Salamander: Arrangement Chronicle DELTA

This is a romhack of Salamander, known as Life Force in western regions. The hack attempts not only to retrofit some of the enhancements afforded to the technically superior Famicom version, but also to bring the game closer overall to its original arcade release. The hack succeeds on both accounts, for better or worse.

While the graphics and palette changes are mostly visually appealing, the hack sometimes feels a little too accurate in its scope. For instance, some of the more detailed elements exclusive to the NES port are discarded in favor of restoring graphics and backgrounds to their much less detailed arcade counterparts, such as the occasional use of solid black backgrounds without any transitional borders. But this is only a minor complaint, as the vast majority of the hack is an improvement in every regard.

The author went above and beyond to provide the player with a wealth of configuration options, covering everything from regional differences to difficulty loops to preferences in soundtrack ordering. To top it all off, these preferences are saved in newly added SRAM, along with the player’s high score. Noticeably absent is any kind of leader board, but at least the high score display no longer reverts to its default value after the game is powered off.

Structural changes within the levels themselves seem to balance between the original arcade layout and the game’s home ports. One thing that bugged me was the absence of big core fights in the aircraft carrier section of the final stage, which has landing pads clearly designated for said enemies. But their lack of inclusion is by no means a deal-breaker.

The game’s base scrolling speed is increased, making levels (and the overall game) faster in pace. I find this to be perhaps the most welcome change of all, as the NES port imposed a considerably slow pacing. Consequently, the slower pace of the NES version actually made the game more difficult in some regards, as the player was forced to be exposed to environmental hazards (stage three) and enemy respawns for a greater duration of time. As mentioned earlier, the configuration menu allows the player to tweak the game’s difficulty, so selecting a higher difficulty loop will more or less offset the base decrease in difficulty resulting from the increased scroll speed.

In summary: Salamander AC Delta is the best of both worlds, and then some. Highly recommended for any veteran of the Gradius series.