Bubble System

A Konami Bubble System board with the Gradius Bubble Software cartridge connected.

The Bubble System is an arcade system board designed by Konami and used across many arcade games 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 separate Zilog Z80 for sound control, which drove two AY-3-8910s, a custom Konami 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 30–40 °C (86–104 °F) 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 two recent games; with Morning Music being one of the playable tracks in Keyboardmania., and the intro of Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits featuring the song too.

Bubble System games

See also

References