Salamander 2

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Salamander 2

Title screen

Developer:	Konami
Music:	Yuichi Takamine Naoki Maeda
Program:	Qchan Yamamoso Type2 Takeaki Hasegawa
Art:	Satonyan Masato Hijima Sonshi SDR Kaori Nishimura Yas Motohisa Ando
Release date:	Arcade: January 24, 1996 Sega Saturn/PS1: June 19, 1997 / July 6, 1997 PSP: January 24, 2007
Previous game:	TwinBee Yahho!
Next game:	Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius

Salamander 2 (沙羅曼蛇2) is a horizontal-scrolling shoot-em-up developed and published by Konami in 1996. It is the sequel to Salamander.

The game received ports on PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PlayStation Portable.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gameplay Overview

Controls

Salamander 2 is a 2-button shooter. There are 6 stages, after completing all of them the game enters loop 2.

• A button: Fires the player's main weapon and missiles.
• B button: Launches the player's options.

Weapons

Instead of capsules, enemies drop icons that activate automatically. Icons of the same weapon type can be picked up for a 2nd temporary level of power lasting around 11 seconds (an extra 7 seconds can be stacked if a icon is picked up while active).

Module	Effect
Speed Up	Increases movement speed. Can be stacked up to 5 times.
Missile	Fired downwards and travels across terrain. Twin Missile adds a upward missile but can't travel across terrain.
Ripple	Energy ring that becomes wider as it travels. Buster Ripple increases speed and width.
Laser	Piercing laser that increases with length when holding down the button. Hyper Ray increases length and width.
Twin Laser	Set of 2 lasers that becomes smaller as it travels. Spear Laser increases speed and width.
Option	Orb that mimics weapons and movement, homes onto enemies when launched. Can be equipped up to 4 times.
Option Seed	Small orb that circles around the ship and fires automatically, forms a barrier when launched. Turns into a full option if a second seed is picked up.
Force Field	Grants protection from all sides, can withstand up to 7 hits.

Extra Lives

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On default settings, there are two extra lives, one at 200,000 and the other at 500,000.

Rank

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Salamander 2 has a semi-aggressive rank system that can be mostly mitigated if understood properly The Base Rank is affected by the following four factors. Minimum and maximum values are given in parentheses.

Total Rank
Base Rank (-12 to 18) + Stage rank (1 to 27) + Power up rank (-2 to 12) + Frame rank

Total Rank is capped at 31. How the values of these factors are calculated is explained in the following five sections.

1. Base Rank

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The minimum rank is calculated by the difficulty (as set in the test menu) and the current stage number. Per stage, the Base Rank never falls below this minimum rank number. Rank cannot be negative, instead negative rank subtracts any rank added

Difficulty	Base Rank
1	-12
2	-8
3	-4
4	0
5	4
6	8
7	12
8	18

2. Stage Rank

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	Loop 1	Loop 2
Stage 1	1	17
Stage 2	4	20
Stage 3	6	22
Stage 4	6	22
Stage 5	8	24
Stage 6	11	27

3. Power Ups

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Depending on the power ups picked up, the following rank increase is added to the Base Rank. If the power ups currently held changes (from dying or from changing weapons and shooting options), so does the rank increase. Note that there are different power up rank formulas for Vic Viper and Super Cobra.

Vic Viper's Power up rank can be between -2 and 12

Vic Viper Power Up Rank Formula
Power up values (added together) - (Power up values (added together) / 4) (Truncate the output value)

Super Cobra's Power up rank can be between 0 and 7

Super Cobra Power Up Rank Formula
Power up values (added together) / 2 (Truncate the output value)

Power up values for Power Up Rank formulas

Speed ups:

0 Speed Ups	-2
1-5 Speed Ups	4

Weapons:

Weapon	Level 1	Level 2
Shot	0	N/A
Ripple Laser	2	3
Laser	3	4
Twin Laser	2	3

Missile:

None	0
Missile	2
Twin Missile	1

Options
3 * Option Count (includes option seed as one full option)

4. Frame Rank

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Each player has a frame rank counter. Every frame 1 is added to this counter. This counter does not increase during stage transitions, death animations, and cutscenes.

To determine frame rank, this formula is used

Frame Rank Formula
(current counter + (current counter / 2). Then current counter / 4096 (Truncate the output value)

This formula means that every 2731 frames or every 45.5166667 seconds, frame rank increases by one. Frame rank does not have a cap, but will essentially stop increasing at Total Rank's maximum of 31. Upon death, frame rank will be reset back to 0.

5. 2-Player

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Both players have a total rank value. The total rank used by the game is based on the following conditions.

1. If the lowest total rank is lower than 3, total rank will be based on the higher total rank.

2. when lowest total rank is higher or equal to 3, the following operations will happen:

* Highest total rank + (Highest total rank / 2) 
* Calculated value from previous operation + (Lowest total rank / 2)
* Calculated value from previous operation / 2

This value is equal to the Total Rank used.

Co-op also adds an addition +3 to the rank

Loops

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Unlike games of the Gradius series, the arcade version of Parodius Da! does not feature infinite loops and ends after Loop 2. There are no requirements for the second loop so that upon beating 1-10 the player will always enter 2-1.

Upon entering 2-1, the player loses all of their Power Ups and starts in the default state again. If the Power Meter was highlighted at any position at the end of Loop 1, it will be highlighted on the first position "Speed Up" beginning with Loop 2. This is very helpful in order to quickly gain more upgrades again.

Minimum rank is much higher during the loop (see above). Moreover, there's a flag for Loop 2 that will always activate single revenge bullets. On higher rank, additional revenge bullets can spawn after the first revenge bullet. These additional revenge bullets often spawn with a significant delay which makes them particularly troublesome to dodge.

Loops

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Salamander 2 ends after the 2nd loop. Some stages add remixes from Salamander.

Strategy

WIP