- Bubble System
The Bubble System is an
arcade system board designed byKonami and utilized across manyarcade game s in the early eighties.The Bubble System was supposed to have a unique new form of data storage for arcade-style video games. It used
bubble memory cartridges, a sort of non-mechanical magnetic storage system. It was said to have a higher reliability than mechanical diskette or tape drives.Konami used their new G400 BIOS for this project, and modified it a bit. The main CPU was a
Motorola 68000 at 10 MHz. There was a separateZilog Z80 for sound control, which drove two AY-3-8910s, a customKonami SCC (K005289), and a VLM5030 speech synthesizer. It had a Scramble wiring harness.A Bubble Memory game can be identified by its
booting sequence. It displays a "warming up" screen, accompanied with a countdown timer and a small musical tune (called "Morning Music"). The reason this was implemented was because Bubble Memory had to be heated to around 40-50°C for it to work properly.Bubble Memory was not a fully developed technology by the time it was used in the Bubble System, and as a result it is currently very rare to find a working Bubble System. The system proved to be unpopular because it had a high sensitivity to magnetic fields (which was not suitable for an arcade environment, with unshielded speakers and degauss coils), and were also considerably more expensive than ROM chip-based boards. Most games on this system were eventually ported to standard ROM chips, and the system was discontinued.
Still, Konami has made homages to the Bubble System in 2 recent games; with Morning Music being one of the playable tracks in
Keyboardmania . [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jguHUyKCRd4&mode=related&search=] , and the intro of featuring the song too.Bubble System games
*"
Gradius " (ported to ROM chips as "Nemesis")
*"TwinBee"
*"Galactic Warriors"
*"Konami RF2" (ported to ROM chips as "Konami GT ")ee also
*
Konami GX400 References
* [http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=559 System16.com: Bubble System hardware]
* [http://www.mameworld.net/maws/driverinfo/nemesis.c MAWS: MAME source code listing]
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