Salamander Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
Developed and published by Imagine in 1988.
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Salamander was originally released in the arcades by Konami and is a side/vertical scrolling shoot 'em up.
The story involves some alien race with telepathic powers gaining the ability to see into the future, which seemed to hold certain annihilation for their civilisation. Sure enough, they come under attack by an opposing force that is jealous of their utopian way of life and it is your job to save the universe.
Firstly, I'd recommend to anyone that hasn't seen the arcade original in action is to go and watch a video or play it. It's only then that you can appreciate just how accurate the C64 version is to the original. The combination of solid coding from Peter Baron and excellent graphics by Bob Stevenson really provided C64 owners with a cracking conversion.
The game is set over four levels, two of which involve horizontal scrolling and two vertical. The gameplay is standard shooter territory; shoot the aliens and collect power-ups to improve firepower, ship speed and other attributes. Green spheres grant the player a satellite that follows the main ship and fires additional projectiles, whilst different weapon types can be collected from the other pick-ups.
Each level ends with a boss that must be destroyed before progressing to the next level. The bosses aren't particularly difficult, but they all look and behave like their arcade counterparts.
Perhaps one of the most impressive things is the destructible environments in the first level. The objective is to arrange the orbiting satellites that follow your ship in such a way that projectiles carve a way through the pink, organic walls to safety. This could easily have ended up a broken mess, but it works in exactly the same way as the arcade and left me suitably impressed.
Mark Cooksey produced the games soundtrack and effects. The music is decent enough and it was nice to have sound effects playing simultaneously with the music.
In fact, there's nothing that I can really fault this game on other than the fact that the original game isn't the most memorable of shooters; that's hardly the fault of the C64 port though and is more of a personal observation than a real criticism.
Salamander is a top-notch conversion and is definitely adding to your list of shmups to play on the C64!
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