Welcome to My WorldTwenty years ago
Konami's internal developers KCET (Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo) released what I consider to be the
best game in the Gradius series, Gradius Gaiden (グラディウス外伝).
Great stages, excellent weapon selection with four ships to choose from and you cannot forget the great music and wonderful speech, out of respect for the series you should play the game again and look back at the great company Konami used to be.
Solar Assault Revised (JAA) and Solar Assault (JAA) are now both in
MAME 0.188.
I can only get Solar Assault Revised loading as Solar Assault seams to be missing one rom, Solar Assault Revised is the Japanese version of Solar Assault (US Version).
EDIT: Solar Assault Gradius now works fine, updated all the arcade roms to MAME 0.188.
Wow, where has all the time gone, just over twenty years ago I started this little website and decided to call it Gradius Home World, way back on 27th July 1997.
Things have changed so much since then, computers have got so much faster.
Some things about the site and it's future.
I have no plans ever shutting the site, in fact I been filling out the games collection where (I had some gaps) with some games I was missing, I've have not taken any photos yet but may add some in the future, I have been adding them to the GameStone's Collection list on the right.
I cannot think of much more to say at the moment, so keep playing games and lets take this for another twenty years.
Just playing with the Gradius Gaiden Font I made back in 2009, I decided to make a x2 and x4 hand edited version for higher resolution displays.
The original font for Gradius Gaiden was for 320x240 gaming so the first font listed below is my double resolution font for 800x480 games, the x2 is for
and the x4 is for K gaming.
I may actually find a use for them at some point.
Font - for 800x480 Games
Font x2 - for
Font x4 - for
with some new tunes and also made it a single archive to make it easier to download.
Audited all the arcade game roms and tested them in MAME 0.179.
Audited the
X68000 games and added some alternative rom images, they are the same games just in different formats (HDM, DIM, ADF and XM6), may be useful for use with different emulators.
Added the X68000 game Hellhound to the
section, this is a great fan based game that's in the Gradius style in more ways than one.
It's the 30th Anniversary of the Konami arcade game Salamander, excellent speech, music and gameplay.
After six years I finally started again on the translation for the arcade release of , this was one large update that translates all the graphic based text.
This is also for the later GGG-J-A-A- version of the game that has all six characters.
Konami are releasing a new music CD in the new year on the 23rd January 2016 - EMCA-0024.
X68000 Gradius II GOFER
no Yabou COMPLETE SOUNDTRACKS.
Salamander on PS4, 27th November 2015, ?823, Arcade Archives (PS4), this also includes Life Force and the overseas version of Life Force.
Also added details of all the virtual console releases and added Thunder Cross and Thunder Cross II to the Arcade section on Thunder Cross to the PS2 section
Now this looks good, very professional, I know it's a doujin game but wow that looks like a full Konami game.
I would love to see something like this on Steam so I can play it on a large screen.
Thanks to speedup in the forum for the link.
Updated all the MAME games to the latest versions (0.165), also added some missing games.
Added two different versions of Gradius and Salamander for the C64 to the Download section.
Wow, it's been 30 years since Konami released the humble game Gradius in the arcades.
So lets celebrate
the 30th Anniversary of Gradius.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
by Koji Igarashi
悪魔城ドラキュラX 月下の夜想曲
Akumajō Dracula X: Gekka no Yasōkyoku
Devil's Castle Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight
In the west the game was known as:-
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
As you may know Akumajō Dracula X came out on the PlayStation the same year as Gradius Gaiden and is commonly classed as the best game in the Dracula series.
Well the original author of the game (Koji Igarashi) has just started a Kickstarter for a game in the same sort of style, Michiru Yamane who done the music for the PS game as well as many other Konami games including Otomedius X is also on board.
It's already funded within 24 hours, hopefully Konami will see this success and do something similar for the Gradius series.
Note:- This Kickstarter has nothing to do with Konami.
I would loved to see a Gradius Gaiden 2 or Gradius VI.
Gradius V has now been released for the PS3 today in Japan.
More Konami Gradius PS4 behind the scenes.
Some more Gradius PS4 stuff, some interesting artwork.
Moved Gradius Home World to it's own domain
Gradius on PS4, 29th January 2015, ?823, Arcade Archives (PS4), this also includes the overseas version Nemesis.
After the last play of Gradius IV Fukkatsu on my Windy II machine before I start to strip it down I was inspired to update my
pixel art to version 8.
Bricked up the doorway and moved the machines around, less Solar Assault but
much better spacing.
Well, another year and no new Gradius content.
It will be the
30th Anniversary of Gradius next year (29th May 2015), I do hope that Konami will do something this time as the 25th Anniversary came and went with nothing
but no news yet either way.
I would like to see a Gradius Collection on PC, Xbox One
and PS4 containing all the games and I do mean all the games (Gradius I to V, Gradius Gaiden, Salamander Series etc..)
I would also like to see Gradius V re-released with enhancements like Multiplayer across Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Widescreen 1080p, Extra Stages and
maybe even a stage creator and editor.
Sorry about the total lack of content, I've just not been inspired to make anything new, this may change next year as I'm moving house and should have more space to finally display the large Gradius Collection.
All the merchandise is packed and the Konami Windy II candy cabinet will have to be stripped down again (as it doesn't fit through my
doorways), this should be fun.
I was searching for the new C418 music (the guy that did the Minecraft tunes) and found a great music site called
Bandcamp that has variable pricing and choices of what file type to download (mp3 FLAC etc...).
Also the site has quite a few game soundtrack that are free to download too, I found this album that has some interesting tunes on it including a Gradius remix track, you can listen to the whole track and album but also
download them
Long time since the last update, just some new merchandise added to my collection.
Lots of factory sealed goodness, a few video tapes and an unexpected buy.
The NES Korean Version of Life Force Salamander made by Hyundai and Konami, this is a UK/US style cartridge rather than the smaller Japanese style, I'm not sure if it's compatible with the UK/US NES as I don't have one of those consoles to test the game.
Otomedius Anoa and Tron life size displays for the arcade game, these are absolutely Gorgeous (no pun intended).
for some more images and information.
Would you believe it, it's been 25 years since the best sequel to any Gradius game was released.
The 25th Anniversary of Gradius II ~GOFER no Yabou~ グラディウスＩＩ ～ＧＯＦＥＲの野望～ (aka Vulcan Venture).
This was the third
arcade board that I owned back in 1991 (Wardner and Side Arms were the first two which I now have again after selling them years ago), my version was Vulcan Venture, the music, the speech, what a classic.
still my most favourite Gradius game, not many sequels excel at so much, large bold enemies, wonderful stereo music, clean clear speech, weapon selection and not too insanely difficult.
How can you even forget the speech...
You will never return alive, You shall be crushed, You can't go any further, I am the strongest.
I'm just a small portion of the empire Bacterian.
Konaken has been keeping a list of all the arcades that have the game Solar Assault running.
Here's Solar Assault Revised streamed live from one of those arcades.
Some of you long term readers of the site may have seen the
3D rendered art work.
The Riccardo F art work was not just art work but a rendered video, it's pretty old but well worth a look.
He also now goes by the name Rickonami -
You may have already seen the Gradius II and Gradius III HD intros, they are by the same person and are done very nicely.
Here's some images for the last order of the year.
for some more images and information.
Two new PC9801
games added to the Games Fan section.
ULife Force (CO2-PRO-)
Salamander (Gold Cats)
I haven't found any disk images for these games yet but I'm still looking.
Sorry about the lack updates, I've been a little busy playing the excellent and very addictive game called Minecraft - .
So here's my latest pick ups to add to the collection.
A spare Konami Windy II JVS bottom board and loom, I already had a spare top board so
I wanted a spare bottom board as these are quite hard to find, Gradius Generations (budget), Nintendo
FamicomBox Gradius, Otomedius Arcade Marquees (Anoa and Tron) and Thunder Cross Arcade PCB.
for some more images and information.
Well another few months and more
Gradius stuff added to my collection.
Lots of King Records Game Simulation Videos on VHS, TwinBee Paradise VHS.
Game flyers for Gokujou Parodius Arcade, TwinBee 3 Famicom, Gradius II Super Famicom, Parodius da! Arcade, Gradius II Famicom, Gradius and Salamander PC Engine, Salamander Collection and TwinBee Collection PSP stickers.
Thunder Cross PlayStation 2, another Gradius II GOFER no Yabou, Arcade Gradius III Vic Viper and a Konami Gradius Moai Coin.
for some more images and information.
Here's a simultaneous release of
Otomedius X (Excellent) オトメディウスＸ（エクセレント！） on Games on Demand.
Go to Xbox live and play the game, unless you are in Europe that is as there is still no Europe version yet.
US Release - Otomedius Excellent! - $19.99
Japanese Release - オトメディウスＸ（エクセレント！） - ?2940
Well another bumper order of Gradius stuff.
Otomedius X (Excellent!) Original Soundtrack and two badges, Otomedius Arcade control panel, Gradius IV ~Fukkatsu~ Original Operators Manual, Solar Assault, Gradius IV ~Fukkatsu~ arcade flyers, TwinBee Paradise DVD boxset, Gradius III AND IV Fukkatsu no Shinwa, Gradius V and Gradius Generation posters and more...
for more images and information.
I'm trying to organise my 'Gradius To Sort' directories as it's getting a little out of control again, I have two lots with the large movie files separated.
These are all my Gradius related stuff that I've collected over the years that's not being sorted or added to Gradius Home World, it's one of those thing I want to get around to and never do.
I'll try to sort some of it out this year.
!Gradius to sort - 7.3GB - 12774 Files - 1641 Folder
!Gradius to sort Movies - 10.4GB - 225 Files - 35 Folders
After a few hours of sorting they are organise a little better, still lots to go through but it should be a little easier,
I may actually get around to adding some new stuff to the site.
!Gradius to sort - 7.17GB - 10739 Files - 1419 Folder
!Gradius to sort Movies - 10.5GB - 226 Files - 35 Folders
Yet another Solar Assault pixel art, this time the 29inch version, also put the 50inch version next to it for comparison.
According to the specs on the data sheet, the 50inch version is 1929mm and the 29inch is 1822, my versions are almost the same height so these will have to be adjusted at a later date.
Also the 50inch control panel should be wider than the seat section..
Gradius Corner again (still v7 as not much changed), there's not enough room for the new machines, I will have to do some rearranging as it looks a little messy now.
Only one day later and I've already edited the Solar Assault machine.
It now has a bigger control panel, it looked a little too flat before and
from higher up you would be
to see more of the orange control panel.
Also made the machine a little longer (four pixels if you must know) and adjusted some of the darker colours.
hours of pixel editing, here's my latest work.
Solar Assault 50inch edition, the 29inch and upright versions are still to do, luckily the 29inch version shouldn't take as look as the seating section is almost the same.
I just thought that I would post the image I based the pixel art on.
Solar Assault 50inch Version
Solar Assault 29inch Version
After four hours of pixel editing, here's my latest work, Otomedius arcade version.
It's based on the AM show image from the Konami website.
I've also updated
Gradius Corner v6 with the new Salamander and Otomedius machines, plus now I have some extra floor space for Solar Assault (when I make it that is).
When trying to updated the Gradius Corner pixel art I realised that the perspective was wrong on the Salamander machines, it's less noticeably with the upright Salamander but very wrong on the Salamander Cocktail version.
So a few hours of editing and the new better perspective version of Salamander Cocktail has been completed (new one on the right).
Upright machine is now complete too (again).
Another day another pixel art piece, this time Salamander Cocktail version.
I've just made a new Salamander pixel art, I'll make an updated Gradius Corner at a later date with the new machines.
I do plan on making the Salamander and Gradius II GOFER no Yabou cocktail versions, Otomedius and maybe even Solar Assault, that would be a challenge.
The first two are the older versions I made last year, the others are the new 128px version.
More Windy icon editing, over the years these plastic cabinet discolour and people change the joystick and button colours.
After some research I believe I've found the original colouring for these items, so
decided to change the colours of the joystick, buttons and made the machine a bright white, just like new.
It's come a long way in the year since I drew the original, for all the other views see the .
Here's my latest art work logo,
Konami's Windy, used on their arcade cabinets with the same name.
Also added a new section to the , this will cover some of the arcade cabinets that Konami have made over the years
Updated all the CD music tracks name to my latest offline version, this is something I've been meaning to do for a few months.
Japanese track listings added to the new
music CD five disc collection.
Translated listing done.
Konami are releasing a new
music CD five disc collection.
No track listings yet, LC2130-34, release date 29th March 2012.
The random logos are now gone and the new large logo is now on the top right of each page.
All the other logos are now in the GameStone Artwork section.
Added the row of section icons to this page only.
I've started hand editing the pixel art
section icons from the original 32x32px to 64x64px, this gives them a little more detail.
Here are a few examples of the ones
I've already changed (the 32x32px have been resized to 64x64px to show the comparison).
Some like the Game Boy and Arcade icons have been totally redrawn.
I've moved all of the section icons to the new section bar, plus made a new Home icon for this page as it looked a little odd without one.
Also moved the flag icon in the Games Section to the same section bar.
The unified GameStone site style is now more or less complete, still a few colour tweaks to do.
Also you may have noticed the new site wide master navigation at the top of each section, this is to make it easier to jump to the various sections here on GameStone.
Small update to the Blank Gradius section.
Sorry for the broken styles on this page and the links section, it's still a work in progress.
It looks like Gradius HD Collection and Otomedius Excellent for the PSVita was all a hoax.
I cannot find evidence of the games existence anywhere so I've edited the Wiki article to remove the games.
I would like it to be true but unless some concrete evidence is found, so as far as I'm concerned the games do not exist on the PSVita.
Gradius HD Collection and Otomedius Excellent could be a lie for the PSVita.
The edits on Wikipedia were by an anonymous source whose IP address shows them in the Philippines, there is speculation that the edits are fake and hundreds of sites have jumped on this news as fact.
I'll keep you posted if any other news or evidence shows it's self.
Gradius HD Collection and Otomedius Excellent are listed as games coming out for the PSVita, who knows if the wiki list is correct.
No other information at the moment.
I've been sent some interesting guides for Salamander 2 (AC) and Nemesis 3 (MSX), take a look, they are in the
Konami has released their third DLC stage.
ＥＸ３ どんぶり島ステージ（２０１１／１２／２７ 配信、４８０ ＭＳＰ）
Donburi Island
Stage (Released 27/12/MSP)
Note:Donburi translates as Bowl.
The Mameworld site is now back after some site hacking took it offline for almost a week.
Mr Do's Arcade section has lot of artwork scans for various games in MAME including most of the Gradius related games scanned by me.
I haven't had a reply yet about my new Gradius II GOFER no Yabou but I guess after a major hack that takes the site offline, it may be a bit of time until the new artwork is on his site.
MAME supports background artwork like bezels, backgrounds etc... the original versions I scanned a few years back (shown below),
Mr. Do done the lay file for it (Mr. Do's MAME artwork page is currently offline), the dark colour around the logo's on the instruction cards is due to a foil section which
doesn't scan too well, last time I coloured it a dark blue but this time I've decided to add a metallic type background to simulate the foil effect.
After looking at KEI-KO Fujisaki's machines
(of which I'm so jealous), I noticed the large side banners on her Gradius II GOFER no Yabou machine, I thought wouldn't that be great to recreate that in MAME.
managed to win a pair of large side artwork in an auction, pretty rare items apparently and not cheap, I paid ?160 for a pair in pretty much mint condition, I already have the top & bottom banners and the two side instruction cards.
I decided to not simulate the monitor bezel more than 5px on the left and right as it made the game image smaller, the top and bottom I cannot do anything about.
As the art is pretty large I've done two versions, 25% and 50%, the 50% can slow down the game some what as the art is so big.
They are the same name as that's how MAME needs it, just put one or the other vulcan.zip file in the MAME Artwork folder and run the game.
long version of the artwork, the Seven and a new computer.
Over the last few months I have been cleaning up some scans I done of the complete set of Gradius II GOFER no Yabou artwork for use in MAME.
I scanned them at 300dpi 600dpi and 1200dpi, the 1200dpi version is just too large to edit even on the new system listed below (almost px - 500MB PNG for the large side artworks).
The goldilocks approach was the best choice, the 300dpi didn't show enough detail making edited difficult and the 1200dpi images made the computer unusable so I decided to edit the 600dpi version which is px - 148MB PNG.
Even this brought my poor AMD Athlon X2 XP system with 2GB of RAM to its knees, so an upgrade was required.
don't upgrade that often these days as computers have levelled off over the last five years or so (unless you play games that is, which I don't much), my XP system is five and half years old with some tweaks a few years back, like an
160GB Intel X25-M SSD which made it feel like new again, I just needed more RAM.
I decided to splash some cash on a new homebuilt system (I always build my own workstations).
I bought two copies of Windows 7 Home Premium retail
at launch ( I installed one on my laptop) but
never got around to using the other version on my desktop as it just ran slower than XP on that hardware.
Anyway, I had no choice but to finally go with Windows 7 x64 as I wanted more RAM, another story is Windows 7 Home Premium only supports 16GB of RAM, so I had to buy an anytime upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate, ?100 just for a code, what a rip off.
So here's the list for those interested in what I bought, I already had a
case, PSU, graphics card, fans, hard drives, monitors, Keyboard and mouse.
Items I already had from my old XP system
Antec 4U22ATX400UK Rackmount Chassis (I had to modify the lid as the Noctua heatsink was too large for the case by about 20mm).
Noctua NF-R8 80mm Quiet Case Fan x2
Noctua NF-P12 Vortex-Control 120mm Quiet Case Fan x2
Enermax 650W Infiniti EIN650AWT Modular Quad CPU & SLi/CFire PSU 85% Eff' DXX EPS12V/ATX12V.
Supermicro CSE-M35T1 Five Drive SATA Rack Mount (Ivory) x2 (with help from the
and myself,
we modified them to fit 120mm Noctua fans as the original 80mm fans were very noisy).
PNY NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 PCI-E Graphics Card - 1GB (old but good enough for real work).
Various large hard drives.
DELL - UltraSharp U2711 27& Widescreen LCD Monitor.
HP L2335 23& Flat Panel TFT Monitor.
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard (five year old, which I modified to an orange LED backlight as the standard blue looked pretty crap).
Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer with Intellieye USB (my trusty eight year old optical mouse).
Items bought for the new workstation
Asus P9X79 PRO S2011 Intel X79 DDR3 ATX
Intel Core i7-GHz S2011 12MB
Kingston 16GB (4 x 4GB) HyperX DDR3 1600MHz 240-pin DIMM CL9 XMP (two lots of to make 32GB)
Intel 300GB 320 Series MLC 2.5& 25nm SATA-300 9.5mm SSD
Noctua NH-D14-2011 Dual Radiator Cooler with PWM fans, LGA2011 only.
System is built and running great, some software is still needed here and there as Windows 7 can be a bit annoying sometimes, here are some photos of the build for those interested.
Konami Games
Otomedius X (Excellent!)
オトメディウスＸ（エクセレント！）
Games on Demand
Otomedius Excellent
Games on Demand
Otomedius G Gorgeous!
オトメディウスＧ（ゴージャス！）
Gradius ReBirth v256
グラディウス リバース
Konami Arcade Collection
(Konami Classic Series
Arcade Hits)
Gradius Portable
Gradius Collection US
Salamander Portable
Parodius Portable
TwinBee Portable
Gradius Home World
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