Salamander a.k.a Life Konami game ad in the 9/1987 issue of Newtype.
Salamander for Famicom.
salamander, for the famicom, by konami – known in the US under the title life force – is the best looking video game cartridge on earth, i would argue. i’d certainly like to see any contenders that can seriously compete.
frank cifaldi tweeted out this pic with that assertion a few weeks ago, and i wrote up a bit of a tumblr blog, but then i got busy, and then chrome crashed and i lost it. so i’m starting again…
not just to agree with frank, because i do, but to talk about a few things.
one, of course, is just to let you know: hey, this is the best looking game cartridge. in case you didn’t know.
two: it started a conversation that made me think about my first trip to japan, which was for tokyo game show 2003, in september of that year.
salamander was probably the first retro game i bought.
this is a surprisingly complicated question to answer, sort of, i guess.
the first game i bought in japan, i am almost certain, is the PC genjin (bonk’s adventure) remake for the PS2. it’s sort of a remake, really, but not exactly. it’s a new game, really. the first store i went to that had games only sold new games.
i also asked my friend andrew to buy a lot of famicom games on yahoo auctions (what japan uses instead of eBay) because i’d just gotten my AV famicom that summer, after writing about the console’s anniversary for gamespy. and he did. so does that count? sort of. i guess?
but i’m reasonably sure that if salamander wasn’t the first retro game i tracked down, it was damn close. how about we say it’s first in my heart?
that’s because i’d always wanted it. in college, in 1997, before the era of cell phones, i’d missed my chance at my first famicom games ever.
i went to school at the university of the arts in philadelphia. several blocks away from the school (walkable, and i did, often) was a game shop called “the gamerary” (which people pronounced “gamery”) which sold playstation and saturn imports (and also rented anime on VHS, too.)
one of the guys who worked there brought in his personal famicom collection from when he was a kid and sold it off one day, and i missed it. this is why i mention “no cell phones.” my friend went and she managed to score the salmander cart, and i was so incredibly jealous. she brought it home and hung it on her bedpost from a chain through that hole on the top left (yes, it goes all the way through. i have no idea why.)
so i guess in the back of my mind i was kind of fixated on that, to be honest, though in a low key way. i’m not the kind of person who easily forgets things.
so yeah: probably the first game i bought. can you blame me?
i mean, life force is really good, too. if you’ve never played it you really ought to.
and i should, i realize, probably write an interesting essay about the gamerary, because that kind of culture is essentially completely dead. i was talking to a friend about an upcoming book project he’s doing about a retro game, and we started talking about 1990s game culture, and i realized what a brief and unique moment in time it was. i don’t mean to make more of it than it is, but it’s something i look back on with fondness, but also i think if it’s not explained it’s harder for people to understand why game culture took the shape it has.
the gamerary closed, suddenly, in 1997. my friend tried to go one day and there was a handwritten sign in the door. i didn’t want to believe it, but there it was.
