Salamander

I have played both the original arcade and the NES port, and I think the former is way better. Known also as Salamander; but don't know why. Since LifeForce makes much sense because the visual theme is that the ship destroys bio-cyber threats in some sort of huge organic setting. Similar to an immune system response; think of a miniaturized antibody vessel to shoot laser type weapons at disease. Of course this is all an excuse to precisely make it so; ie, a shooter game out of it. This is it's major differentiating attribute from the rest of others, that were almost exclusively set in space. And believe it or not; it was very original at the time. As a matter of fact, in an absolute Konami line of comparable shooters; LF comes as #2, behind Gradius; the main difference being precisely theme setting, and order of appearance, of course. That's exactly the same as saying that WC3 is #2 to SC in Blizzard's strategy series, and that SC2 is not really 2, but 3; and I wholeheartedly agree, until actual time of referencing them by name of course. In this line is also as confusing for there is a Gradius 2 (3 really:) And just as with Gradius, there are plenty of neat power ups that can be combined. This fares better overall compared to Gradius though, and the one I like the best; even more so that G2! Bottomline; LF's basically an upgraded Gradius (revolutionary horizontal shooter), with better gameplay and a new set of changed theme graphics. Ie, a really good game!

Konami used to be one of the best video game companies around. They made the Contra series, the Castlevania series and brought us the Teenage Mutant Turtles. Their success carried over to the newer systems, but these days they just are not as good anymore. This game is a spin off of the game Gradius and is a rather fun space shooter game. A space shooter to me, is any game featuring a ship flying through space shooting everything that it comes across. This is one of the first games of its type I played, though the very first was probably Vanguard for the Atari 2600. This one is just a bit more detailed and has all the Konami touches that make the games they made for the earlier systems such fun.

The story, as best as I can recall had a ship flying into a giant planet or something that was alive. This would also be done in the later game, Abadox, and one has to feel they got their inspiration from this game. You must blast enemies in each stage and sometimes also dodge environmental obstacles as you fight your way to the end of the level where you must fight a stage boss that can be difficult or very easy depending on your power ups. In this game, you collect power ups and choose to power up what you want. You have speed, missiles, ripple, laser, options (a satellite that also shoots) and force field. I suggest using the laser as to me, the ripple gun sucks. Those are the only two you have to choose between though. The stages consist of side scrolling stages and overview stages. Enough variety to keep in fun and entertaining, but not a long game by any means.

So a fun game brought to us by the company that always brings us awesome games...well at least back in the old days. As far as space shooters, this one is one of the best for the NES, but the Sega Genesis and the SNES would both have some very cool shooters. For the NES, though, this one is very well done. It has good music for one of the earlier systems and it has nice graphics for the time too. Graphics to me are overrated anyways...once you get by the Atari games, every system does well as far as graphics when the right company makes the game. It is like a form of art, here you can tell what things are, it is just rendered in a more artistic way rather than games today that rely on making things look super real and stuff.

Can staff please edit the title to correct name>?

The game is excellent for when it came out and its sound track is awesome too.