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 four 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

4. Frame Rank

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The Frame Rank consists of a main counter and an incremental counter. The incremental counter goes +1 for every 32 frames passed. When the incremental counter surpasses 255, the main counter and thereby the Frame Rank increases by +1. Only this number of the main counter has then an effect on the calculation of the Base Rank.

The incremental counter can increase at a higher rate and is affected by the number of speed ups equipped and likewise by an active shield and active bell power. The incremental counter is not affected by the bell stock as such but only during the duration of the bell power itself (e.g. for the duration the character sprite is increased in size from a Green Bell). If the player loses a speed up/shield or the duration of a bell power wears off, the incremental counter is increasing at a slower rate again.

	No active Shield or Bell Power	Active Shield or Bell Power
0 to 1 Speed Ups	x1 (32f)	x2 (16f)
2 Speed Ups	x2 (16f)	x4 (8f)
3 to 5 Speed Ups	x4 (8f)	x8 (4f)

To put this into perspective, the main counter of the Frame Rank increases by +1 every 136 seconds with a 32f increase rate. In contrast, it increases every 17 seconds with a 4f increase rate.

For every death, the main counter of the Frame Rank decreases by -2 and the incremental counter resets to 0. This means that dying with a high incremental counter can make the main counter decrease by almost -3 at times. If Frame Rank reaches 12 or higher, revenge bullets will appear on the first loop, and a second delayed revenge bullet will appear in loop 2. Frame rank will be set to 0 upon continuing.

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