Salamander

Salamander, released as Life Force in North America and in the Japanese arcade re-release, is a 1986 scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Konami for arcades. A spin-off of the Gradius series, Salamander introduced a simplified power-up system, two-player cooperative gameplay and both horizontally and vertically scrolling stages. Some of these later became normal for future Gradius games. In Japanese, the title is written using ateji, which are kanji used for spelling foreign words that has been supplanted in everyday use by katakana. Contra, another game by Konami was also given this treatment, with its title written in Japanese as 魂斗羅 (kontora).