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Life Force (arcade Game)
, retitled in North America and in the Japanese arcade re-release, is a scrolling shooter arcade video game developed and published by Konami. Released in 1986 as a spin-off of ''Gradius'', ''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 (). ''Salamander'' was followed with a sequel in 1996 titled '' Salamander 2'' and '' Salamander 3'' on August 7 2025. Gameplay The first player controls Vic Viper and the second player takes the reins of debuting spacecraft Lord British, which is sometimes referred to as "Road British" due to the ambiguity of Japanese-to-English romanizati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konami
, commonly known as Konami, , is a Japanese multinational entertainment company and video game developer and video game publisher, publisher headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo. The company also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, ''tokusatsu'', pachinko machines, slot machines, and List of Japanese arcade cabinets, arcade cabinets. It has casinos around the world, and operates health and physical fitness clubs across Japan. The company originated in 1969 as a jukebox rental and repair business in Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan, by Kagemasa Kōzuki, who remains the company's chairman. Additionally, Konami owns Bemani, known for ''Dance Dance Revolution'' and ''Beatmania'', as well as the assets of former game developer Hudson Soft, known for ''Bomberman'', ''Adventure Island (video game), Adventure Island'', ''Bonk (series), Bonk'', ''Bloody Roar'', and ''Star Soldier''. Konami is the twentieth-largest Lists of video game companies, game company in the world by re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. The region includes Middle America (Americas), Middle America (comprising the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico) and Northern America. North America covers an area of about , representing approximately 16.5% of Earth's land area and 4.8% of its total surface area. It is the third-largest continent by size after Asia and Africa, and the list of continents and continental subregions by population, fourth-largest continent by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. , North America's population was estimated as over 592 million people in list of sovereign states and dependent territories in North America, 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's popula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Power-up
In video games, a power-up is an object that adds temporary benefits or extra abilities to the player character as a Game mechanics, game mechanic. This is in contrast to an Item (game), item, which may or may not have a permanent benefit that can be used at any time chosen by the player. Although often collected directly through touch, power-ups can sometimes only be gained by collecting several related items, such as the floating letters of the word 'EXTEND' in ''Bubble Bobble''. Well known examples of power-ups that have entered popular culture include the power capsules from ''Pac-Man'' (regarded as the first power-up) and the Super Mushroom from ''Super Mario Bros.'', which ranked first in UGO Networks' ''Top 11 Video Game Powerups''. Items that confer power-ups are usually pre-placed in the game world, spawned randomly, dropped by beaten enemies or picked up from opened or smashed containers. They can be differentiated from items in other games, such as role-playing video ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Single Player
A single-player video game is a video game where input from only one player is expected throughout the gameplay. Video games in general can feature several game modes, including single-player modes designed to be played by a single player in addition to multi-player modes. Most modern console games, PC games and arcade games are designed so that they can be played by a single player; although many of these games have modes that allow two or more players to play (not necessarily simultaneously), very few actually require more than one player for the game to be played. The ''Unreal Tournament'' series is one example of such. History The earliest video games, such as ''Tennis for Two'' (1958), ''Spacewar!'' (1962), and ''Pong'' (1972), were symmetrical games designed to be played by two players. Single-player games gained popularity only after this, with early titles such as ''Speed Race'' (1974) and ''Space Invaders'' (1978). The reason for this, according to Raph Koster, is down ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription (linguistics), transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into ''phonemic orthography, phonemic transcription'', which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict ''phonetic transcription'', which records speech sounds with precision. Methods There are many consistent or standardized romanization systems. They can be classified by their characteristics. A particular system's characteristics may make it better-suited for various, sometimes contradictory applications, including document retrieval, linguistic analysis, easy readability, faithful representation of pronunciation. * Source, or donor language – A system may be tai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vic Viper
is a series of shooter (shoot'em up) video games, introduced in 1985, developed and published by Konami for a variety of portable, console and arcade platforms. In many games in the series, the player controls a ship known as the Vic Viper. Games *'' Scramble'' (1981) An early horizontal-scrolling shooter from which gameplay elements of the Gradius series were inspired. Although there is no canonical relationship between ''Scramble'' and the Gradius series, ''Scramble'' is implied to be a spiritual predecessor to the series, evident by its appearance in flashbacks during Gradius introduction sequences ('' Gradius Advance''). ''Scramble'' has been ported to other platforms, including MSX and Commodore 64. In 2002, ''Scramble'' appeared on GBA as one of the titles featured in ''Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced'' as well as later Konami game compilations for PlayStation and Nintendo DS. *''Gradius'' (1985) The first true Gradius game to introduce the concept of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salamander 3
Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten extant salamander families are grouped together under the order (biology), order Urodela, the sole surviving order from the group Caudata. ''Urodela'' is a scientific Latin term based on the Ancient Greek : ourà dēlē "conspicuous tail". ''Caudata'' is the Latin for "tailed ones", from : "tail". Salamander diversity is highest in eastern North America, especially in the Appalachian Mountains; most species are found in the Holarctic realm, with some species present in the Neotropical realm. Salamanders never have more than four toes on their front legs and five on their rear legs, but some species have fewer digits and others lack hind limbs. Their permeable skin usually makes them reliant on habitats in or near water or other cool, d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salamander 2
is a 1996 horizontally scrolling shooter arcade video game developed and published in Japan by Konami. It is the direct sequel to ''Salamander'' (1986), which itself is a spin-off of the ''Gradius'' franchise. Up to two players control two starships — the Vic Viper and the Super Cobra — as they must destroy the alien race Doom before they wipe out all of the planet Gradius. Gameplay involves shooting down enemies, collecting power-up items, and avoiding collision with projectiles or obstacles. Though it was a moderate success in arcades, ''Salamander 2'' was met with mixed reviews. The game received generally negative feedback from fans of the original ''Salamander'' for its poor design and inferiority to its predecessor. It has been republished through ''Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus'' (1997) and ''Salamander Portable'' (2007). These re-releases were better-received for their gameplay, graphical style, and soundtrack, though its high level of difficulty and lack of innovation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contra (video Game)
is a 1987 run and gun game developed and published by Konami for arcades. A home version was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988, along with ports for various home computer formats, including the MSX, MSX2. The arcade and computer versions were localized as ''Gryzor'' in Europe, and the NES version as ''Probotector'' in the PAL region. The arcade game was a commercial success worldwide, becoming one of the top four highest-grossing dedicated arcade games of 1987 in the United States. The NES version was also a critical and commercial success, with ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' awarding it for being the Action game, Best Action Game of 1988. Several Contra (series), ''Contra'' sequels were produced following the original game. Gameplay Overview ''Contra'' employs a variety of playing perspectives, which include a standard side view, a pseudo-3D view (in which the player proceeds by shooting and moving towards the background, in addition to left or right) and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora (linguistics), mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or ''kana'' in each system. Each kana represents either a vowel such as "''a''" (katakana wikt:ア, ア); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "''ka''" (katakana wikt:カ, カ); or "''n''" (katakana wikt:ン, ン), a nasal stop, nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese language, Portuguese or Galician language, Galician. In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kanji
are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived Syllabary, syllabic scripts of and . The characters have Japanese pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as , by a process similar to China's simplified Chinese characters, simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the general public. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ateji
In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings. For example, the word "sushi" is often written with its . Though the two characters have the readings and respectively, the character means "one's natural life span" and means "to administer", neither of which has anything to do with the food. as a means of representing loanwords has been largely superseded in modern Japanese by the use of , although many coined in earlier eras still linger on. Usage today are used conventionally for certain words, such as ('sushi'), though these words may be written in hiragana (especially for native words), or katakana (especially for borrowed words), with preference depending on the particular word, context, and choice of the writer. are particula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
