attack.

Options follow behind the ship and act as shadow images of the player's firepower. There is also a half-option which will circle around the player's ship and automatically fire on a regular basis. However, one or more options (depending on how long the "release options" button is held) can be sacrificed to form a devestating attack against the enemy.

Shields are a very rare item, but they allow the player's ship to absorb a single hit. Normally, when a ship is lost, all of the features gained are lost, except for the options. Previously collected options will continuously float around the screen until they are picked back up.

The graphics of Salamander 2 are absolutely beautiful. The digitized speech is tastefully used, and the background music is good. This game makes for great eye candy just to leave sitting in attract mode. Gameplay is as exciting as it looks.

Salamander 2 KLOV/IAM 5 Point User Score: 4.20 (1 vote)

Fun Factor: 4.40

Overall Like 5.00
Fun (Social) 4.00
Fun (Solo) 5.00
Collector Desire 3.00

Technical Rating: 4.00

Gameplay 5.00
Graphics 4.00
Originality 2.00
Sound/Music 5.00

Personal Impressions and Technical Impressions each account for half of the total score. Within the Personal Impressions category, Like carries a little more weight than the other factors.

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Cheats, Tricks, Bugs, and Easter Eggs

After your player dies, your next ship appears and is invulnerable for a limited period of time. Use this to your advantage and ram into the tougher enemies or the bosses.

After the game is completed/finished once, the game continues a second time: except much harder, and with a remixed version of the original Lifeforce music.

Images

Trivia

Probably has the most convoluted numerology of any arcade game.

Conversion

This game uses Konami's System GX mainboard. Other games can be swapped in as daughterboard modules, such as Tokimeki Memorial Taisen Puzzledama and Sexy Parodius.

VAPS Arcade/Coin-Op Salamander 2 Census

There are 15,174 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society / Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, 9,629 whom participate in our arcade census project of games owned, wanted, or for sale. Census data currently includes 166,343 machines (6,975 unique titles).

Very Common - There are 57 known instances of this machine owned by Salamander 2 collectors who are active members. Of these, One is a conversion in which game circuit boards (and possibly cabinet graphics) have been placed in (and on) another game cabinet. 56 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.

For Sale - There is one active VAPS member with an extra Salamander 2 circuit board for sale.

Wanted - No active members have added this machine to their wish list. There are 5 active VAPS members looking for Salamander 2 boards sets.

This game ranks a 20 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census ownership records.

Rarity and Popularity independently are not necessarily indications of value. [More Information]

Technical

A daughterboard attached to the Konami GX system, the game can be swapped out with several others.

Stereo sound is available via a 4-pin connector (CN2) on the System GX board. Please note that this connector is polar! The pinout for this connector, pins 1-4 respectively, is as follows: L+, L-, R-, R+.

Legacy

  1. Nemesis
  2. Lifeforce
  3. Vulcan Venture
  4. Gradius III
  5. Parodius Da
  6. Gokujou Parodius!
  7. Sexy Parodius
  8. Salamander 2
  9. Gradius IV - Fukkatsu

Manuals

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