how well are the famicom ports of Gradius II and Salamander?

[KimagureMachibuse]

How well are the family computer versions of Gradius II Gofers Ambition and Salamander?
considering they are mainly recreations from the ground up of their arcade counterparts more so with salamander

[Jonpachi]

Gradius II is one of the most graphically impressive games on the Famicom. There's a good bit of slowdown and flicker, but for the system it's a gem and very playable.

[BIL]

As with their Umechan Team companion pieces Contra and Super Contra, they're eminently loveable works. Not particularly close to the arcade games, often starkly divergent, but they capture their broad strokes more than recognisably enough, while compensating for the innate lack of walloping arcade firepower with reams of generally high-quality original content, all delivered with sharp handling, vivid looks and powerhouse Hidenori Maezawa-driven sound. (in the Contras' cases, fixing the AC's godawful aiming lag; see also FDS/NES Jackal, not Umechan's IIRC but easily worth mentioning alongside)

I do think FC Gradius II slightly cocked up its first stage, by inexplicably reverse-importing Salamander's instakill solar flares, but that's as much a criticism of Salamander itself (its third stage is a warts-and-all translation of the AC's memo gauntlet; safespot at lower-left). Pretty smooth sailing otherwise, and made up for a hundredfold by the much savvier endgame hybrid of Maximum Speed, an extended Mechanical Base, and an entirely new Organic Base, a titanic sendoff that's still pretty impressive to behold.

I do consider FC Gradius, while nowhere near as flashy, the formally stronger Famicom STG, in its meat and potatoes way. More consistent pace - there's no heavingly slow Crystal Dimension to chisel through - which dovetails perfectly into another plus: its second and third loops, which crank up pretty nicely. If I recall right, just like FC Super Contra, FC Gradius II doesn't actually loop up at all.

FC Salamander meanwhile does loop up, while bringing some nice variety in its topdown stages. Taking into account its occasional bouts of Memoriser Bullshit™ (again, basically all straight from the AC version), I'd put it second in this ranking. They're all essential Famicom STGs, imo.

[Despatche]

They're pretty good games. Gradius II maybe tries too hard as previously mentioned, but Salamander is stunning for 1987. It's often said that Super Mario Bros. 3 was the game changer, but honestly Salamander is operating on the same level.

[To Far Away Times]

FC Gradius II is quite good. It's not arcade perfect of course, but its pretty good for what it is.

[Despatche]

I should probably point out that FC Gradius II, and to a lesser extent FC Salamander, were made in same vein as SFC Gradius III; it's certainly apparent from the gameplay. That aside, as if to provide a clear visual of this, the SFC Gradius III uses a large slanted "III" graphic much like all versions of II do, and it also drops the original subtitle like FC Gradius II does. Consistent design language or something.

[Sumez]

I think both are among some of the most enjoyable shooters on the NES, but they also both suffer from a very pathetic difficulty level that doesn't get better by looping the games.

Salamander especially has a small spike on the fire level (third stage) since it requires a lot of memorization, but from that point out you're likely to just blast through the remaining stages first try. Bosses go down in splitseconds with the (thankfully) built-in autofire.
It's a less direct port, with I think probably like half the game(?) being brand new stages - but both games have a clear distinct personality on the NES.

Gradius II is definitely the more balanced of the two with a somewhat steady increasing difficulty, and can take a bit of practice. But after that you'll be sailing through just as easily. Not just graphically, but also mechanically I think it's one of the (if not the) most impressive NES shooters, but I think they probably also hit kind of an upper limit for what they can do with that. I'm not sure it would be possible to maintain everything that makes the port great if they did try to crank up the difficulty, with ensuing additional flicker and slowdown to be expected.

[Restart_Point]

I'm just repeating whats already been said but the Famicom carts of both are still reasonably cheap and are among the best / most technically impressive NES games full stop, plus they have unique features which make them almost their own games. Why wouldn't you want them?