The JAMMA bliss of Salamander [Eurogamer.net]
Nearly all retro-heads of a certain age have an enduring romance with the 1980s arcade. We reminisce about the rows of machines blaring out for attention and credits, their screens illuminating a dark cave that smelt of hot electronics, cigarettes and spilt drinks. I increasingly think it sticks in the mind precisely because it had a smell. These days, we have only the scent of a freshly opened game, rather than places of magical discovery and competition. My deepest feelings of arcade romance are for the mid-80s carnival of JAMMA, where the Japanese megabrands such as Sega, Capcom and Konami cemented their growth into industry legends. It really was a splendid time, where new arcade games seemingly arrived on a weekly basis.
The event (and the game) that gave me my love of the arcade happened on a trip to Rollerbury, Bury St Edmunds' premiere roller-skating arena. There was a broken Dragon's Lair and a working Choplifter on the way to the actual arcade, and even though it was nearly 30 years ago, I can still remember most of the machines in that smelly, dark room. It reads like a perfectly curated idea of a cool connoisseur's arcade: Battlezone (broken), Bombjack, Commando, Marble Madness, Centipede, Paperboy and finally, the game that would come to symbolise the JAMMA era for me, Salamander.
Konami's sequel to Gradius stole the show. We'd all played Bombjack and Commando thanks to Elite's decent 8-bit conversions, but Salamander was astonishingly advanced. The splash screen had a fireball that wrapped around an alien logo of Japanese letters. The attract mode showed the wealth of power-ups available and the demo showed AI players coursing through the first stage and later, flying through a burning, boiling star.
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