![]() Like all shmups, it does bury its roots in the early days of the arcade and to me is still on that short list of video games you must play before you die. I grew up knowing this series on the NES, although I am told that in Japan and Europe it has a more significant presence on the MSX. Despite critics rightfully complaining that each new title in the series seems to harken back to the original, I feel it is the series staples that keep dedicated fans and strong sales. Not only that, the series is responsible for a few offshoots including my favorite shmup of all time, Salamander ( Life Force in US), and the Parodius series. In that time the series has graced almost every console and portable that has come out, although recent iterations have been predominantly collections. ![]() The Gradius series has withstood the test of time with the first technical iteration in 1981 and the most recent actual game released in 2008 ( Gradius ReBirth on Wii). It’s pronounced simply how it is spelled. Okay people, I’ve confirmed this with Konami, the pronunciation is “grah-dee-us”, not “gray-dee-us”, “grah/grey-die-oos” or any other awkward pronunciation. KONAMI-VRC-1 (75) using multiple Konami VRC*.Responsible for plenty of attributes to the shmup genre, notably the space aesthetic, but the most significant thing I remember about the title “Gradius” is how often people mispronounced it. I tested my Famicom games with Konami mappers and got similar results. The eyeball and the skull look mostly correct, as well as most of the border. Most of the bird looks correct when its wings are in this position. There are also some graphics that are correct or partially correct. This is a solar flare which has its tiles replaced by letters and numbers. I found where many of the text letters and numbers are used. This is the escape sequence, where your ship flies through some kind of rectangular tunnel. ![]() I'd really appreciate it if this could be fixed. I included some more screenshots below.Īnyway, this is the only official licensed game of mine released during the lifespan of the NES that doesn't dump correctly, aside from a few overdumps that were easily fixed by using a hex editor to truncate the file. The sound and music all seemed correct, as far as I could tell. So the dump does contain the game, just with mostly the wrong graphics tiles being loaded. ![]() Just thought I'd update to say that I managed to play through to the end of the game (with rewinding). ![]() An 8 KB save file is also created, even though Gradius II doesn't use a battery save and I didn't select the battery option when dumping. I dumped using the firmware "ntmv2_firmware_verJB6.2.bin" and later with "ntmv2_firmware_verJB6.6" and got the exact same file as output. The correct ROM file occupies 256 KB the dump I get of the game occupies 384 KB. My dumped ROM of the game runs (I haven't tried getting past the first section because the messed up visuals make it extra difficult, so I don't know how much of the game can be played) and the sound effects and music work in the portion of the game I have been able to test. Opening graphic of the player's spaceship, which appears to use the correct color scheme within the boundaries of the ship's form, thus resembling the actual ship's graphic.įor comparison, here is the normal version of the opening graphic. I used the corresponding "Konami VRC4.BIN" CopyNES plugin, and as you can see in the screenshots taken from the dumped ROM, the graphics are scrambled but bear some resemblance to at least the outline of the actual shapes. According to, Gradius II uses KONAMI-VRC-4, mapper 25. ![]()
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