salamander (game)

Salamander, retitled Life Force in North America and in the Japanese arcade re-release, is a science fiction 2D scrolling shooter arcade video game by Konami.

Released in 1986 as a spin-off to Gradius, Salamander introduced a simplified power-up system, two-player cooperative gameplay (using two starfighters, the original Vic Viper and a new one called Lord British) and both horizontally and vertically scrolling stages. Some of these later became the norm for future Gradius games.

The game was ported to the Famicom and the NES a year later. It also has been released on the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, the NEC Pc Engine, the Sony PlayStation 1, the Sega Saturn, on mobile phones, the PlayStation Portable and the PlayStation 4 in the last years.

Salamander was followed with an official sequel in 1996 entitled Salamander 2.