Salamander



Salamander is a horizontal-scrolling shoot-em-up developed by Konami in 1986, and is the first spin-off in the Gradius series. It introduced a simplified power-up system, two-player cooperative gameplay and both horizontally and vertically scrolling stages.

In 1987, the game was rereleased as Life Force; This brought back the power-up bar, along with some changed music tracks and redrawn enemies/backgrounds.

Controls
Salamander is a 2-button shooter (3-button for Life Force). There are 6 stages, after completing all of them the game loops back to stage 1.
 * A button: Fires the player's main weapon.
 * B button: Fires the player's missiles.

Weapons
Instead of capsules, enemies drop modules that activate automatically. Excess modules can be picked up for 2k each.

Loops
Salamander loops infinitely. Upon a completion of a loop, the player is stripped of all their power-ups. Suicide bullets start appearing at loop 3, difficulty maxing out by loop 4. Almost every stage has changes.

Stage 1
Every other loop has different wall formations, membrane respawns faster.

Stage 2/5
Asteroids are randomized per loop and spawn faster.

Stage 3
Fire wheel placement is randomized per loop.

Stage 6
Extra moai and turrets, ground lasers randomized per loop.

Version Differences
WIP