Salamander (1987). Play Free Online

Summary

The MSX edition of Salamander feels like a whole new shoot‑’em‑up. It starts with a cartoonish intro that actually shows the pilots – Iggy Rock in the Sabel Tiger and Zowie Scott in the Thrasher – and it gives each stage a proper name. Levels stretch out far longer than the arcade version and a death drops you back to a fixed checkpoint, not an arbitrary respawn point. After the second round you can pick the order of the next three stages, and a hidden cache of “E” capsules appears throughout; collect fifteen of them and one weapon on your power‑up bar receives a permanent upgrade. Some power‑ups even let the two ships fuse, letting one player steer while the other fires.

Set in the year 6709 AD the game offers two different endings depending on how you finish. The quirky ship names and pilots give the MSX port its own identity. It was revived for the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on January 12 2010, resurfaced on the Wii U VC on July 20 2016, and later arrived on Project EGG for Windows Store on May 19 2015.

Storyline

Salamander (often just called Salamander) drops the player into a bizarre organic world in its North American MSX release. The spacecraft flies inside a colossal alien organism infected by a bacterial strain, and each level is announced with warnings like “Enter stomach muscle zone” or “Bio‑mechanical brain attack”. This body‑based setting replaces the original arcade plot, which the Japanese and European versions keep unchanged.

The MSX storyline, however, follows human pilots Iggy Rock and Zowie Scott in the year 6709 A.D. They command the Sabel Tiger and the Thrasher, battling the alien menace from within. Depending on how the player progresses, the game delivers one of two possible endings, rewarding different outcomes for the pilots’ actions.

Edited by Maya Carter