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Games

Playing

World Of Goo
(Wii)

Raiden IV
雷電IV
(Xbox 360)

Otomedius X (Excellent!)
オトメディウスＸ（エクセレント！）
(Xbox 360)

Harmful Park
ハームフル・パーク
(PS)

Raiden DX
雷電DX
(PS)

Otomedius G (Gorgeous!)
オトメディウスＧ（ゴージャス！）
(Xbox 360)
Finally got the last Achievement!!!

Waiting

None

Emulation Watch

Arcade

Gradius IV Fukkatsu
グラディウスＩＶ～復活～

Gradius IV Fukkatsu

Works with some graphic problems, also runs very slowly when lots of polygons are on displayed

Sounds is much better after my bug report 03275 was fixed

Latest version
MAME 0.145
Added MAME 0.86

Solar Assault Gradius
ソーラーアサルトグラディウス

Solar Assault Gradius (Japanese release)

None!

Has this rom been dumped yet?

Solar Assault Revised
ソーラーアサルトリバイスド

Solar Assault Revised (Japanese release)

None!

Has this rom been dumped yet?

Solar Assault

Solar Assault (US release)

Load and plays fine if a little slow MAME 0.145

Added MAME 0.104u6

(Even More Countdowns)

26th April 2012

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...

See GameStone's Collection for more images and information.

9th April 2012

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 origanise 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

20th March 2012

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..

GameStone's Solar Assault 29inch

Solar Assault 29inch Solar Assault 50inch

Updated 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.

19th March 2012

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 the view 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.

18th March 2012

After six 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.

GameStone's Solar Assault

I just thought that I would post the image I based the pixel art on.

Solar Assault 50inch Version

Solar Assault 50inch

Solar Assault 29inch Version

Solar Assault 29inch

17th March 2012

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.

GameStone's Otomedius 128px

Konami's Otomedius Collection

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).

16th March 2012

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).

GameStone's Salamander Cocktail Version 128px

Salamander 128px GameStone's Salamander 128px v2

13th March 2012

Another day another pixel art piece, this time Salamander Cocktail version.

12th March 2012

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.

Salamander 32px v1 Salamander 128px

11th March 2012

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 Guides Konami Arcade Machines section.

Windy 32 Windy 64 v2 Windy 64 v1 Windy 64 v3 Windy 128px Windy 128px v2

7th March 2012

Here's my latest art work logo, Konami's Windy, used on their arcade cabinets with the same name.

GameStone's Windy Logo

Also added a new section to the Guides section, this will cover some of the arcade cabinets that Konami have made over the years

5th March 2012

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.

2nd March 2012

Japanese track listings added to the new Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスＸ（エクセレント！） music CD five disc collection.

Translated listing done.

26th February 2012

Konami are releasing a new Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスＸ（エクセレント！） music CD five disc collection.

No track listings yet, LC2130-34, release date 29th March 2012.

http://www.konamistyle.jp/item/71694

http://www.konami.jp/products/style_lc2130-2134/index.html?ref=recm

LC2100

24th February 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.

20th February 2012

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.

18th February 2012

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.

15th February 2012

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.

14th February 2012

Sorry for the broken styles on this page and the links section, it's still a work in progress.

3rd February 2012

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.

30th January 2012

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.

29th January 2012

Gradius HD Collection and Otomedius Excellent are listed as games coming out for the PSVita, who knows if the wiki list is correct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_Vita_games

No other information at the moment.

25th January 2012

I've been sent some interesting guides for Salamander 2 (AC) and Nemesis 3 (MSX), take a look, they are in the Guides section.

27th December 2011

Konami has released their third DLC stage.

ＥＸ３どんぶり島ステージ（２０１１／１２／２７配信、４８０ＭＳＰ）
EX3 Donburi Island Stage (Released 27/12/2011, 480MSP)

Note:Donburi translates as Bowl.

22nd December 2011

The Mameworld site is now back after some site hacking took it offline for almost a week.

http://mameworld.info/

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.

http://mrdo.mameworld.info/

21st December 2011

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.

MAME Gradius II GOFER no Yabou OLD

After looking at KEI-KO Fujisaki's machines http://www.konaken.com/ (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.

Konaken's Machine

I 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.

MAME Gradius II GOFER no Yabou

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.

vulcan.zip - 25% version - 13.2MB

vulcan.zip - 50% version - 65MB

The 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 10000x26000px - 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 4650x12748px - 148MB PNG.

Even this brought my poor AMD Athlon X2 XP system with 2GB of RAM to its knees, so an upgrade was required.

I 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 late Mred 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 i7-3930K 3.20GHz 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.

The Build

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.