Tag: konami

Link Roundup 5/12/22

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Greetings to all humans down there on planet Glorb-III, also known as Earth. Let’s get started, drebnar!

A lament from Reddit on how Streetpasses are impossible to get now. If only Nintendo had thought to include them on the Switch. Probably it’ll take another ten years before they realize what a good idea they had.

Chris Moyse from Destructoid tells us this week’s Arcade Archives release is Taito’s Fighting Hawk!

Kate Gray from Nintendo Life writes about the thing that all video game journalists are someday destined by fate to write about: Earthbound. It’ll happen here too someday, you can rely upon it. And Alana Hauges frpm Nintendo Life has some words to say about its sequel Mother 3!

From Polygon, Michael McWhertor enthuses about how great is the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, Shredder’s Revenge.

Chris Friberg of Den of Geek tells us his picks for the 15 best NES RPGs. #1 is Dragon Quest III! (What do you mean, don’t spoil it? I’m an alien, I spoil everything drebnar!) He also ranks Wizardry pretty high, he has great taste!

Over on Hackaday, Robin Kearey tell us about a reimplementation of the classic Tamagotchi using modern hardware!

Blake Johnson of CBR.com asks if a collection of the DS Castlevania games could ever be released? While the fan favorite remains Symphony of the Night, the DS games are excellent and retain many of its greatest elements.

The image in question, from History of Hyrule’s Twitter feed. Hi Melora!

Go Nintendo’s rawmeatcowboy points to the discovered female Link art from Japanese guidebooks that History of Hyrule uncovered! Hey, that image looks familiar! Meanwhile, comicbook.com’s Connor Casey tells us that professional wrestlers Steve Austin and Cody Rhodes disagree as to which is the best Legend of Zelda game, respectively, Breath of the Wild or Ocarina of Time. This may be the only time in my entire life that I’ve agreed with the opinion of earthling Steve Austin, although admittedly I’m a unicellular organism filled with an iridescent goo.

And Jules Wang at Android Police tells us that Chromebooks should be getting better Android support later, improving their game-playing experience. Between that and Steam Support, who needs a Steam Deck? (Answer: ME I DO YES I WANT ONE PLEASE SEND IT TO MEEEEEE)

Sundry Sunday: The Gradius Morning Music

Hey everybody, WAKE UP!

We’re back for another Sundry Sunday! Congratulations for making it another week into our technological hellscape! Your reward is another catchy tune and some information from the old days of arcades.

Gradius is a long-lived and storied series of shooters, full of interesting details and traditions, but my favorite part of it all is something not a lot of English-speaking fans may be familiar with.

The first arcade releases of Konami’s Twinbee and Gradius were produced using “bubble memory,” a type of storage that had to warm up, literally, to be read reliably.

It would work effectively if it had been running for at least a couple of minutes. So, to prevent anyone from playing the game too soon after the machine had been turned on in the morning, it would display a countdown on the screen. It would also emit a digitized voice, saying “Getting ready!” and then after a few seconds, it would play the MORNING MUSIC, while the computer warmed up, as in the video embedded above. I kind of think of it as the national anthem of arcadeland.

One of the quirks of Gradius‘s bubble storage is that it was read sequentially, from a starting point. Its stage layouts were stored in this memory. Dealing with this hardware quirk required the game, when the player lost a life, to return back to the last starting point they had passed. This was the source of one of the Gradius series’s major characteristics, having to return to a previous part of the level, which could then be read into memory going forward once again.

I forget where I heard this factoid, but I think I saw it in the supplemental material in the Gradius Arcade Collection, out on Steam and Switch, and no doubt other platforms. Hey, it’s Sunday, I’m not supposed to be stressing out about these details!