Gradius Origins - Salamander II 1st Loop (2-1. Super Cobra. 681,300)

Описание: First clear of 2026. It's been awhile since I've posted anything. I definitely got a little burned out from shmups from some of my R-Type endeavors from last year. This was a great game to get back into the swing of things.

Salamander II is easily the best of all 3 Salamander games and all their variations. WAY more polish than the first game and just better designed than M2's 3rd game.

The first loop of this game is not too crazy. I even managed a little bit of light scoring. There are two secrets each worth 100k points in this game. The first one at the start of the game requires you to have at least one option and position it on top of the brain to point blank it as I demonstrate at 0:43

The next bonus I messed up unfortunately. It's at the start of level 4. You maneuver your options to take out the two battleships WITHOUT blowing up their rear engines. This spawns a third gold battleship as seen at 6:50

For the gold battleship it's pretty tricky. You have to damage it from the top, middle, then bottom of the back. Had I pulled it off I would have gotten 56th on the Steam leaderboards. This run only got me 82nd unfortunately, so I may go back and attempt a better score at some point.

The rank in this game is NUTS. Like almost Battle Garegga nuts. I actually had planned an intentional death before the stage 4 boss, but since I died on the stage 3 boss anyway the rank was low enough for the 5th and 6th stages that it worked out.

Had some crappy dodging on the final stage, but thankfully I was able to keep my nerves okay for the final boss's light bullet hell at the end.

This game is fantastic though. I adore the presentation and the stage 5 music starting at 9:27 has been stuck in my head all week. I highly recommend this one to anyone who likes horizontal shooters. You get plenty of time to recover your options upon death along with a big drop in rank, which makes this feel like one of the most fair Konami shooters I've played so far.