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Gradius Home World グラディウス ホームワールド

Site History

Site History

Site History - 2022

None

 

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Site History - 2021

18th September 2021

More hi-res scans, arcade this time, they are in the Downloads - Hi-Res Scans section.

AC - Gradius - Bubble System - 1985
AC - Gradius II ~ GOFER no Yabou ~ - 1988
AC - Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa e ~ - 1989
AC - Gradius IV ~Fukkatsu~ - 1999
AC - Salamander - 1986
AC - Salamander 2 - 1996
AC - Parodius da! ~ Shinwa kara o-warai e ~ - 1990
AC - Gokujou Parodius! ~ Kako no Eikou o Motomete ~ - 1994
AC - Solar Assault Gradius - 1997
AC - Solar Assault Revised - 1997
AC - TwinBee - 1985
AC - Detana!! TwinBee - 1991
AC - TwinBee Yahho-! ~ Fushigi no Kuni de Ooabare!! ~ - 1995
AC - Otomedius - 2007
AC - Super Transformation Finalizer - 1985
AC - Vs Gradius - 1991
AC - Xexex - 1991

Fixed two broken download links and also fixed a small issue with the download script not working in Chrome.

12th June 2021

Doesn't time fly, it's almost the 35th Anniversary of Salamander (4th July 1986 - 4th July 2021), kaguyadepth is releasing a new music next month to celebrate.

It's going to be released on 4th July 2021 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Salamander, this will contain music from an imaginary game called "UNDINE".

http://kaguyadepth.jp/2021/05/29/kdcd-21031.html

UNDINE is an original work, but the setting is the prequel to Salamander 2, for more information see the project site below.

http://kaguyadepth.jp/2021/04/03/undine_project.html

6th April 2021

Back in 2012 some interesting rom hacks turned up for Arcade Gradius III and Gradius IV Fukkatsu on a Japanese website.

These add some interesting stuff to the arcade games, I can no longer find the original site but I still had to files in my archive, so have decided to post them on the site as some people may have never seen them before.

I've also made a dedicated page called Games Games Rom Hacking in the Downloads sections that contains all the information.

5th April 2021

Super Famicom (SNES) Gradius III SA-1 has been updated to 1.6, a new patch to slow the game down!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9csScQY5T8&t=4s

As the boss speeds were way too fast compared to the original game, here's a quote from the site.

"Another version uses GuyPerfect's spdwn add-on that reduces the speeds of most of the Gradius III bosses, making it closer to the original game speed, but still without slowdown being used."

https://github.com/VitorVilela7/SA1-Root

3rd April 2021

Added some music related stuff from my file archive to the Multimedia - Music Other section, moved the MIDI files into one archive as the files are very small these days.

Also added my PSD source files for the WinAmp skins I made back in 2002.

Lots of game play, advert and cameo videos added to the Downloads - Movies and Music section.

Slowly making my way through the file archive.

Cleaned up the Site History page, archived 2019 from this page to the that page.

21st February 2021

Tinyus - An arcade quality Amiga OCS port of Gradius-Nemesis now has a beta release!

http://www.indieretronews.com/2021/02/tinyus-arcade-quality-amiga-ocs-port-of.html

11th February 2021

I just got delivered the new music CD collection from Konami.

Music From Konami Arcade Shooting - GFCA501-10_S - 20-01-2021

This is a 10 CD music collection, I didn't get the Special Bonus as that was only if you preordered from Konami Style (which you cannot as it's for Japan only).

 

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Site History - 2020

23rd December 2020

Spolous (made by suppon) has been released and it's actually pretty good, you can play it directly in your browser too.

https://twitter.com/Suppon2014

At first I thought 'this starts off slow and very easy' but the difficulty curve is great.

https://unityroom.com/games/spolous100

Also on Itch.io (play it in your browser or download for Windows).

https://suppon.itch.io/spolous

5th December 2020

Otomedius G (Gorgeous!) and Otomedius X (Excellent!) (Both Japanese) Title Updates added to the Downloads section.

Note these are only the game patches and not the complete game, they are of useful if you're emulating the games in xenia (xenia-canary supports Title Updates).

I only managed to get Otomedius X (Excellent!) working with the Title Update (xenia-canary), all the DLC and extra characters work fine (I will not be posting any DLC as you can still buy it on Xbox live), the game has some graphic glitches on some stages.

What are Title Updates?

Games on consoles like the Xbox 360 get updates to patch new things like DLC and to correct issues with games, because the DVD is read only, Xbox live downloads the patch and patches the game in real time when you run it.

Otomedius G (Gorgeous!) was to patch the menus for the two extra DLC characters.

Otomedius X (Excellent!) patch changes a lot of the weapon strengths, fixed some slow down on some stages and balanced the game difficulty.

Also more fan music from kaguyadepth, CD coming soon! (20th December 2020).

逆ディウスⅡ~望野のアフーゴ~ (Gyakudiusu Ⅱ ~ bōya no afūgo ~), translates as Reversedius II ~Mochino no Afuugo~

8th November 2020

Here are two fan made games by Ace from the old GHW forums (Ace9921 - https://www.youtube.com/user/Ace9921).

Gradius The Dark Armada and Unofficial Salamander 3, see the Downloads Games section for the files.

Please note that these files are old (the games were made in 2009), not made by me and may not work correctly on modern systems, you're on your own with these old games.

1st November 2020

Bubble Memory was a commercial failure and died too easily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_System

Some Konami games like Gradius, TwinBee and others in the arcades used Konami Bubble System for game storage, Gradius did have a later rom release and went for over ¥1,000,000 the last time I saw one for sale.

However there may be hope for all the broken Bubble System boards out there, an interesting development I just found out about, a Bubble System emulator board for original Bubble System games called Bubbless.

Bubbless GX400 Bubble memory unit

Also here's some images of the box the board would come in, it's quite cool as it looks the same as the original metal box the Bubble System is housed in on the original game.

https://illegalfunction.wixsite.com/bubbless/bubbless - Translated to English

It's not cheap (¥58,362 about £430 or $557) and is currently out of stock but it is a way of making original boards work again if you can get hold of one.

https://www.beep-shop.com/ec/products/list?name=Bubbless

At this stage I don't think I will get one as my Gradius board currently doesn't work at all, even if the Bubble Memory is broken, you should still get the warming up message and Morning Music, I don't a display or audio at all, maybe in the future I'll look at getting it looked at.

I just read their site specs and it says that to use this board you need a working Bubble System to copy the Bubble Memory, so it will only work if you either have a working board or know someone who can read the roms from their board.

Good for preserving a working board but seems to be a huge oversight as if your game is dead then you would have no way to copy the roms onto it.

Good for copyright protection, bad for game preservation.

27th October 2020

More fan art added, this time some nice art by GeoSwordRX35.

23rd October 2020

Added information on English translations for the new CD collection from Konami.

It's not out until next year (20th January 2021) but it is looking to be a very nice collection of tunes coming on ten discs.

ミュージック フロム コナミアーケードシューティング(CD)
Music From Konami Arcade Shooting (CD)

https://www.konamistyle.jp/products/detail.php?product_id=109620

29th May 2020

Here's the sixteenth and final logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

Based on the arcade title screen logo from Gradius.

Well 35 years ago Konami released Gradius in the arcades, that was the start of a this great adventure.

The game that started it all... just one more credit... Vic Viper go for launch...

I also made font sheets while making all the sixteen different types of font logos.

28th May 2020

Here's the fifteenth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th NES Logo, Box logo for Gradius on the NES.

27th May 2020

Here's the fourteenth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th PS2G4 Logo, based on Gradius IV Fukkatsu on PlayStation2 and Arcade.

Often overlooked but well worth playing.

26th May 2020

Here's the thirteenth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th PSGG Logo, based on Gradius Gaiden on PlayStation.

My favourite game in the series, excellent music, speech and a choice of 4 ships, Falchion β is my favourite.

25th May 2020

Here's the twelfth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th ACG3 Logo, based on Gradius III ~Densetsu kara Shinwa e~ arcade poster.

Great addition and also the hardest game in the series.

24th May 2020

Here's the eleventh style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th PS2GV Logo, based on Gradius V on PlayStation2.

Now this needs a remaster, also widescreen support would be great.

23rd May 2020

Here's the tenth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th GBA Logo, this is based on the Gradius Generations, Gradius Galaxies and Gradius Advance on the Game Boy Advance.

Playing this on a large TV, it holds up and is still a challenge.

22nd May 2020

Here's the ninth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th ACG2 Logo, this is based on the Gradius II GOFER no Yabou on Arcade.

Vulcan Venture (the western name for the game) was the second arcade PCB I owned back in 1992 and it's still my favourite arcade release.

19th May 2020

逆ディウス Gyakudius (translates as Reversedius) a fan made music CD by kaguyadepth, it contains some nice 8bit style music.

Also here's the eighth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th SFCG3 Logo, this is based on the Gradius III on the Super Famicom (SNES).

16th May 2020

Here's the seventh style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th MSX2 Logo, this is based on the Gradius 2 on the MSX (Instruction Manual).

14th May 2020

Here's the sixth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th MSX2 Logo, this is based on the Gradius 2 on the MSX.

12th May 2020

Here's the fifth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th GB2 Logo, this is based on the Gradius II and Nemesis II on Game Boy.

9th May 2020

Here's the fourth style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th GB Mono Logo, base on the UK release of Nemesis on Game Boy.

6th May 2020

Here's the third different style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th MSX Mono Logo.

1st May 2020

Here's the second different style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

GameStone Gradius 35th MSX Logo.

26th April 2020

Here's one of the different style logos I've made to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Gradius on 29th May 2020.

I'll be posting them over the next month and on the anniversary I'll post the actual font image sheets I also made.

GameStone Gradius 35th GB Logo.

19th April 2020

More hi-res scans, almost all the C64, Spectrum and Amstrad games I own (still got some cardboard game to do).

C64 - Konami Arcade Collection - 10 Games by Imagine - Cassettegamestone_35th_anniversary_gradius_font
C64 - Konami Arcade Collection - 10 Games by Imagine - Disk - German
C64 - Nemesis - The Hit Squad 16 - Cassette
C64 - Salamander - Cassette
C64 - Salamander - Disk
C64 - Salamander - ERBE - Cassette - Spanish
C64 - Salamander - The Hit Squad 17 - Cassette
CPC - Konami Arcade Collection - 10 Games by Imagine - Cassette
CPC - Konami Arcade Collection - 10 Games by Imagine - Disk
CPC - Nemesis - The Hit Squad 15 - Cassette
CPC - Salamander - Cassette
CPC - Salamander - Disk
CPC - Salamander - The Hit Squad 16 - Cassette
ZXS - Konami Arcade Collection - 10 Games by Imagine - Cassette
ZXS - Konami Arcade Collection - 10 Games by Imagine - Disk
ZXS - Nemesis - The Hit Squad 15 - Cassette
ZXS - Salamander - Cassette
ZXS - Salamander - Disk
ZXS - Salamander - ERBE - Cassette - Spanish
ZXS - Salamander - ERBE Especial 8 - Cassette - Spanish
ZXS - Salamander - Konami - Cassette
ZXS - Salamander - The Hit Squad 16 - Cassette
ZXS - Salamander - The Hit Squad 16 - Cassette - Alt

16th April 2020

I just bought this release so I thought I'd scan it to complete the DS game scans.

DS - Konami Classics Series Arcade Hits - NTR P ACXE - NTR-ACXE-USA

12th April 2020

More hi-res scans, Game Boy and DS.

DS - Konami Arcade Classics - NTR P ACXP - NTR-ACXP-EUR
DS - Konami Arcade Collection - NTR-P-A5KJ-JPN
GB - Konami GB Collection Vol.1 - DMG-AJIJ-JPN - RK140-J1
GB - Konami GB Collection Vol.2 - DMG-AJJJ-JPN - RK141-J1
GB - Konami GB Collection Vol.3 - DMG-AJKJ-JPN - RK142-J1
GB - Konami GB Collection Vol.4 - DMG-AJLJ-JPN - RK143-J1
GB - Nemesis - DMG-NMA
GB - Nemesis II - DMG-NEA
GB - Parodius da! - DMG-PVJ
GB - TwinBee da!! - DMG-TDJ

7th April 2020

More hi-res scans, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance.

GB - Nemesis - DMG-NM-UKV
GB - Nemesis II The Return Of The Hero - DMG-NE-UKV
GBA - Gradius Advance - AGB-AGAP-EUR
GBA - Gradius Galaxies - AGB-AGAE-USA
GBA - Gradius Generation - AGB-AGAJ-JPN - RK256-J1
GBA - Gradius Generation - AGB-AGAJ-JPN-1 - RK256-J2
GBA - Konami Wai Wai Racing Advance - AGB-AKWJ-JPN - RK212-J1
GBA - TwinBee (Famicom Mini 19) - AGB-FTWJ-JPN - RC807

Thanks to Gradian for supplying some USA Game Boy and NES manual scans.

GB - Nemesis - DMG-NM-USA
NES - Gradius - NES-GR-USA

6th April 2020

Last of the hi-res scans for the X68000, all the MSX games I own and one Windows game.

MSX - GOFER no Yabou ~Episode II~ - RC764
MSX - Gradius - RC742
MSX - Gradius 2 - RC751
MSX - Parodius ~Tako wa chikyuu o sukuu~ - RC759
MSX - Salamander - RC758
MSX - Space Manbow - RC768
MSX - TwinBee - RC740
WIN - Gradius Deluxe Pack - ME203-J1
X68 - Salamander - CZ-218AS
X68 - TwinBee - CZ-217AS

5th April 2020

More hi-res scans added, X1 and X68000 games.

X1 - Gradius - RA900
X68 - Detana!! TwinBee - RA958
X68 - Gradius II ~GOFER no Yabou~ - RA957
X68 - Nemesis '90 Kai - GS-166
X68 - Parodius da! -Shinwa kara o-warai e- - RA955

4th April 2020

More hi-res scans added, NES and a start on the X68000.

C64 Gradius US Disk version, Gradius Board Game, three more NES games, Life Force Salamander UK and Korean versions, Parodius UK version and the X68000 of Gradius.

3rd April 2020

Hey, I finally got around to doing something Gradius related.

I've scan the UK edition of NES Gradius manual, box and cartridge scan, 600dpi and a few 1200dpi scans too.

Also scanned the Japanese release too, I was inspired.

It's in the Downloads - Hi-Res Scans section.

26th January 2020

Otomedius English Translation update, nothing added to the game, however I've decided to add some of my source help files and scripts on how I made the translated version patch files (also included in the download), these may be of use for others to follow in patching the game further, I may add more in the future.

Now that Otomedius original arcade game no longer works in Windows 10 (worked fine in Windows 7), this is not that much a surprise as the original game run on Windows XP Embedded, this make make it impossible to continue the translation effort until MAME catches up or I have an old machine for just one game.

Otomedius has been in MAME for some time (not working), hopefully once it's working it should be a little more easier to progress with the translation effort.

4th January 2020

Cleaned up the downloads game section, added some game ISO images for the Saturn, PlayStation, PlayStation2 and PlayStation Portable.

Added all the demo and beta release roms I could find for various systems.

Cleaned up some broken links, removed some no longer needed thumbnails, made the whole site wider (it's now 1200px rather than 1040) as screens have got bigger and wider over the years.

 

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Site History - 2019

12th October 2019

Changed all the magnet links to torrent files, hopefully this will sort out the downloading issues.

21st September 2019

Last year I bought a secondhand VHS video recorder with a build-in DVD recorder, I then spent a few weeks capturing all the Gradius videos I have.

In April 2019 I encoded all those videos on the PC to h265 HEVC, as they are still a little too large for the site, there will be torrents just like the Salamander anime I put up earlier.

These releases also include 300dpi scans of all the artwork with each release.

They are in the Downloads - Movies and Music - Game Simulation Videos section

8th September 2019

Well today I thought I would go through the site code and clean up a few things.

So I've archived some of the What's New section.

Also moved the GHW site back to the GameStone domain (I have an SSL certificate for GameStone),the gradiushomeworld.co.uk links will still work however they will get redirected to the GameStone - Gradius Home World section..

GameStone has always been the master domain anyway.

3rd June 2019

R-Type Final 2 Kickstarter has started.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/granzella/r-type-final-2-aiming-for-a-brand-new-the-best-shmup-ever

9th May 2019

Fans come to the rescue again.

Imagine playing Gradius III on the Super Famicom (SNES) without slowdown!

Well now you can, amazing work on (in my opinion) the best version of Gradius III has just got better.

https://twitter.com/HackerVilela/status/1126003826614513665

https://github.com/VitorVilela7/SA1-Root

20th April 2019

How can Konami mess such a simple thing up.

The Arcade Archives (PS4) games contain all the different releases of a game (Gradius II GOFER no Yabou also has Vulcan Venture as well as other minor rom revisions).

So this version in the UK will only have Vulcan Venture and not Gradius II GOFER no Yabou.

So, the collection doesn't have all the different releases of each game, no physical release and as a collector I have other ways of playing these games legal or otherwise (eg. Gradius II GOFER no Yabou - JAMMA PCB, PlayStation, PlayStation Portable, Windows 95, PS4 Arcade Archives, MAME and probably many others).

All they had to do is package the Arcade Archives games with a 'choose your game' select screen and that's it but they chose something else.

So I don't think I'll be buying this unless something changes.

8th April 2019

I've re-encoded the Salamander Anime in a more up to date codec (h265), files are much smaller.

However as they are still too large for the web server so I'm using a torrent magnet link again, if this works out a have a few of the game simulations videos too.

UPDATE:Fixed the magnet link as I copied it wrong from the older release (wrong hash).

magnet salamander.anime.-.dvdrip.h265.aac.japanese.-.english.subtitles.-.720x480 - 887MB

Encoding Date....: 7th April 2019
Source...........: DVD
Runtime..........: 1x0154.03 min-1x0251.43 min-1x0352.12 min
Size.............: Varies
Video Codec......: H.265/x265/HEVC
Video Bitrate....: Constant Quality 20 RF
Framerate........: NTSC 29.970 fps
Resolution.......: 720x480
Aspect Ratio.....: 4:3 (1.500)
Audio Codec......: AAC - 2 Channel - 160Kbps - 48KHz
Audio Language...: Japanese
Subtitles........: English - updated 4th March 2010
Genre............: Anime

20th March 2019

Anniversary Collection Arcade Classics for PS4 Xbox One, Steam and Switch.

アニバーサリーコレクション アーケードクラシックス

Haunted Castle, Typhoon (A-Jax), Nemesis (Gradius), Vulcan Venture (Gradius II), Life Force (Salamander), Thunder Cross, Scramble and TwinBee

Released as digital only on 18th April 2019 for ¥3000 or $19.99.

23rd February 2019

I've notice some old forum members are joining the John Smith Legacy Discord server I also run, you're more than welcome to join but please note thatthat section is really only for the John Smith Legacy Minecraft Resource Pack, if your a Minecraft player and use the JSL pack welcome.

However soas not to confuse the current members of the John Smith Legacy Discord, I've decided to start a Gradius Home World Discord too as I guess the forum wont be coming back anytime soon.

https://discord.gg/H6SZ3SK

23rd January 2019

All dynamic scripts have been updated to the newer way of doing things, so the site should be back to where it was (minus the forum).

Remove lots of external broken links in theFan Games and Links section.

I'm thinking about maybe starting a Gradius Home World Discord,that would be much easier to manage than starting another forum and it does allow real time chat too.

21st January 2019

Sadly the forum has been taken offline, my host no longer supports PHP 5.6 which the old version of vBulletin used, also it's notcompatible with the newer PHP 7.2.0 or higher.

Now the choice is to find some new forum software or just shut it down, I've decided to go with option two as the forum was pretty much abandoned anyway, with Konami all but given up with Gradius it's hard to update a forum with very little posts or user interaction.

Also some of the site is broken too, I'll try to sort the scripts out over the next few weeks, this is quite a pain.

UPDATE: Fixed the download script so at least you can still get the games, as for the rest this will take some time to learn the new way of scripting.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2018

Nothing happened this year!

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2017

28th August 2017

Twenty 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.

3rd August 2017

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.

29th July 2017

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.

29th June 2017

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 1920x1080 and the x4 is for 3840x2160 4K gaming.

I may actually find a use for them at some point.

Font - for 800x480 Games

Font x2 - for 1920x1080 Games

Font x4 - for 3840x2160 Games

1st March 2017

Updated GameStone's Chiptune Collection with some new tunes and also made it a single archive to make it easier to download.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2016

27th October 2016

Audited all the arcade game roms and tested them in MAME 0.179.

23rd October 2016

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.

19th August 2016

Added the X68000 game Hellhound to the Downloads section, this is a great fan based game that's in the Gradius style in more ways than one.

4th July 2016

It's the 30th Anniversary of the Konami arcade game Salamander, excellent speech, music and gameplay.

25th May 2016

After six years I finally started again on the translation for the arcade release of Otomedius, this was one large update that translates all the graphic based text.

This is also for the later GGG-J-A-A-2008041801 version of the game that has all six characters.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2015

21st December 2015

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.

8th December 2015

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

17th October 2015

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.

6th September 2015

Updated all the MAME games to the latest versions (0.165), also added some missing games.

5th September 2015

Added two different versions of Gradius and Salamander for the C64 to the Download section.

29th May 2015

Wow, it's been 30 years since Konami released the humble game Gradius in the arcades.

So lets celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Gradius.

12th May 2015

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.

15th April 2015

Gradius V has now been released for the PS3 today in Japan.

13th February 2015

More Konami Gradius PS4 behind the scenes.

Part 4

8th February 2015

Some more Gradius PS4 stuff, some interesting artwork.

7th February 2015

Moved Gradius Home World to it's own domain

2nd February 2015

Gradius on PS4, 29th January 2015, ¥823, Arcade Archives (PS4), this also includes the overseas version Nemesis.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2014

26th December 2014

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 Gradius Corner pixel art to version 8.

Bricked up the doorway and moved the machines around, less Solar Assault but much better spacing.

21st December 2014

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.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2013

10th November 2013

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 too.

18th September 2013

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).

See GameStone's Collection for some more images and information.

24th March 2013

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.

This is 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.

3rd February 2013

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.

5th January 2013

Some of you long term readers of the site may have seen the Riccardo F 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 - http://www.youtube.com/user/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.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2012

1st November 2012

Here's some images for the last order of the year.

See GameStone's Collection for some more images and information.

13th October 2012

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.

22nd September 2012

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.

See GameStone's Collection for some more images and information.

22nd July 2012

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.

See GameStone's Collection for some more images and information.

17th July 2012

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

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 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

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..

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.

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

Solar Assault 50inch Version

Solar Assault 29inch Version

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.

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).

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.

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.

7th March 2012

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 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. /p>

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

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.

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.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2011

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、480 MSP)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

20th December 2011

Another new stage has been released.

EX2 エビス星ステージ(2011/12/20 配信、480 MSP)

EX2 Ebisu Star Stage (Released 20/12/2011, 480MSP)

13th December 2011

Well I'm back after a main system upgrade, still a few things to sort out, so here are some new updates for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) .

Finally a new stage has been released.

聖グラディウス学園ステージ(2011/12/13 配信、480 MSP)

St Gradius School Stage (Released 13/12/2011, 480MSP)

Also last week two Icon Packs and another Uniform Pack were released.

ゲーマーアイコン (2011/12 /06 配信、80MSP)

Game Icons (Released 06/12/2011, 80MSP)

ストラーフ/ココロ・ベルモンド/ヴェノム/オペレッタ/ダークフォース

Strarf/Belmont/Venom/Operetta/Dark Force

ゲーマーアイコン (2011/12 /06 配信、80MSP)

Game Icons Strarf/Belmont/Venom/Operetta/Dark Force (Released 06/12/2011, 80MSP)

エスメラルダ/ポイニー/華風魔/アーンヴァル/ハイパー亜乃亜

Esmeralda/Poini/Hanafuuma/Arnval/Hyper Anoa

聖グラディウス学園の体操服Ver. 月士華風魔 (2011/12 /06 配信、160 MSP)

St Gradius School Gymnastics Clothing Ver. Gesshi Hanafuuma (Released 06/12/2011, 160MSP)

29th November 2011

Even more Japanese DLC, three characters costumes to go.

エプロンドレスVer. ポイニー・クーン (2011/11/29 配信、160 MSP)

Apron Dress Ver. Poini Coon (Released 29/11/2011, 160MSP)

浴衣Ver. アーンヴァル (2011/11/29 配信、440MSP)

Bathrobe Ver. Arnval (Released 29/11/2011, 160MSP)

Total DLC (so far) costs almost as much as the game was to buy.

Game 7140円 - Total DLC 6480円.

22nd November 2011

More Japanese DLC, five characters costumes to go.

バクテリアン軍士官服Ver. 5ティタ・ニューム (2011/11/22 配信、160 MSP)

Bacterian Soldiers Uniform Ver. Tita Nium (Released 22/11/2011, 160MSP)

レストラン制服Ver. エスメラルダ (2011/11/22 配信、160 MSP)

Restaurant Uniform Ver. Esmeralda (Released 22/11/2011, 160MSP)

Also I've decided to go back to the random logo on this page.

15th November 2011

Another week and another Japanese DLC, seven characters costumes to go.

吊るしのドレスVer. ジオール・トゥイー (2011/11/15 配信、160 MSP)

The Hanging Dress Ver. Diol Twee (Released 15/11/2011, 160MSP)

王家のドレスVer. マドカ (2011/11/15 配信、160 MSP)

Royal Dress Ver. Madoka (Released 15/11/2011, 160MSP)

8th November 2011

More DLC for the Japanese release of Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!), this time Uniform packs..

聖グラディウス学園の制服Ver. 空羽亜乃亜 (2011/11/08 配信、160 MSP)

St. Gradius School Uniform Ver. Aoba Anoa (Released 08/11/2011, 160MSP)

伝説の航空服Ver. エリュー・トロン (2011/11/08 配信、160 MSP)

Legendary Flight Suit Ver. Erul Tron (Released 08/11/2011, 160MSP)

3rd November 2011

Both versions of Otomedius Excellent are now in stock at Amazon.com, so go and buy this great game.

Amazon - $29.99

Amazon Limited Edition - $49.99

1st November 2011

What I believe will be the last music pack for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) is out.

Vol。9 ココロ・ベルモンドパック(2011/11/01 配信、440MSP)

Vol.9 Kokoro Belmont Pack (Released 01/11/2011, 440MSP)

Also after months of delays the US release Otomedius Excellent is finally out, or is it, Amazon and Konami still show the Pre Order banner, maybe later today that will change.

UPDATE - Konami's site now shows BUY NOW rather than PRE ORDER but Amazon shows the Collector Special Edition as 'Temporarily out of stock'.and the Standard as 'Usually ships within 1 to 3 months', strange for a game that came out today.

UPDATE 2 - Finally got around to translating the track names for all the music packs

25th October 2011

Another week, another music pack DLC is out now for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!).

Vol。8 アーンヴァルパック(2011/10/25 配信、440MSP)

Vol.8 Arnval Pack (Released 25/10/2011, 440MSP)

This only leaves Pack 9 to go, it's almost like their in a rush to release all the music packs before the US release.

18th October 2011

Konami are on a roll now, another music pack DLC is out now for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!).

Vol。2エリュー・トロンパック(2011/10/18 配信、440MSP)

Vol. 2 Erul Tron Pack (Released 18/10/2011, 440MSP)

This only leaves Pack 8 and 9 to go, it would be nice to see a Stage pack but I guess we will have to wait for that.

11th October 2011

Yet another music pack DLC is out now for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!).

Vol。4 ジオール・トゥイーパック(2011/10/11 配信、440MSP)

Vol. 4 Diol Twee Pack (Released 11/10/2011, 440MSP)

4th October 2011

It's been a long wait but finally the latest character for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) has been release by Konami.

ココロ・ベルモンド (声:原田ひとみ) (2011/10/04 配信、400MSP)

Belmont Heart (Voice: Harada Hitomi) (Released 04/10/2011, 400MSP)

28th September 2011

Konami has released a large update for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレン.ト!) Xbox 360.

Lots of difficulty balancing and other stuff, see this discussion thread for more details, thanks go to dieKatze88 for pointing it out.

19th September 2011

After years of searching the quest is over, I've finally got my hands on one of the rare Gradius games, the great Windows 95 games collection - Gradius Deluxe Pack.

See GameStone's Collection for more images of the collection.

I managed to get hold of the disc only last month, but this time I found a complete boxed version, won the auction and it's all mine in excellent addition, this is the only one I have ever seen available and it's all mine.

Also got the excellent Raiden IV for Xbox 360 (Special Edition with the soundtrack CD), cracking game, excellent music and great playability, well worth playing.

Also picked up a few other items too, more on the way.

I'm working on a database for all the merchandise with information, prices, images etc, as it's getting a little out of control to manage, this will take months to complete but should make it easier to see what's available and to show the true extent of the collection.

14th September 2011

Well, looks like the US release of Otomedius Excellent has been put back again to 1st November 2011.

5th September 2011

KONAMI SHOOTING COLLECTION (CD) LC2039-2048, complete track listing are now shown on Konami Style, this looks to be great music collection from Konami.

English translation of the track name also complete.

30th August 2011

One more DLC is out now for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!).

Vol。10 ストラーフ パック(2011/08 /30 配信、440MSP)

Vol. 10 Strarf Pack (Released 30/08/2011, 440MSP)

Added all the track names and music arrangers

It looks like there will be ten music packs, at 440MSP each that's 4400MSP total, with the extra stages, characters and icons, it will add up to more than the actual game!

14th August 2011

I finally got around to transferring my precious save games from my PlayStation Memory cards to the PC using uLaunchELF.

While using MemcardRex on the PC, I found it has an option to view and rip the small icon associated with each game save, as some are animated I decided to ripped all the Gradius related stuff.

MemcardRex (PlayStation Memory Card Manager).

Gradius Deluxe Pack, 3 frames.

Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus

Even though they are only 16x16 pixels, they are quite detailed (the above are scaled to 64x64 pixels).

See the Downloads Sprite Rips section for the images.

13th August 2011

Here are some images of the latest merchandise I've just bought for my ever expanding collection.

Yes I had to have it, the First Edition of Otomedius オトメディウス ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK LC1852-54.

Also some demo versions of Gradius III AND IV & Gradius Deluxe Pack.

Plus you can't miss the Laser Disc for Konami Shooting Best, see GameStone's Collection for more images.

One thing I will say for a game that came out twenty years ago, the Xexex PCB and instructions are in absolutely mint condition.

30th July 2011

I've converted this pages code to HTML5, this allows me to you the new video and audio tags.

Only this page at the moment has been changed as my scripts would need updating, I thought I would make use of the new audio tag, this is only just for fun and doesn't work in all browsers, I've tested it in Firefox 5 but does not work in Internet Explorer 8 but should be fine in IE9.

Gradius - Coin

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Gradius II - Coin

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Gradius III - Coin

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Thunder Cross - Title

Your browser does not support the audio element.

26th July 2011

Lots more DLC is out now for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!).

Vol。3 マドカパック(2011/07/26 配信、440MSP)

Vol. 3 Madoka Pack (Released 26/07/2011, 440MSP)

Vol。5ティタ・ニュームパック(2011/07/26 配信、440MSP)

Vol. 5 Tita Nium Pack (Released 26/07/2011, 440MSP)

Vol。7 月士華風魔パック(2011/07/26 配信、440MSP)

Vol. 7 Gesshi Hanafuuma Pack (Released 26/07/2011, 440MSP)

Update: added all the track names and music arrangers

8th July 2011

More Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) DLC.

Only Game Icons (ゲーマーアイコン) this time

アイコン1(2011/07/08 配信、80MSP)

Icon 1 (Released 08/07/2011, 80MSP)

亜乃亜、エリュー、マドカ、ジオール、ティタ

Anoa, Erul,, Madoka, Diol, Tita

5th July 2011

A new music collection from Konami, I've added track listing and translations.

This mega sized 10 disc collection contains music from:-

Salamander, TwinBee, Thunder Cross, XEXEX and many others.

Release Date: 22nd September 2011

Price: 13,650円 (tax included)

Specifications: Disc Album 12cmCD 10 (Maxi Case)

Case Three-way back

48 page booklet included

Now this looks like a great collection of tunes.

4th July 2011

Games and Merchandise update, my last order arrived last week but I've only just got around to photographing them yesterday.

See GameStone's Collection page for more images.

2nd July 2011

Updated the Emulation section as some of the emulators have been updated or changed web addresses.

24th June 2011

First DLC is out now for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) .

Vol。1空羽亜乃亜パック(2011/06/24配信、440MSP)

Vol. 1 Aoba Anoa Pack (Released 24/06/2011, 440MSP)

ストラーフ (声:茅原実里) 400MSP

Strarf (Voice: Chihara Minori) 400MSP

12th June 2011

After a week a drawing, editing and layouts, here's GameStone's newest logo.

It's a little late as the game has been out for almost three years but here it is:-

Otomedius G (Gorgeous!).

Lets hope Otomedius Excellent is a great success and Konami then decides to release Otomedius Gorgeous in the west, If Konami does go this route they have my blessing to use the custom logo for that release.

Note: The image below links to the quarter resolution versions, see the Art Work section for half and full resolution versions.

7th June 2011

Updated the Otomedius Excellent logo again, I decided to make the word 'Excellent' 25% bigger compared to the 0.6 revision.

Also added text to the image to show it's NOT the official Konami game logo as some people are getting a little confused.

Note: The images below link to the quarter resolution versions, see the Art Work section for half and full resolution versions.

4th June 2011

A new Gradius game in the arcades from KPE.

Gradius The Slot

1st June 2011

Check out these wonderful videos by the talented Gradius fan - Riccardo Faidutti (aka rickonami).

Gradius II Gofer no Yabou Intro 3D HD PC-ENGINE at 1080p

Gradius III Intro 3D HD SNES at 1080p

30th May 2011

I'm disappointed with the logo used on the US release of the game and made my own version last year, I've now put together some box art of how it would look on the official release.

I also made some fake PS3 and PSP box art for the fun of it.

Note that the images are only linking to the Quarter Resolution versions, see GameStone Artwork section for half and full resolution versions..

29th May 2011

Started some translations for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) menus.

21st May 2011

Moved the Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) section around a little, some information added about the weapon cards.

The game has been out a month and still no DLC yet!

I've finally got around to adding the new merchandise I bought at the same time as the game to GameStone's Collection.

12th May 2011

Added US box for Otomedius Excellent and adjusted the release date, it's now the 19th July 2011, also adjusted the count down to reflect the new date.

7th May 2011

Finally got my game, I'll add images and stuff much later.

21st April 2011

Well the game has finally come out, i should be getting my copy by the end of next week.

19th April 2011

Oops, it would seam that Konami made some mistakes on the Otomedius Original Soundtrack disc collection.

I've updated my track names with the revised names.

On a brighter note, it's only two days till the game now!!!

16th April 2011

The game I've had on preorder for the last 92 days and have known about for almost a year is almost upon us.

Just under 5 days until the official launch of Konami's newest Xbox 360 shoot'em-up game Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!).

I can't wait!

3rd April 2011

Added some stage information and moved the Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) section around a bit.

26th March 2011

More merchandise added to my collection, see GameStone's Collection for more images.

I've found a new Parodius Pachi game today made by KPE called Gokuraku Parodius KPE パチスロ 極楽パロディウス.

It looks like a fruit machine type Pachinko game, the official site has wallpapers, screen saver to download and a video advertising the game.

I also just ripped Vic Viper from the site for you viewing pleasure.

25th March 2011

More screen shots added to Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!)

Also the Otomedius soundtrack is out now.

20th March 2011

I've translated some of the menus used in Otomedius G (Gorgeous!) オトメディウスG(ゴージャス!) this should help with playing the game.

18th March 2011

Konami has decided to postponed the release of Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) in Japan until next month (Thursday 21st April 2011) due the earthquake in Japan.

Read Konami's short message on the link below.

Moved some of the screen shots about and added some more, also now listed the development screen shot separately.

12th March 2011

Konami have posted Trailer 01 for Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) on Japanese Xbox Live, added some screen captures from the video.

6th March 2011

I've added a celebratory Otomedius Home World! logo to this page, this will be displayed for a few months to celebrate the new game which comes out in a few weeks.

Newest Windy Icon (on the right) much smoother than the original 64px version with lots more detail.

I can feel the next version of Gradius Corner will be done soon.

Gradius Corner Updated to version 4, the image is way too big for this page now, see the art work section for details as well as the other views of the Windy arcade icon..

2nd March 2011

Cleaned up the composer names for Otomedius G (Gorgeous!) as well as renamed some of the tunes.

Added the Japanese and English CD track listing for the Otomedius ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK, 24-03-2011 - LC1852-1854 - 3600円.

Only THREE weeks to go....

27th February 2011

Second release (v0.2) of the unofficial 9th CD to compliment Gradius Ultimate Collection, Gradius Generations was just way too quiet compared to the other tracks in the collection.

26th February 2011

Reorganised the Merchandise and consolidated the various multimedia sections into one long page for each section to make it easier to find stuff and update.

Also added the new Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) badge and phone cleaner.

Merchandise

I've put together an unofficial 9th CD to compliment Gradius Ultimate Collection with some of the missing tunes.

Added the 40 achievements for the game Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) , thanks for dieKatze88 for the link to the information.

22nd February 2011

I been acquiring new merchandise over the last few months, so I thought while the collection was unpacked I would take some photos, so here they are, they are original resolution images so you can see the detail.

GameStone's Collection

18th February 2011

Windy 128px Version

Even more Windy machine icons, this time a 128px version with much more detail, only the front of the machine done so far as this is a work in progress.

You can see the detail that's added with each resolution change.

2px, 64px v1, 64px v2, 64px v3 (all resized to make them the same size as the 128px version).

Finally got around to added the hidden tune cheat (A Long Time Ago) to Gradius III Arcade - Cheats Section

Also only 33 days till the "Excellent" new game from Konami.

28th January 2011

I decided to make a rear view of the Windy machines but I found out they don't line up too good back to back, so I also needed to edit the front views yet again.

Gradius Corner v3, new Windy, Windy II Machines, Exit door and less seats on the two player games.

I may start making new machines like Solar Assault and Otomedius to give the arcade some variety.

Based on the new edited Windy icons which now include the original marquee.

Windy - (Pink) - 1 and 2 Player control panels.

Windy II - (Blue) - 1 and 2 Player control panels.

16th January 2011

After making the Windy machine icon I thought I would create a small pixel art arcade.

I had to make some one and two player Windy and Windy II machines as well as posters and chairs.

15th January 2011

More Otomedius X (Excellent!) stuff leaking out, hi-res box scan and T301 card.

14th January 2011

More Windy icon editing, as you can see I've added a lot more detail to the original 64px version.

You can even see the Konami logo on the top of the machine and almost read Windy on the side..

12th January 2011

Yeah, Otomedius X (Excellent!) オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) has a Japanese release date, countdown adjusted to the new date.

Plus a special download card:- Awards Edition; Vic RV "T-301" Ver when you buy the game.

Konamistyle official page, lots of information, three different releases, sound tacks and more, the marketing machine is kicking into gear.

Thanks go to.dieKatze88 for the link.

More music from Konami, this time the very nice collection of all the Otomedius tracks.

Otomedius ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK, 24-03-2011 - LC1852-1854 - 3600円

This is turning into an expensive year for Gradius stuff.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2010

30th December 2010

I thought I would make a double res version of the Windy Arcade machine icon.

30th December 2010

I thought I would make a double res version of the Windy Arcade machine icon.

Quite a bit smoother than the original 32x32 pixel version.

28th December 2010

The front cover has now been released as has the complete track listing.

GameStone's translated track listing.

Gradius Ultimate Collection (CD) LC1949-1956

2600円 (£98 or $152), comes out 13th January 2011.

25th December 2010

Merry Xmas to all.

Here's a just for fun Japanese Salamander Arcade machine icon, this was based on the original operators manual line art and Konaken's art work for the marquee and side panel colours.

22nd December 2010

Some of the navigation icons were looking a little crap, so I've decided to rework and redo some of them, I've redone the PSP and made a generic touch screen Mobile Phone icon.

Also made an excellent rendition of the Konami Windy arcade machine icon for the arcade section, you can almost see Gradius II GOFER no Yabou title screen.

21st December 2010

For those that don't know you can now play TwinBee and Detana!! TwinBee on Game Room for Windows and Xbox 360.

You can also play a variety of Konami's other games and some other not so classic games..

On another note I may have to add a new section for Games Virtual for the re-released games, as the current method of putting them in the various game section is a little messy at the moment.

Also cleaned up some site code as some of the hacks for layouts were getting a little messy for me to cope with when updating.

25th November 2010

Well it looks like Otomedius X Excellent! オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) is now delayed till next year.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 Release Schedule now lists the game release date as 2011年春 (Spring 2011), Konami's official site is also listing Spring 2011.

Konami has also posted a short message for the games delayed release.

Hopefully this will not turn out like Gradius V, when that game was announced to the actual release was 18 months later.

21st November 2010

GameStone's Chiptune Collection v1.10 has been updated with some new stuff, lots of unofficial tunes for the X68000.

The collection now contains 899 files at a total of 187MB, see Downloads, Movies and Music for the listing and download.

Also I thought I better add this information to the site from the forum.

Gradius Ultimate Collection (CD)

Finally some new Gradius stuff. 40 page Booklet and 8 CD's all for the huge price of 12600円 (£95 or $152), comes out next year 13-01-2011.

Track listing to follow as they become available.

Thanks to ZeetherKID77 for the link and information.

12th November 2010

Still no news on the release of Otomedius X Excellent! オトメディウスX(エクセレント!), so I've decided to move the countdown back from my guess of 1st December 2010 to the last day of Autumn (Fall) which is the 22nd December 2010.

But my guess is that the game will slip into 2011 for the Japanese release and even later for the other releases.

4th October 2010

Updated my Otomedius X (Excellent!) English Logo again with some extra detail.

オトメディウスX(エクセレント!)

See GameStone's Artwork section for more info and hi-res versions or just click the image below for the quarter-res version.

2nd October 2010

Finally updated my Otomedius Excellent English Logo with a totally redrawn 'X' as the original one was very low res.

Now this version I'm totally happy with (more or less), lets just hope the game actually comes out anytime soon.

20th September 2010

Added some extra screen shots I've found to the Otomedius X Excellent! section.

Also could this be the official Japanese poster for the game?

Looking good...

17th September 2010

Well it looks like that Gradius Arc trademark a few months back was actually for a mobile phone based game called:- グラディウス・アーク -銀翼の伝説- (Gradius Arc -Legend of Silver Wing-), It's an RPG so this maybe like R-Type Tactics rather than a new Gradius shoot'em-up.

Thanks to deadmario for the information.

Also three new Japanese Gradius related links added to the Links page (also listed below).

12th September 2010

More updates to the translation, now at v0.5 - 12th September 2010.

GameStone Otomedius AC English Translation

11th September 2010

One large update to the Otomedius AC English translation, now up to v0.4 - 11th September 2010.

Otomedius X Excellent! オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) news, the game will be shown at the Tokyo Game Show 東京ゲームショウ on the 16th September 2010.

Don't forget to see this section in the forum for all the latest Otomedius X Excellent! オトメディウスX(エクセレント!) news.

29th August 2010

I've been messing around with the Arcade game Otomedius and have discovered that some of the graphics can be change, so I've started a new project at translating the game into English.

This is one huge project and is going to take some time.

28th August 2010

Updated my Otomedius Excellent English Logo again as I was not happy with the size and look of the wing, still got the X to do but that will be later as I'm working on something important at the moment.

See GameStone's Artwork section for more info and hi-res versions or just click the image below for the quarter-res version.

21st August 2010

Added some character images, screen shots and a box image to the Otomedius X Excellent! section.

Also changed some of the system images in the games section.

1st August 2010

After a two solid days of ripping, the sprite rips for the arcade game Otomedius have been added to the Downloads Sprite Rips section.

29th July 2010

This looks like a western release poster for the game Otomedius Excellent, still no release date for either the Japanese, USA or UK versions yet.

17th July 2010

A bit late maybe, but I've added the trailer for Otomedius Gorgeous, the Original WMV version, see the Xbox 360 section for details and download. EDIT link now works.

16th July 2010

Added the Original WMV trailer for Otomedius X Excellent!, much better quality compared to the MP4 (MKV) file I had ripped from YouTube.

Also recaptured the images from the trailer and left them as decompressed png's, you can't get any better.

9th July 2010

I was not quite pleased with my English Otomedius Excellent Logo, so I started from scratch and made a much better one.

Still not happy with the X as it's too low res now and looks quite blocky, I will draw a better one later.

See GameStone's Artwork section for more info and hi-res versions or just click the image below for the quarter-res version.

4th July 2010

Lots of images captured from the Intro Movie for Otomedius X Excellent!.

Also uploaded the video file for you to download.

20th June 2010

Updated my Otomedius X Excellent! Logo to make it even better, I made the star bigger and change the positions og the word Excellent and changed the X in Excellent to look more like an X.

19th June 2010

New official logo for Otomedius X Excellent! (USA release).

no no no....not the top one, it's the boring purple thing three images down.

The top version is drawn by GameStone, based on the Japanese logo and one of my font's I made last week, much better quality version than the official logo.

See GameStone's Artwork section for more info or just click it for the full high-res version.

17th June 2010

Well....It looks like Otomedius Excellent is being released in the US after all, no news on an EU release yet, below is Konami's press release, no real information on the Konami page yet.

El Segundo, Calif. - June 16, 2010 - Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today announced that the lovely ladies of Otomedius Gorgeous will land in the United States for the very first time with the release of Otomedius Excellent on the Xbox 360 ® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. The highly-anticipated sequel to the Japan-exclusive arcade and Xbox 360 games features classic Gradius-style, shoot-em-up gameplay that is complemented by a dazzling array of stunning visuals. In addition, the new game also features an improved upgrade system, exclusive downloadable content and thrilling local and online multi-player action.

"As the sequel to the 2008 Japanese hit Otomedius Gorgeous, Otomedius Excellent boasts a significant visual and gameplay update since its predecessor," said Shinji Hirano, President of Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. "Accompanied by brilliant graphics and an excellent soundtrack, Otomedius Excellent will engage fans with the Gradius franchise on a whole new level."

In Otomedius Excellent, gamers will be able to choose from nine stunning characters as they battle through all-new stages in an expanded world full of intense 2D sidescrolling shooter action. Players can team up for the experience with up to three players locally or online via Xbox ® LIVE Arcade for the Xbox 360. Additionally, an expanded gallery mode allows players to view their unlocked wallpapers and graphics in a gallery that grows as they progress through the game. Gamers will also be able to tap into a wealth of exciting downloadable content to be announced later.

Otomedius Excellent is scheduled for release later this year for Xbox 360. For assets and more information, please visit www.konami.com/downloads.

Source: Konami

10th June 2010

Made yet another font, this time based of Otomedius X Excellent!.

v0.1 GameStone's Otomedius Title Font

Also see GameStone's Artwork section for more font's.

Countdown changed to Otomedius X Excellent!, my made up tentative release date of 1st December 2010, I will put the actual date in when one has been released.

10th June 2010

オトメディウスエクセレント! Otomedius X Excellent! , Konami link added on the right hand list.

9th June 2010

Sad News I'm afraid, it looks like the Otomedius Excellent rumours are not the overseas release of Otomedius Gorgeous after all but.......... a whole new game from Konami!!!

The girls are back!!! with even more cuteness, characters, stages and lots more on Xbox 360.

オトメディウスエクセレント!

Otomedius Excellent is yet another game for the Xbox 360, coming out this Autumn, the PS3 misses out again.

Thanks to KEI-KO Fujisaki (Konaken) for the info.

Actual game info is a little thin on the ground, but I've made a section in the Xbox 360 games section, more info added when some has been found!!!.

8th June 2010

Moved the new fonts and 25th Anniversary logos to the Artwork section under GameStone.

4th June 2010

Changed the countdown to Salamander's 25th Anniversary next year.

Interesting looking homebrew game, here's Hydorah Official Trailer.

Thanks go to speedup for the information.

30th May 2010

Added the Wings and GameStone logos to the Otomedius Font v0.4.

I'm not too sure on the pink background, but I tried lots of colours and that one just fits, reminds me of pink chocolate for some reason.

29th May 2010

It's been 25 years since Konami's original game Gradius was unleashed in the arcades.

Celebrate the occasion by playing Gradius at least once more on anything you can get hold off (PS, PS2, Wii, Saturn, Arcade, C64 etc....)

25th Anniversary of Gradius.

Here's a new font I threw together today, inspired by the Game Over message in Otomedius

19th May 2010

I was thinking that it will be the 25th Anniversary of Nemesis too, so I got to work and made an updated Nemesis logo.

18th May 2010

After looking at the Arcade Nemesis logo, I've decided change the 'W' and 'M' in the new font.

I've also realised that the font and updated logo's are based on the PlayStation Gradius Deluxe Pack logo rather than the original Arcade (PlayStation and Saturn logo has ® and not ™), as the PlayStation logo has more vibrance colours compared to the Arcade version I'm leaving it as it is.

v0.5 GameStone's 25th Anniversary Gradius Font now online.

3rd May 2010

Tweaked GameStone's 25th Anniversary Gradius Font (click image for the full version).

Some of the characters didn't look quite right ('9', '6', 'M' and 'N') were changed to include the angled section at the bottom right, plus some shadow tweaks.

UPDATE: More tweaking done to the 'V', 'W', '4' ,'7', 'P' and 'X' (I should have finished it properly before uploading in the first place), hopefully it's now finished.

2nd May 2010

The month of Gradius has begun, the countdown is set and it's time to play.

While I was working on the 25th Anniversary logo for this page I had an idea for a classic font based on the original Gradius logo, after a few weeks of work tweaking the design ('Z', 'X' and '&' were the worst).

Just to show the work I put into the updated logo, here's the original logo and GameStone's updated logo zoomed in to 200%.

26th April 2010

Added my new 25 Years Of Gradius hand edited Logo for the up and coming 25th Anniversary of Gradius.

7th April 2010

Add the excellent banner by Konaken for the Quarter Century Anniversary 2010 -Gradius-

Gradius Arc.................Sadly the screen shot was a sick April fools joke by Shocky, quite a good one too but arhhhh no Gradius this year (maybe).

This thread has some information about the joke.

1st April 2010

Could this be the next Gradius game for the Xbox 360?

If it is it's two player with a special weapons bar under the main weapon bar and the Moai are back.

Thanks to ZeetherKID77 for the heads up.

26th March 2010

Changed all the arcade roms again as quite a few changed in MAME.

12th March 2010

Added all the Gradius related Sparcade roms to the Downloads section, also made some new RAT config files for the other versions of the game (Gradius II new version etc...).

5th March 2010

Here's the srt sub file for part three of the Salamander anime - 10k, just incase you don't want to download a large file again.

You can use MKVToolnix for remuxing the new srt sub file into the old mkv file.

4th March 2010

Salamander Anime, I've added the missing subtitle text on part three of the anime ('previously on Salamander' intro).

I've decided to seed the new version as no one is seeding the old one anyway.

If you have downloaded the files before, just download part 3 as the other files have not changed.

In utorrent, go to the Files tab and right click each file you don't need and select Don't Download.

2nd March 2010

Gradius Arc グラディウス・アーク

Could this be a new Gradius game for the PS3 or Xbox 360?

18th February 2010

The Hi-Res Scans section has been updated to the new format (no new content yet) still some things to sort out but it works ok at the moment..

Also changed some of the Japanese text with the help of Fujix from MAME Testers.

14th February 2010

Change the roms for Amstrad, C64 and ZX Spectrum, added screen shots to the rom packs to show the game differences.

Change the way the Cheats section works, all data is now in the database making it easier for me to update and add new stuff.

I've decided to move the Fan Based games to it's own section rather than mixing them with the official games, also made the navigation better for browsing the Fan games.

13th February 2010

Just when you thought you have seen all there is on the C64, I find a cracked version of Nemesis with a new loading picture by ASH.

I already knew about the fan art by THE SORGE but the new loading image by ASH is pretty good too, as you can see they are much better than the official shots above for Nemesis and the US version Gradius which look like ZX Spectrum images.

Fan art by THE SORGE

Fan art by ASH

7th February 2010

I've re-ripped all three parts of the Salamander Anime with the latest x264 codec and direct AC3 audio, tweaked the translations as well as scanned the front covers and DVD.

They are now MKV files with the embedded srt subtitle file.

Please seed as people have been taking the p*ss and leeching the files making it slower for everybody else.

No longer needed.

Part three has no translation for the short 'previously on Salamander' intro, this bit was cut from my last version but I've decided to add it back again.

31st January 2010

Added arcade Sexy Parodius Special Stage to the cheats section.

30th January 2010

Added release date information for the Arcade, Saturn, PlayStation games.

Gradius 20th Anniversary is now on 29th May 2010.

Sorted out some site display issues in the games section.

10th January 2010

Just finished making all the icons for the various sections, Contact, Links, Emulation, Multimedia and Cheats.

6th January 2010

Added Konami Logo History to the Guides section, the images now have the correct alpha transparency this time, same with the four Kukeiha Club Logos in the Multimedia section.

I've started work on icons for the all the sections, to make the site more consistent, I already had one for Games, the new icons I've added today are for Artwork, Cameo, Downloads and the Guides section..

Added a little reminder of what section icons I still need to do.

You may have noticed that I've based the Cameo icon on The Goonies cameo of Vic Viper..

3rd January 2010

Lots more cheat action added to the Wii Gradius ReBirth, Six new extra stages and four 5000 points with screen shots.

I believe I've got all the Extra Stages but there are lots more 5000 point bonuses to find.

2nd January 2010

Finally got around to grabbing the elusive 29th of the month option screen image change on the Sega Saturn Gradius Deluxe Pack (only in Gradius), see the cheats section for the image.

I tried grabbing it a few days back but the SFF Saturn emulator kept locking up when loading the game.

I tracked it down to a corrupt iso of the game, four hours later I've re-ripped my collection of Saturn and PlayStation games with ImgBurn as all had bad sectors.

ImgBurn, my favourite small does the job nicely burning program that rips to cue-bin iso files as well.

CDmage is an iso checker and converter, great for checking if there are any corrupt sectors on your rips, I know the program is old but it does the job and it's portable.

Sega Saturn Emulator - SFF Ver0.11 alpha R2 (their naming scheme is a bit odd but the emulator play games quite well).

1st January 2010

Happy new year

Updated all the Arcade roms to the latest version of MAME 0.136 (released yesterday).

Funny that there are now six different versions of Gradius II GOFER no Yabou (グラディウスII ~GOFERの野望~).

It would be nice to know what the differences are between all the versions.

Changed all the downloads from zip archives to rar archives (apart from the Arcade roms as MAME only does zips at the moment), this has save some server space so I maybe able to add some new stuff.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2009

30th December 2009

Added modified intro images for Saturn Sexy Parodius to the GameStone section in Art Work.

Sega Saturn game logo's have finally been added to the various sections.

Sexy Parodius intro images added to the Saturn section.

Anciently created some display bugs in my php scripts (games_games.php and games_system.php) with the Cheats update yesterday, all have been fixed hopefully.

29th December 2009

Change the Cheats section to list games in the correct order of release rather than by game name.

Move some of the text about in the MSX Cheat section to make it more readable as some of the text in that section came from translation software.

Added Gradius MSX hidden stage information, thanks go to GOGS for the info and screen captures.

26th December 2009

Added some cheats for Gradius ReBirth, lots more to add but I don't any more at this time.

Gradius ReBirth Sprite rips have also been added to the Downloads - Sprite Rips section.

25th December 2009

Merry Christmas

Changed the Contact page a little bit.

Updated the Gradius Home World logo on the top right, much sharper and more refined compared to the old version.

Gradius Home World - New Logo Vs Old Logo

Also change the random logo shadows.

24th December 2009

Tweaked the new layout to look more like the dark forum theme (when set to Dark Style).

Got around to doing some image buttons for the site Style switcher, see it at the top of the page next to the GameStone logo, I personally prefer the Dark Style, there are only two themes at the moment but there's no reason why more could be made.

Finally sorted out annoying bug that would stop the java Countdown displaying in IE6, IE7 and IE8, I was not that bothered as I use Firefox but I thought I would sort it out as it was bugging me.

22nd December 2009

Three great site Japanese sites from the same person, excellent information and layout.

Added System link icons to the Genre section of Games, also remove some broken links in the Links section.

6th December 2009

Added all the box art for the Game Packs, some are poor quality but they are the only ones available at the moment.

Tweaked the width of the site wider by 50px, move the region selection flags on all the Game section pages to the top right, this makes the pages a little shorter and easier to view.

The System images in the Games section are a little large for the fixed width layout, I will modify then at a later date.

4th December 2009

It's now the Arcade - Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa e ~ 20th Anniversary

グラディウスIII~伝説から神話へ~ (AC) コナミ アーケード

Chat about it in the forum.

2nd December 2009

Gradian is selling some of his great one of a find sculptures on eBay, these could make some great unique Xmas presents for Gradius fans.

Choking Weed

Golem of Salamander 2

Antenniod

Slash Fighter

Big Core (includes micro Vic Viper)

28th November 2009

As you can see the site is in a bit of a mess at the moment, hopefully it should be sorted out today.

Update: New top navigation and fixed site width, I will be working on some new colour themes over the next few weeks.

26th November 2009

Magnet links for the Salamander Anime.

All three films are, DivX5 720x480 1500Kbps - mp3 48000Hz 128Kbps Stereo.

No longer available.

20th November 2009

GameStone's Chiptune Collection v1.00

Gradius ReBirth v2 tunes (three extra tunes in the updated version), sound effect and speech added.

Now contains 1033 files at a total of 179meg, see Downloads, Movies and Music for the listing and download.

Official Art section updated with original files rather than resized jpgs from years ago:-

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius ~forever with me~ - PlayStation - OMAKE

Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius ~forever with me~ - SegaSaturn - OMAKE

Salamander Deluxe Pack Plus - SegaSaturn - OMAKE

Made the Guide section easier to navigate.

Changed the heading in this section, made the page less busy with borders, tweaked some of the positioning and colour code, still a work in progress while I try some new coding techniques.

15th November 2009

I've been doing a general clean up of the GameStone site code and scripts (not just the Gradius Home World section), it's taken two days of hard coding and hopefully it's completed.

No new content has been added but what's here should work better and more consistent between browsers.

This site is fully tested in Firefox but should display fine in Internet Explorer.

13th November 2009

Sorted out the broken link to Gradius Deluxe Pack for Windows, also split the file into six 20meg RAR files, as I was having trouble uploading the original 110meg file.

26th October 2009

Finally Gradius Deluxe Pack for Windows has been found and uploaded to the Downloads Games section, its quite large at 105meg.

Thanks to Dimetra for the information.

Windows Gradius Deluxe Pack tunes added to GameStone's Chiptune Collection v0.95 (now contains 610 files at a total of 125meg!!!), see Downloads, Movies and Music for the listing and file download.

25th October 2009

Updated the Emulation section with the latest links, also added the Wii emulator Dolphin.

17th October 2009

Salamander Anime torrents.

I've ripped and encoded them from the DVD and replace the crappy DVD subtitles with a much better separate srt subtitle file translation.

All three films are, DivX5 720x480 1500Kbps - mp3 48000Hz 128Kbps Stereo.

I recommend µTorrent as it's quite a lightweight program for downloading these files.

I'll seed them for a few weeks to see how it goes.

11th October 2009

Change the Art section to remove some doubles and add some artist credits.

Gradius ReBirth has been updated on 13th October 2009 with some new features.

Additional BGM
Score adjustments
New ranking board (because of score adjustments)
Enhanced screen production (??? Better graphics maybe?)
Shows number of play times
Stage select adjustments, with a choice of 4-30 laps.

This is a free update from Konami, just go to the Wii Shop channel and re-download the game.

As far as I can see this is for the Japanese NTSCJ version, I'm not sure when this will come out for the NA (US) and PAL (UK) versions.

Thanks to KEI-KO Fujisaki for the updated information.

6th August 2009

Added a review of the ZX Spectrum game Nemesis The Final Challenge, see the games section for the review by ACE_Spark.

0th June 2009

Arcade tunes added to GameStone's Chiptune Collection v0.9.

31st May 2009

Blank Gradius has now got a mockup Title Screen and a slightly edited Arm Core to make the colours stand out better.

30th May 2009

Added a few new bits to the Blank Gradius section including a new core made by me called Arm Core.

22nd May 2009

Information about the Fan Based game's Kemesis, Ulamander and Storm Assault have been added to the games section.

The original sites for some of the Fan Based games no longer exists so I've started to host the downloads on GameStone, I've added a few to the Download section.

19th May 2009

Gradius ReBirth and the Konami Antiques MSX Collection 1-3 tunes added to GameStone's Chiptune Collection v0.8, due to the size of the newer tunes the collection has grown from 2meg to 80meg.

Also sorted out the broken links on the Links page.

17th May 2009

Added i-mode Mobile Phone Salamander and Gradius NEO to GameStone's Chiptune Collection v0.7

10th May 2009

Added X68000 Gradius and Detana!! TwinBee to GameStone's Chiptune Collection v0.6

4th May 2009

Updated the Emulation section, sorting out broken links and updated release information.

I guess nobody noticed but Arcade - Fantastic Journey now works in MAME 0.131, this game has always just displays background and played music but had no sprites but is now fully playable.

3rd May 2009

I just spent the last three days editing playlist and binary files to correct the track names and add new tracks to my Chip Tunes Collection.

Large update to GameStone's Chiptune Collection v0.5, it's in the Downloads section as usual.

6th April 2009

Added lots of file format information to the Xbox360 Otomedius Gorgeous section.

Including DVD file structure, DLC structure, file sizes and some help in reading the files.

9th April 2009

Otomedius Gorgeous translations for Easter Island to all the sound packs in, also added Sound Pack 7 translations and the two extra characters.

13th March 2009

Updated all the arcade roms to the latest version of MAME.

I've decided to remove the Virtual section and just put the game with the various systems.

Added all the WiiWare and Virtual Console games for the Wii to the Games section.

8th March 2009

Completed the Japanese listings for the Music CD's, also created a new image display script for the CD covers so it no longer displays directories as a broken image.

174 Gradius Related Music CD's are now in the Music Database.

Still some track listings to do, plus a better layout for the page would be nice but at least the hard work of data entry is more or less complete.

2nd March 2009

The first release of the PlayStation emulator PCSX2 (PCSX2 0.9.6) has been released after the PCSX and Playground teams merged.

More work done to the Music database.

22nd February 2009

Big update to the Music CD section of Multimedia, lots and track names in Japanese and English plus a few new CD's added (Gradius ReBirth Remix etc...)

165 Music CD's are now listed.

Now all I have to do is make the page layout better.

1st February 2009

Google was down for 40 minutes yesterday, its all good now but I decided to remove the Google search from the main index anyway.

Tweaked some of the Japanese translations (again!!!) for the music tracks in Otomedius Gorgeous Xbox 360.

31st January 2009

Google is broken at the moment, it's displaying 'This site may harm your computer.' on every search page.

So I guess you should use a different search engine for now.

24th January 2009

Konami yesterday released more downloads for Otomedius Gorgeous (オトメディウスゴージャス).

Three music packs (Madoka, Diol, Tita) and Premium Theme 1.

I've updated my section with the new information and tweaked the translations.

They did not release Emon 5 music Pack 3 (very odd) or the extra characters Esmeralda (エスメラルダ) and Kuhn POINI (ポイニー・クーン) which would have been better but I guess they will be out next month.

17th January 2009

Updated all the sites scripts to php 5 and changed the database to MySQL 5.0 (except the Forums, that will come later).

Move the Music CD section navigation to the bottom of the page and tweaked some of the scripts bit here and there.

2nd January 2009

Happy new year etc...

My new PlayStation 2 emulator of choice has been added to the Emulation section.

PCSX2 Playground v1.0.0395.

This thing plays Gradius III, Gradius IV and Gradius V all very well.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2008

30th December 2008

Cleaned up the Art Work section.

29th December 2008

Removed all ads from the forum and the site.

I've started to clean up the site as I think its got a bit overly complicated in the coding department.

Replaced the gradius4 arcade rom with the updated file (0.127u2).

28th December 2008

Large update to Xbox 360 Otomedius G section.

All the weapon lists, all the downloadable content, Stages and more. All in a dual language setup with Japanese and English.

More to come soon.

21st December 2008

Added my Xbox 360 Gamer Card to this page.

20th December 2008

Added a new Mobile Phone emulator to the Emulation section, also updated the page with the newest versions and removed broken links.

Salamander mobile phone game has been added to the Download section as it now works in a new emulator. Thanks ReyVGM.

Finally got around to making a Nintendo Wii icon.

14th December 2008

Otomedius Gorgeous Achievement list has been translated and added to the XBox 360 section Otomedius Gorgeous

12th December 2008

I've finally got hold of this game, see the main Otomedius Gorgeous section for some more images.

This game and joystick bundle was bought from:-

Video Game Imports (UK Store).

Fast and friendly email response, expertly packed with fast shipping, excellent.

http://www.videogameimports.com/

6th December 2008

My order for Otomedius Gorgeous (plus the extra Joystick) should be with me by the end of next week.

I'll be adding the XBox 360 Achievements when I get around to translating them.

Xbox homepage for Otomedius Gorgeous G

Otomedius Gorgeous is out now so the main site countdown has been changed to Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa e ~.

17th September 2008

Finally!!! The release date has been set for Xbox 360 Otomedius Gorgeous - 20th November 2008.

New section added to the Konami website.

Translated to English link below.

10th September 2008

Konami has put back Otomedius Gorgeous Xbox 360 release date.

Konami Page with more information.

Translated to English link below.

7th September 2008

Gradius Rebirth is out now on Wii (Japan only at the moment).

Not long till Otomedius Gorgeous.

27th July 2008

Gradius Rebirth Konami links added.

17th July 2008

Gradius Rebirth for the Nintendo Wii (WiiWare download), No other details available yet.

27th June 2008

Countdown changed to Otomedius Gorgeous.

24th June 2008

Otomedius Gorgeous has a release date now, 25th September 2008, a trailer and a big update on the official site, thanks to King Moai for the updates.

21st June 2008

Some section lend themselves to a dynamic pages like Games and Music CD sections but the Multimedia section was a mess so I've removed the dynamic pages and move a few bits around so it should be a little easier to navigate, still needs more work to be done.

14th June 2008

New section added for Guides, moved the emulator guides there from the Emulation section and also compiled them into just one page per guide rather than the sections like before.

I'm also having a small clear out on the site.

Voting Poll (on this page) has gone, It was a pain to keep updated and the forum can have polls anyway, also makes this page load faster.

Archived some of the updates from this page, view the site history at the bottom of this page for older news.

5th May 2008

Yet another cameo has been found, Speed King NEO KOBE 2045, thank to Deadmario again.

'Gradius to sort' - 4.38GB, 6536 files.

Slowly getting there.

3rd May 2008

I deleted all the little bits and bobs you get when saving web pages (3431 of them!!!) so the 'Gradius to sort' should be more manageable now.

'Gradius to sort' - 8.36GB, 7648 files.

Some of these are movies so the size should go down quite a bit when I move them out into the Movies directory.

More Cameo's added:-

LA BlueGirl, Poitter's Point and Poitter's Point 2, Bishi Bashi Online, Nazo no Kabe - Block Kuzushi.

I've move the Cameo page about a bit putting the Anime and Moai references in their own section.

2nd May 2008

Large update to the Cameo section, Games added:-

Dream Mix TV World Fighters, Falsion, Hayate the Combat Butler, Metamorphic Force, Violent Storm, Doremikko, Trigon, Ganbare Goemon: Uchuu Kaizoku Akogingu, Pani Poni Dash!, Knightmare II: The Maze of Galious, Penguin Adventure, Ganbare Goemon 2, Pyuu to Fuku! Jogger Byuu to Deru! Megane-Kun, Pandora's Palace, Snatcher, Moai Kun, Aliens, Vic Viper.

Cameo section now has 58!!

The Cameo section would be better if I made a database for the section, so that you could list them by Console and Alphabetically, year etc…(may be added at a later date).

I've added thanks messages to most of the pages in the Cameo section for the people who helped.

Also made some of the fonts bigger as the Japanese Kanji where blurring into one.

Just thought I would add that my 'Gradius to sort' directory (all the stuff that has not been added to the site) is now 8.40GB, 11079 files, I'm going to try to go through this and add some stuff over the weekend (hopefully).

27th April 2008

Large update the the Cameo section, thanks go to Deadmario from the GHW forums for the help.

26th April 2008

It's now Official, Otomedius Gorgeous (OTOMEDIUSU GOJASU) for the Xbox 360.

Now listed on Amazon Japan, no release date set.

Xbox 360 section added to the Games section, Otomedius Gorgeous added to that section.

Also new Xbox 360 icon made.

Also links to the Arcade Otomedius.

23rd April 2008

Can it be true, Otomedius for the Xbox 360 called Otomedius G.

Thanks to KEI-KO Fujisaki for the tip.

20th April 2008

Cleaned up the Cameo section a little more, removing broken links etc…

14th April 2008

Updated my PS Gradius Gaiden sprite rips to v0.07, added player and enemy shots.

The Cameo section is to be expanded thanks to deadmario in the GHW forum.

13th April 2008

Cameo section is back!!!

As I've never got around to putting the Cameo section into the GHW database, I've decided to add it as static pages instead.

30th March 2008

Updated my PS Gradius Gaiden sprite rips again to v0.06, I've added the ships lights as separate images.

Some more bits added on the Blank Gradius section.

29th March 2008

Updated my PS Gradius Gaiden sprite rips to v0.05 making them easier to animate (Downloads section).

28th March 2008

New section for my guides on making Blank Gradius.

22nd March 2008

Added a new sub-section to Downloads, Sprite Rips for various games.

1st March 2008

Forget Salamander, twenty years since the true sequel to Gradius.

Gradius II ~GOFER no Yabou (Vulcan Venture), Happy birthday and lets celebrate the twentieth anniversary in style.

Salamander had some great speech but it was not until Gradius II GOFER no Yabou that the game just went into overdrive.

The games attention to detail was ahead of everything at the time with things like the name up sequence having different animations depending on where you scored, speech for all the weapons like 'Photon Torpedo' and 'Spread Bomb', different speech depending on how far you where into the game (You Need Some Practice, Arrrrrr).

Amazing music, excellent gameplay, four weapon choices, two shields, large flaming suns, a large phoenix and mocking speech from the enemies like 'You shall never return alive' and 'I'll bash you down', at the time this was just amazing stuff.

Also the game was a challenge but not impossible (Gradius III anyone!!).

I played the game at the PCW (Personal Computer World) show in 1988 at Earls Court London and there were queues waiting to play it (I did not get passed the Crystal stage btw).

So go and play it today as is still good to play now.

27th January 2008

Made a new Dark style for the forum to go with the Dark site style.

Cleaned up the smilie images in the forum so they look good on the Dark style.

11th January 2008

Made a small script to only show the other style link, ie when you are on the Dark Style GHW it only shows the Light Style GHW link, I may changed this to a button of some sort.

New random Gradius Home World logo for the Dark Style.

Changed the left and right table background images to alpha transparency.

Put a better 'Nebula' style stars background.

Changed the GameStone logo site wide to the new alpha transparency version.

Cleaned up lots of game images that had the lighter border so they look good on the Dark style.

Gashapon Vic Viper and SkyGirl Vic Viper models have been added.

8th January 2008

Moved the White and Black style switchers to the head of the page (top right), its now on every page so you can change site colours at any time and on any page, I may make two small buttons instead of the plain text but it will do for now.

2nd January 2008

Just a test at the moment for switching between White or Black background using two style sheets, it stores the value in a cookie so whatever you set it too it should be the same when you come back

Lots more to do like the text colours etc… but I've had enough for today.

Also cleaned up some of the Art Work php code.

New icon for the Games section

Changed lot of the images to transparent version so they look good on the black background, only Otomedius and Parodius Pachinko to go

1st January 2008

Happy new year!!

Two more my version navigation icons added, PS2 and PS3 (even though there are no games for it yet!!).

Also changed the black outside colour on most of the icons to a dark gray, they look much better now even on a black background.

Changed the aspect of the GB and GBA icons as they looked a bit fat.

I've decided that consoles and computers will have isometric icons but hand held's will be face on.

The Fan for Fan based games is genius.

Changed the six flag icons to transparent PNG files so they look good on a black background.

As you can proberly guest (or maybe not) I'm in the process of changing the site so you can choose between White or Black backgrounds (two different style sheets), still lots of work to be done with logo's, images and other things.

Classic Star's again maybe!!

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2007

31st December 2007

I'm getting a bit carried away here as I'm changing some of the better small machine navigation images to my own versions.

All small machine navigation's now done, the Virtual one sucks but it will do for now.

Modified the Cheats page to show a larger version of the icon when on that particular system.

30th December 2007

Added better navigation to the Music CD section, still more work to be done though.

More art added to Otomedius.

Gradius PC Engine Cheats, hidden stages finally added, thanks King Moai.

I'm in the process of redrawing the small machine icons as some are crap (crossed out ones have been completed).

Arcade, C64, CPC 464-6128,, FAN, i-mode, LCD Game, MSX, PlayChoice 10, PC88-5INCH, PS2, PS, PSP, PC Engine, SPC, SS, Virtual (has not even got one yet!), X1, X68000 and ZX Spectrum.

All the new one's were drawn from scratch be me (apart from PS2 which was edited from another source).

They all scale quite nicely so I may replace some of the other icon on the site with these new ones (Once I have finish the few missing/old ones).

29th December 2007

Expanded the Arcade Otomedius section quite a bit (finally added it too!!).

Also changed the flag images to a much nicer round version.

22nd December 2007

Still no news on PS3 Gradius even though Amazon UK are listing it as out on the 30th November 2007.

Amazon Japan are listing Gradius (PS3).

21st December 2007

Changed the Cheats section to a dynamic page rather than the long list of games, this was something I was planning on doing for ages.

Last 10 forum posts added to this page.

1st September 2007

Added Gradius for the i-mode to the Download/Games section, it has been converted to play in Windows but you can also download the original jar file too.

31st August 2007

Would you believe it, Gradius Gaiden on the PlayStation is ten years old!!!!

Go play it now for the excellent music, speech and gameplay.

How did you come this far, Ha ha hahaa, I hope we can entertain you, Ha ha hahaa, Do you think you can beat me with that!! Loser, You die here, Ha ha hahaa, You'll pay, That doesn't hurt, You die here, Ha ha hahaa, I hope we can entertain you, That doesn't hurt, arhhhrrrraaaaaaaaa.

11th July 2007

Gradius NEO i-mode game added to the Downloads/Games section and Gradius NEO midi music added to the Downloads/Movies and Music section.

Change some of the images in the Multimedia section to the full resolution versions (Salamander Anime and others)

Added the two mp3 tunes of the Vinyl Deep-Mission-Trance-Records Germany" called "Digital Technology".

Tweaked the style sheet (CSS) for the site to make it more readable.

10th July 2007

Lots of new 'Otomedius' information and an Official website from Konami, this must mean the game is almost ready for prime time.

Thanks to King Moai for the information.

Also added a brand new section to the Downloads page:-

On the Movies and Music section there is Chip Tunes, this is an archive of all the chip based tunes for the various Gradius related games available plus a few extra cameo tracks too.

26th July 2007

It's now the 10th Anniversary of Gradius Home World, I have put together a little section to show the history of the site.

1st June 2007

It's now the 20th Anniversary of Life Force, go play it today and enjoy the classic all over again.

26th May 2007

Changed my contact form to stop spammers, not much else to say.

7th May 2007

Solar Assault playable in MAME 0.115, released yesterday.

3rd May 2007

Finally got around to setting up my home server again (Apache, php, MySQL etc…). So I have uploaded the latest database which includes all the Portable games now (Gradius, Salamander, Parodius and TwinBee).

Sorted out the Solar Assault section to a better layout and put the games in the right places this time.

Nintendo DS section added with the 'Konami Arcade Collection' game pack.

PlayChoice 10 and Vs sections have been split into two sections as they are different games.

Added little icons for the PS3, DS and Vs.

I will be adding a new Games section called 'Virtual', in this section will be all the virtual games you can download for the various consoles like the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console and the Microsoft XBox360 Arcade.

9th April 2007

Amazon Japan are listing the Gradius (PS3).

Amazon UK are listing it too but also with a release date - 30th July 2007 30th Nov 2007.

Considering that Gradius V had screen shots and some videos 18 months before it came out it does seem odd that there are none so far for this game.

8th April 2007

It would seem that Solar Assault did get a US release after all as I now have some images of the US Operators Manual and game in action.

And also one is on eBay for sale.

The US game version is the same as the Japanese Solar Assault Revised, but its just called Solar Assault.

Three known versions now:-

Solar Assault Gradius

Solar Assault Revised

Solar Assault (US release)

17th March 2007

The RAM went down again! Crappy Corsair, replace then with Crucial RAM and have have no trouble since.

3th March 2007

Hello, I'm back again, my main system went down with bad RAM and it took three weeks to sort it out (they did replace them with better one too), I should be doing some site updates again.

25th January 2007

The new Konami PSP game collections have now been release in Japan, I should have my Japanese imports by 2nd February 2007.

Salamander Portable, Parodius Portable, TwinBee Portable.

No news on a western release yet.

20th January 2007

Torrents not working so they are now gone, I will have to look at another way of moving these large files in the future.

11th January 2007

Another try at this torrent crap as the others never got started, they don't make this easy do they.

7th January 2007

Nice to see that Konami has drawn some new artwork for the new PSP Portable games that come out later this month.

3rd January 2007

I am trying to share my first torrent files (all three parts of the Salamander Anime with sub files) but am having no luck, can you please try these to see if they will download in your bittorrent client, thanks

1st January 2007

Happy new year etc…

Moved the Salamander Anime images about and changes some of the details.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2006

31st December 2006

Finally back after being disconnect from my broadband for over a month.

Added links to the new PSP Portable games on the right that come out next month, updated the database to include all the new game information (not upload yet as I don't have Apache, php and mysql installed on my test system).

Some new screen shots added the the PlayStation MSX packs.

Removed a few broken links on the Links page, changed the games I'm playing on the left.

6th November 2006

Added some information to the Cheats section for the arcade games Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa e ~ and Gradius IV Fukkatsu

25th October 2006

Three new game packs for the PSP.

TwinBee Portable, Salamander Portable and Parodius Portable.

Thanks to everyone who emailed me about these

7th October 2006

New vBulletin forum has just opened it doors, there are so many configuration options in this program that I have left quite a few at default, I will change them as and when necessary.

Please log in and update your profile, avatar etc…

3rd October 2006

More Gradius madness, this time King Moai does Gradius Generations.

21st September 2006

I forgot you could embed the YouTube videos into your own site so here are two interesting ones from 'King Moai', you can chat about them in the forums.

1st September 2006

A very new Retro Remake of Nemesis for the PC and its very good too, thank go to Klatrymadon in the Forums for the info.or see the developer site.

Ovine.

27th August 2006

Very large Hi-Res 300dpi update added to the Downloads section:-

Gradius II Gofer no Yabou

Instructions 1 and 2

Control Panel Sticker

Operators Manual

Note - The top of the original instructionhave a mirrored foil bit which doesn't scan well at all so I have filled this with a dark gray colour.

Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa e ~

Control Panel Weapons Sticker

Solar Assault Gradius

Information Sheet and Operators Manual

Detana!! TwinBee

Operators Manual

Parodius da! ~ Shinwa kara o-warai e ~

Operators Manual

Gokujou Parodius! ~ Kako no Eikou o Motomete ~

Operators Manual

TwinBee Yahho-! ~ Fushigi no Kuni de Ooabare!! ~

Operators Manual

I forgot to say yesterday about the comical bit on one of the Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa e ~ Instruction cards, one of the weapons is listed as FLEE WAY.

26th August 2006

More Hi-Res 300dpi scans added to the Downloads section:-

Salamander 2
Instructions 1 and 2 and Weapons Sticker

Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa e ~
Information Layout
Instructions 1 and 2
Control Panel Sticker
Operators Manual

More to come over the bank holiday weekend as I have some spare time, I think I will do Gradius II next.

I was inspired to edit more because of the excellent work done by Mr.Do and the MAME team.

Using the new Hi Res artwork you can display the instructions cards in MAME at the same time you play the game, this looks excellent ona wide screen monitor.

22nd August 2006

Mame 0.108 is out but still no Solar Assault.

15th August 2006

More Hi-Res 300dpi scans added to the Downloads section, Arcade Gradius Instructions (colour photocopies), Operators Manuals, the very rare Bubble System Manual and Solar Assault Revised installation instructions.

Also changed the countdown to Life Force (forgot about that).

30th July 2006

Mame 0.107 is out but not much has changed on theGradius front, this is still a very important release though as the graphics engine and the

config file layouts have been changed, Mame now also supports multiple monitors so the PlayChoice 10 games can be displayed on two monitors (rather than shrinking them to one).

22nd June 2006

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Arcade Salamander I have added some Hi-Res 300dpi scans of theArcade Instructions and Operators

Manuals to the Downloads section.

7th June 2006

The US version of Gradius Collection is out now and the UK release comes out in September (why the delay?).

3rd June 2006

The Official US Konami site states that Gradius Collection should be be out in a week's time, the news was listed on the 30th May 2006 so it should be some time next week.

Still no information on the UK release.

16th May 2006

My host had a Linux server crash and the site was offline for a few hours, so much for Linux never crashing.

UPDATE: This was not a server crash but a connectivity issue inside the hosting company.

4th May 2006

Changed the Amstrad Nemesis rom set to a newer version with the correct colour's, thanks go to edd for noticing the problem.

Also the Gradius series has a section in the latest issue of UK game magazine 'Retro Gamer' (Issue 24), thanks to puzzle_rattrap for the news.

I had a look at Retro Gamer issue 24 while I was at Bluewater shopping centre tonight and while it has all (most) of the Gradius games listed and some nice screen shots it's missing a few things, first a link to the emulators it lists would have been nice.

Also considering this site (Gradius Home World) has been going for nearly nine years, is the largest Gradius site on the internet (and the only one with a dedicated Gradius forum), this site did not even get a mention.

17th April 2006

Changed the Games Packs to display more information, also changed some of the database to list overseas games (UK and US). Fixed a small bug in the Games section.

16th April 2006

You can now list by game packs in the Games section (ie.. Gradius Deluxe Pack), I'm not entirely happy with the layout but will sort it out soon.

I've changed the Emulation Watch on the righthand side because the official WIP for MAME has more information, I have added links.

20th March 2006

Gradius IV Fukkatsu

The first screen shot of Solar Assault Gradius running in MAME.

Solar Assault Gradius (slrasslt.zip) added to the download games section.

Also see the Mameworld site for other bits of information, thanks Big Core for the link and info.

Also keep an eye on the Mame development log

3rd March 2006

Parodius da! Game Boy cheats (GB Collection and Original release) added to the cheats section.

MSX TwinBee and UK and Japanese versions of the Konami GB Collections added to the Downloads section.

Changed my choice of MSX emulator to the much better NLMSX for a no install hassle emulator small download (only 1meg) or the very nice looking (but you have to install it and its 9meg download) blueMSX, see Emulation for links.

I have made the default region on the Games section to Japan as this region has the most games.

Also added a new Joystick icon for navigation to Games and a logo navigation for Multimedia..

18th February 2006

I have been sent this link to an excellent Japanese Parodius fan site, thanks to BHDAA for the link.

Gradius Portable is very good, I hope Konami continue this and bring out a Salamander, TwinBee and Parodius Portable packs as well.

I can confirm (and will write up soon in the tips section) that the standard Konami codes all work in the Gradius Portable games, (UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, X, O).

15th February 2006

My PSP and Gradius Portable arrived this morning, here are a few shots of the unpacking ceremony.

12th February 2006

After messing with the countdowns on http://www.timeanddate.com/date/birthday.html where you can fine out when you are 1,000,000,000 seconds old etc, I thought I would try something for Gradius games.

So messing with java and php and I have come up with a countdown page just under the countdown on this page (see the Countdown More link).

Eg. Did you know it's over 4736 days until the 20th Anniversary of Gradius IV Fukkatsu.

Sorted out the look of the countdown so it looks better in IE6, I only test the site in Firefox (on my own PC) and Mozilla (on my work SunOS workstation), I say give Firefox a try. Http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

Added some gradient fills to the navigation boxes, changed the link colour to a bit darker and made it look like the boxes have drop shadows to make them stand out more.

9th February 2006

The Japanese release of Gradius Portable is upon us.

My copy of Gradius Portable and a white Sony PlayStation Portable to go with it should be with me by next week, no more information until then.

Mame 0.104 is out, I cannot see anything different with the Gradius IV Fukkatsu emulation.

3rd February 2006

As its only five days till the next Gradius release I though of doing something special and came up with the idea of photographing all the games included in Gradius Portable.

Just to show you how much Gradius action you get here are some nice photos of the arcade boards on the left shot and the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 collections on the right.

Gradius Portable is the best Gradius Collection you can carry anywhere, play on the bus, train, park, lunch break, just be careful as someone may want to kick you off of the PSP and play these excellent games.

29th January 2006

Change the Games section around, you can now list a game from Japan and change the page to the United States and the information is dynamically changed in that for that section.

Also added new smaller machine logo's to the Games section, larger logo's and region flag logo's to all the sections, I'm quite happy with the way the site works at the moment.

28th January 2006

Split the Downloads section into two sections, Games and Movies and Music.

27th January 2006

All files in the Downloads section are now direct downloads rather than eMule links and yes that does include all the movie files.

26th January 2006

Gradius Portable is coming to the west this Summer 2006 but has been rename Gradius Collection.

I would say the renaming makes sense as it sounds more like a collection of games rather than Gradius Portable that could be mistaken for just a single game.

It's taken nearly nine long years but finally the west can see what all the fuss was about with Gradius Gaiden, anyone who has not played this before are in for a treat.

21st January 2006

M1 is an arcade music sound emulator, when used with the excellent front end BridgeM1 it's an excellent way of listening to the arcade tunes (including unused never heard before tunes).

So I've add the Gradius related sound roms for BridgeM1 to the Downloads section.

Reorganized the Downloads section to contain all the downloads available on the site, I am trying to work a database version so it will be easier to update but that will have to wait for the moment.

Sorted out some bad links here and there, also got around to better error reporting.

16th January 2006

Added Solar Assault Gradius Intro mp3 music track to the Downloads section, this was ripped and converted by GameStone from the 'Konami Best Selection 98 Autumn' CD Track 16.

Out of over 100 Konami CD's I have this is the only track to do with Solar Assault, did Konami even bring out a game music CD?

I forgot to add the Solar Assault Gradius intro movie was taken from the Konaken homepage and converted to xvid using the excellent Virtualdub.

15th January 2006

Changed the Style Sheet for the whole site to make it more readable and to add a bit more colour into the mix.

Made the Art work section into just one page thanks to some new php techniques I've learned

Also finally got around to better navigation in the Games section, you can now list by region too (Japan, United Kingdom and United States).

Well if you were asking where the Gradius Gaiden Intro image came from (below), it was grabbed using the excellent PSX Multi Converter (PsxMC??????)

Google Japanese BETA Translated | Altavista Bablefish Translated

This is a player and converter for PlayStation XA (music like mp3) STR (video like mpg).

The player is in Japanese but works fine in XP and the controls are easy enough to work out, well worth a look.

11th January 2006

Well its under a month until Gradius Portable and still no information if there will be a western release.

Added Solar Assault Gradius Intro xvid video to the Downloads section.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2005

31st December 2005

Mame has been updated again to 0.103, Gradius IV Fukkatsu now has sound, see the Emulation watch on the left if this page for other details.

4th December 2005

Another Emulation Guide has been added, this time it's for the arcade emulator MAME Command Line, see the Emulation section for details.

Re added Fan Based games but instead of it being a section in itself, it's now just under the Games section.

Also added a Gradius IV Fukkatsu Emulation Watch to the right of this page at the request of lastsamurai0.

Added Monadius to the Fan Based games as I forgot to add this months back, this is a Gradius game in Mono that came out earlier in the year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Gradius, thanks to Chris for reminding me.

I found a Vic Viper King animation in my 'Gradius To Sort' directory and I just had to put it on the site.

26th November 2005

Changed the two tape images for Commodore 64 Nemesis and Salamander to non cracked and trained versions.

15th November 2005

Gradius IV Fukkatsu is now in Mame 0.102

But even on my Athlon 64 3200 with 1GB of Ram it runs soooo slow its unplayable, also the sound is not yet emulated, but its looking good.

Moved the Gradius Portable on the PSP section around a bit.

I must add that this pack looks very interesting and I cannot wait to get my hands on it.

The biggest question is will it get an overseas release?

I would like to see this because it's not that much work to translate the Japanese (it's not an adventure game is it!!!), Gradius Generations was released for the Game Boy.

So please Konami make a western release of this pack and finally gamers can play the best ever Gradius game 'Gradius Gaiden' and see what I have been banging on about for all these years.

14th November 2005

Some new stuff added for Gradius Portable on the PSP.

12th November 2005

Multimedia section is now up, I'm not quite happy with the navigation but it works ok for now.

10th November 2005

Art Work should be working again now.

9th November 2005

Yet even more Gradius IV Fukkatsu Mame stuff, this time the graphics are now displaying correctly, maybe it will be in the next release of Mame.

Http://www.mameworld.net/vlinde/

8th November 2005

Even more Gradius IV Fukkatsu Mame stuff, this time it's actually displaying some of the in game graphics.

Thanks again to Inter981 for the update.

7th November 2005

Yet another countdown added, this time it's for the Gradius Collection on the PSP.

Sorry I changed something and the Art Work section is no longer working online at the moment (works fine on my test system), I cannot upload the latest version of the database as it would break the Games section, so Art Work will be offline until the weekend.

6th November 2005

The Games section is up, you can now list the games by System or Genre, I'm working on the other methods and they will up up as soon I have coded them.

The Art Work section is also up and running.

Moved the Guide section about a bit and implemented some new coding techniques.

5th November 2005

More great news Ville Linde (part of the Mame Team) has got some Gradius IV Fukkatsu graphics working in Mame, maybe it will be working sooner than I thought it would be, thanks to Inter981 in the forum for the link.

Change more of my scripts and made my life much easier to update, added a Sony PSP and PS3 sections to the Games section.

More to come soon….

3rd November 2005

Swapped the two pages around now so to see the old Gradius Home World use the link above.

In other news there would seem to be a new Gradius Collection coming out for the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) on 9th February 2006.

The collection will contain Gradius I, II, III, IV and Gradius Gaiden. There will be lots of extras like art and movies to watch, more news soon.

28th October 2005

Change a few bits around again and cleaned up some of my code (I'm still learning this stuff).

Added two new ways to search for the games, the actual games section are not up yet as I am still testing the way they work.

21st October 2005

Changed the layout around a bit for the Emulation section so that the main site navigation is still shown when in the various section.

Added Systems to the left main navigation.

Also sorted out a silly typo in the code that stopped all the downloads from working in the Downloads section.

No actual game information yet but I am working on that and it just needs some more testing.

15th October 2005

Updated the Emulation Guide navigation so when you are on a guide it lists all the other guides available on the left hand navigation.

Added an X68000 emulator help guide and SmartJoy Plus Adapter guide

When you see this book icon in the Emulation section, this means there is a guide for that emulator.

14th October 2005

I have decided to open the new site much earlier than I originally planned.

Java DHTML menus are now gone (the menu that was on the left) as they are a hassle to keep updated.

The Gradius Home World site rebirth is now (mostly) generated dynamically using MySQL and PHP scripting.

There are lots of problems and not all the sections are online yet but it will get better.

The old site is still online while the transition takes place, all new Gradius information will be added to this page ONLY.

This means the old pages will no longer be updated.

13th October 2005

This will be the last update to this page as the new Gradius Home World is now online (mostly) and all new information will be posted there.

As the sections are added to the new site they will be removed from this site.

30th September 2005

Made a better decription of how to install the excellent Gstyle, added some small bits to the PSX Gradius Gaiden.

25th September 2005

I've had a break from php/mysql coding and put together a guide on how to get the ePSXe emulator running, it's quite a basic guide at the moment (but it has images), this will expand when I get more time to do so.

18th September 2005

Gradius for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) has been talked about at the Tokyo game show in Japan, more news when I find some.

17th September 2005

Arcade Gradius IV Fukkatsu Mame 0.100 screen shots added, the game is still not working but its getting closer.

Also due to the release of Mame 0.100 some roms stopped working, these have been rename and redumped.

I've also decided to stop putting 'Merged Sets' for the arcade games as it's to much hassle when things get changed in the future, see my download page for details and the new files.

16th September 2005

Even more search scripts and ideas added to the test page, reorganized the test page as it was getting a bit long. Take a look….(it's the link on the left that says GHW php Test page)

9th September 2005

More search scripts ideas added and a test page link has been added on the left hand side of this page.

2nd September 2005

I have been making a list of all the games on every machine and have been making a database with this information.

There are now a few different types of search scripts on my test page now so why not take a look and see what you think.

I known the layout of the forms on the search page is a little basic but it's only a prototype test page and will change over time, hopefully into a full blown search feature. I am learning this stuff as I go.

31st July 2005

My first search script has been made but not for the main Gradius Home World but for the Konami Game Music CD's, take a look, you may find it useful.

9th July 2005

Over the last few months I have been working on upgrading the site to a database, see this section of the forum for my updates.

This will not be a fast change over because I am learning this stuff as I go, it will proberly take years but that's the only development on the site at the moment.

2nd July 2005

MSX Parodius cheats and bell information added.

29th May 2005

Added a few screen shots to the PlayStation Gradius Gaiden section.

Wallpaper background pictures taken from the official Konami Gradius V page as that page no longer exists.

More Arcade Parodius Pachinko pictures and four short Quicktime movies.

Added two SHUZILOW.HA pictures scan from the Gokujou Parodius art book.

15th May 2005

Another great Gradius inspired game called ヴァー STYLE ゼロフォースの反乱 (Va-Style Zero Force no Hanran) Translated Name: Va-Style Zero Force Rebellion.

This is from the makers of Gstyle, Only this time, you play as Zelos force, which is hard because it's so big and so slow . Thanks to Postman for the information and Sasamisa for the translations.

7th May 2005

Moved Nemesis 94 Gradius 2 from the X68000 section to the fan section as this is a fan based game, also added a new X68000 fan game called

Gradius Spacial

Aa very interesting game with spites from other game like Pac Man and Fantasy zone.

I have split the Emulation section into two, the new sections are Emulation and Downloads.

Emulation will contain information on my Emulators to use and guides on how to use them (including screen shots!!!), I may need some help with this as there are a lot of machines to do this for.

Downloads will contain all the site downloads (Games, Movies etc…)

Updated the Site Map page as it was a bit out of date.

29th April 2005

The new vertical space shoot'em-up Cavadius is now hosted on GameStone so go take a look at this very good game.

Also today there is a tribute article by Kadosho to the wonderful 20th Anniversary of Gradius.

Happy birthday Gradius ^_^

4th April 2005

A new fan based game Zexseed, this game looks excellent combining Gradius and Salamander.

There is a gameplay movie and opening theme tune to download but no game as yet, but the movie makes it look very good.

Chat about it in the Fan Based section of the forum.

28th March 2005

I've just gone and bought one of those new Mac Mini computers (so far I am very pleased).

I have tried the Gradius type game 'Spacestrike' on it and the game is very well presented, thanks to aleksael for the information and link

23rd March 2005

Added Speed and Temple stages to Famicom Salamander, thanks go to Jeremy again for the images.

22nd March 2005

Added secret stage images of Gradius III Super Famicom to the cheats section, thanks to Jeremy for the images and there is more to come…

17th March 2005

Sorry the Gradius Home World Forum was offline today as I was doing a backup and upgrading it to the latest version, the Forum is now working again.

28th February 2005

New Fan Based games 'Biomix', it's a mix between Bio-Miracle and TwinBee.

21st February 2005

The Gradius II GOFER no yabou arcade JAMMA pcb has now sold and has a new home in Germany.

11th February 2005

My Gradius II GOFER no yabou arcade JAMMA pcb is for sale again on eBay, check it out, auction ends on 11th February 2005 15:53:35 GMT.

6th February 2005

Changed the Game Boy Color and Sinclair Spectrum logo's to higher res versions.

Added an Art Work page for Shaun and an unknown Win2000 boot screen.

Moved the outdated Art Work pages about quite a bit, also added some other bits of art work I had lying around.

1st February 2005

Cleaned up the Emulation section a bit and updated the broken links on that page. Also increased the font size from 10px to 12px across the site (much easier to read now).

14th January 2005

Added a short guide on how to get GSTYLE installed on non Japanese Windows.

12th January 2005

Another Gradius clone, and this one's pretty sweet. Looks to be 7 levels, a full game, I played up to 3 and it's fun. Most like Gradius 2 in playstyle and look I'd say, with remixed graphics and enemies. Thanks to Postman for the information.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2004

22nd December 2004

The Forum went down today, this was due to an upgrade to the latest version of phpBB (as recommended by by hosting company as the older version had a serious flaw).

That's when the problems started and a corrupted the SQL database, obviously I done a backup before the upgrade but SQL did not restore that easily as it should do but it should all be up again.

The only problem is if you uploaded an Avatar (the little images next to your name) they have been lost (sorry) apart from the list of the ones I had.

11th December 2004

Changed the C64 and Game Boy logos, added a placeholder page for Detana TwinBee on I-mode.

24th November 2004

Only Gradius III JAMMA sold on eBay, I still have Gradius II GOFER no yabou available if anyone is interested.

5th November 2004

Changed the layout (again) new layout is much better (CSS is not as easy as it should be), this site is mostly done without 'tables' now which should make future updates much easier.

Moved the Cheats section about for better readability.

Changed the Old Gradius Polls section for a better layout.

My two Gradius arcade boards on eBay finish in the next two days so I would say take a look if you are interested in acquiring some excellent arcade action.

31st October 2004

I have listed Gradius II GOFER no Yabou and Gradius III arcade boards for sale on eBay, take a look.

Both end 7th November 2004 14:33:14 GMT (next Sunday) Gradius II GOFER no Yabou on eBay, Gradius III on eBay

28th October 2004

Sorry about the lack of updates as I have been very busy, I should be adding some new bit at the weekend.

5th October 2004

Added Gradius V to the cheats section.

29th September 2004

I have Gradius and Salamander items for sale on eBay at the moment, auctions finish this Sunday (All now sold)

25th September 2004

Emulation section has been changed to include local files as well as eMule link files, but if the bandwidth goes up to much the files will be pulled again as excess bandwidth costs me money!!! So please donate in the Emulation section.

17th September 2004

Finally got around to installing a testing server on my own system (lots of stress getting it working but well worth the effort), this means I can do more 'offline' testing. Gradius V is out in the US and is getting a DVD called 'Breakdown' which it more or less the Options DVD, see the official Konami US Press Release for details.

Also Gamers can enter the contest on Konami’s website at www.konami.com/gradius5 from September 17th to October 1st 2004, don't forget to view the crazy rules (pdf file) first!!

12th September 2004

Completely changed the layout of the site and sorted out many new problems, layouts are easier to read and colour's are more harmonized.

31st August 2004

Added two images taken from Anubis Zone of the Enders Zoradius game. Temporary Gradius V soundtrack image also added.

30th August 2004

After reading a few official sites (Amazon and Game) it would seam Gradius V UK release date has been put back to 15th October 2004, the US release as for as I can find remains the same.

29th August 2004

Gradius IV Fukkatsu rom emule link added to the emulation section (please keep it shared etc… as it is quite hard to find and when it is fully playable it will be mayhem trying to get it).

28th August 2004

Updated the Emulator section with new links and emu versions, also added a Classified Buy, Sell and Wanted section to the Forum.

21st August 2004

I've finally got around to making a linking banner for this site.

Banner

15th August 2004

Changed the layout of this page and added a new countdown to the 20th Anniversary of Gradius.

9th August 2004

Forum scrolling problems have been sorted out and tested with IE6 and Mozilla Firefox (my browser of choice), thanks to Dynamic Drive for the resize javascript and Graham (<b>GOGS</b>) for pointing the problem out in the first place.

But this iframe resizer was causing to many problems and have returned to the old layout of the Forum opening a second window.

7th August 2004

Moved the countdown to the left hand side, not much else.

26th July 2004

After playing Gradius V for the last few days I have updated my review and made the game sound a lot better than the first version of the review, moved the Gradius V section about a bit, now has the correct stages.

25th July 2004

Added some Game Simulation Video cover scan and Gradius V 'Options' DVD Cover scan, thanks to Natori

22nd July 2004

I have been playing Gradius V for the last few hours and have wrote quite a damning review, go and read it, see the forum for other peoples comments.

21st July 2004

Gradius V Japanese version is out today, it will be over a week until I get my copy from a friend in Japan, if anybody wants to do a small review please post it in the forum, thanks ^_^

15th July 2004

I just could not wait with this information - TWO new Fan Based games added, G-GR and Solar Falcon, both games are just excellent, these should keep you going until Gradius V comes out next week, thanks to Atomita for the information and links.

Also put the Cameo and Fan Based Games menu in alphabetical order on the left hand menu.

The countdown has begun and time is getting short under 6 Days to go.

14th July 2004

Trial Version and Sample covers added to the Game Pack Scans section of Gradius V - thanks to Natori for the information and scans.

Well its been 18 months since Gradius V was announced at the E3 2003 show and its now only one week until the Japanese launch, lets hope its worth the wait.

11th July 2004

I've activated avatars in the Forum so all the people who are joined or not yet to join can choose an image from the gallery's or upload your own.

10th July 2004

Gradius V Music CD information added, thanks to Natori for the information and links.

Konami Style lists the ""Gradius V Original Soundtrackandquot; music CD

Also the composer of Gradius V is Sakimoto Hitoshi (Radiant Silvergun music)

To be honest I thought the Radiant Silvergun music was quite poor or even crap, it was like just a noise in the background. Lets hope Gradius V is much better, but so far the two tunes you can download from the Official site do not sound that good at all, lets just say at the moment its no Gradius Gaiden or even Gradius IV Fukkatsu.

3rd July 2004

Added some advertisement movies for Gradius II GOFER no yabou game play video, Salamander and Salamander Basic Saga Anime, Gradius III and IV Fukkatsu no Shinwa intros and a much better version of the Gradius V movie.

Konami Style lists a DVD called 'GRADIUS V OFFICIAL DVD THE PERFECT' this has play guides, weapon information and lots more, it costs andyen;3150 and comes out the same time as the game. The only thing that's a bit odd is that this sort of extra information came as standard on R Type Final (PS2) when with this game you have to spend more cash, no news if this DVD will come out in the west but I would not hold your breath.

(Japanese site) Babelfish English Translation

30th June 2004

GRADIUS V package designer interview: Hidetaka Tenjin

I'm not sure how good the translation is but you will get the idea, thanks JUN for the link.

24th June 2004

The bandwidth traffic problem was causing some more problems so I have now moved all the movies, rom images including the fan based games to eMule

My broadband is flat rate so this will save me cash when my server costs me when I go over my 10gig per month limit.

The files will be slow to download at the start as only myself will be sharing them, this should speed up as more and more as more people download (please leave the files sharing).

I have added a few clones to some sections ie.. Gradius Galaxies and Gradius Advance. Please share.

21st June 2004

Only one month to go before Gradius V comes out in Japan.

Due to the extra interest of Gradius V this site is getting 150% more hits per day so as a bandwidth saver all rom images are offline until next month (extra bandwidth costs come out of my pocket and I have empty pockets).

17th June 2004

Change the other Gradius V movies to eMule links also, I will be adding some more maybe this or next weekend.

I will also be changing the most downloaded files into eMule links as I'm on unmetered broadband and that costs nothing for the extra bandwidth.

If you do download any of the eMule linked files please keep them shared so they download faster for everybody else, Thanks.

Just to make it easy for all of you, if you search for GSGHW on emule you will find all the files I'm sharing (the acronym means

GameStone Gradius Home World before you ask).

12th June 2004

The Gradius Generations Movie has been added but as an eMule link Gradius Generation Final Challenge the is just a test which if successful I will put some more large movie files and maybe some music on the eMule as well.

11th June 2004

The Gradius V Promotion movie below has some Japanese text and information that has now been translated for this site by SasaMisa, see the Gradius V section for the information.

Gradius Generations tips added for the two, I mean THREE challenges from ForteMP3, I have a DivX video of the Final Challenge but bandwidth is hitting the roof with Gradius V coming out soon I'm getting 3000 hits a day (usually only 2000), I will have to see about this at the end of the month. If I go over my 10gig limit it costs me more cash :(

9th June 2004

A very nice Gradius V Promotion movie from Japanese video game shop version. This shows lots of new bits and information.

Format: wmv9 (Windows Media Video / Windows Media Player), Duration: 2m 10s

Thanks to JUN from Japan

6th June 2004

Azuco's Hornet emulator has had a small update 13th May 2004 (Gradius IV Fukkatsu), he's added a tile map memory viewer. Please note the game is not playable and I don't know of anywhere that has the roms even if it was.

Moved the Emulation section about and redone the links in that section.

5th June 2004

Thanks to Dmitriy D for the TwinBee Taisen Pazuru-dama images for the PSX, also to my brother for the Gradius V Bonus DVD OPTIONS translation

Just under 46 days to go for the Japanese release.

31st May 2004

Cleaned up the Links section of broken and double links. Small bits added to the Cameo section.

29th May 2004

The Konami Style site has information on Gradius V (Japanese).

28th May 2004

Excellent new movie from JUN, Vic Viper Weapons and Option Lock information added to the Gradius V section.

Cleaned up the Gradius III Densetsu no Shinwa and Gradius IV Fukkatsu logo on the Arcade, also in the Arcade section I have added an image of the Konami 'Windy' Candy arcade machine (I want one ^_^ ).

Promoted the Fan Based Games to their own section and renamed the Fan Material to Art Work, rolled out the new DHTML left hand menu across the whole site, should make finding what you want a lot easier.

27th May 2004

I decided to do a bit of Programming and added a Dynamic html (DHTML) menu on the left, it's only on this page at the moment because I'm still testing it for speed etc… If it does work for you use the drop down menu on the top left.

22nd May 2004

Added some images and information for my Gradius IV Fukkatsu arcade board I just recently purchased from Japan, I was looking at the Operator's Manual that came with the board and it mentioned the Low and Med Res versions (selectable by Dip Switch), it also shows the wiring diagram for all the ports, one of them was called VGA out so I selected the 24kHz Medium Resolution option, plugged the board into my old 17' iiyama monitor and the game booted, the picture was so good it make the flickery PS2 version look a bit crap.

The game also has no lag between levels (the PS2 version stops for a split second while the next level loads).

21st May 2004

Just a small Icon Power Up animation added to Gradius V

Also on the Official KCET site you can download the Stage 1 music for the game Gradius V.

20th May 2004 Twelve new Gradius V screen shots added to the screen shot section, I must say the game is just looking better and better, ONLY 62 days till the Japanese release ^_^

19th May 2004

I just this morning received my large order of arcade games straight from Japan including - Gradius (bubble version), Gradius II GOFER no yabou, Gradius III ~ Densetsu kara Shinwa ~, Gradius IV Fukkatsu, Salamander and a small Parodius Pachinko machine all with their original stickers and instructions that I will be scanning over the next few weeks, I will also be updating the Arcade section with the new information and images.

Added character and weapon animations to the Super Famicom Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius

17th May 2004

The site GameStone has been going for nearly seven years and the code and layout of the pages have become clogged with obsolete code and html, the site first started with Notepad and then quickly moved onto Adobe Pagemill, then Microsoft FrontPage 98/99 and then I started with the excellent Macromedia Dreamweaver 2, 3, MX and now MX 2004. I have been going over the pages for the last week (boring) and removing all the rubbish and sorting out the Style Sheets (instead of Font's) etc… I still have lots to do but it should make page loading faster and layouts better for you.

13th May 2004

Some more images added to the Gradius V section from the E3 2004 show, Gamespot has some movies on their site but I don't have access to these (Ahhhh I hate password sites).

For all you people in Japan you can pre order the game on the internet from Sofmap | Sofmap Babelfish English Translation for andyen;6,279 and you get the bonus 'OPTIONS' DVD also, if only I lived in Japan ^_^

Also adjusted the Contact page to use CGI instead of an email link, hopefully this will stop the spam bots collecting my email address.

10th May 2004

Moved a few bits around and organize the PS2 section with a new layout.

9th May 2004

The Core, you may notice the Core gets more detailed as the series progresses.

6th May 2004

Thanks to Federico Mazza for the HDI image of Garudius 95, I have updated the HDI image he sent me to make it boot without a floppy disk boot image and command prompt typing (much easier to run and a very good game).

Now I just need somebody to write some reviews/guides for all the fan games ^_^

5th May 2004

Added two links above to Konami's Official E3 2004 web site (US and Japanese Versions), the E3 show starts May 12th - 14th 2004, the site should have some very interesting Gradius V information taken from the show.

4rd May 2004

More Gradius artwork added from the Japanese CG group 'Konaken' nice stuff.

Gradius V Shop front experience and Sticker images added. I'm sure everybody knows by now but I will say it anyway, if you preorder the game Gradius V in Japan you get a bonus DVD called OPTIONS, this DVD has behind the scenes 'making of the game' and play videos. I will have to see if I can get hold of one of these.

Some excellent Fan Games added - G-Phantom ~Xerdotos Phantom~ (best fan game), GR3EX, Naradius, Haradius, Fatalcraft, GikoParo and GikoParoNeo, also move and reorganized the Fan Based Games section so each game has it's own page as the original section was getting a bit messy.

Three image from the upright version of Solar Assault Gradius have been added (I want one of these ^_^ )

2nd May 2004

Small scans of PSOne Books games Detana!! TwinBee and Gokujou Parodius Deluxe Pack for the PlayStation, a better image of Gradius V box. Dream Mix TV World Fighters scan added to the Cameo section.

1st May 2004

CG Intro images for Gradius III AND IV pack on PS2, Cameo of TwinBee characters in the Arcade game Battle Tryst added.

Also moved the Fan Based games section about.

Added Gradius V UK release date, still no news on the US release date at the moment.

25th April 2004

Moved the Konami logo history to its own section under History, organized the Arcade and Game Boy Advance sections, I'm going through the site and sorting out most of the layout problems and reorganising the layout so they load faster, its going to take quite a bit of time but there's not much else to do until Gradius V come out in 87 days.

Moved the Cameo section about quite a bit, I would like some help with some image grabs for the Cameo games section that have no images at the moment (just about 3/4 of them).

24th April 2004

Added a Gradius V count down to the Japanese release, also back is the Piano tune from Gradius Deluxe Pack, moved the Multimedia section about a bit. Added a few image rollovers to the various sections on the left.

18th April 2004

Three more excellent pieces of Gradius art work from Cliff Campbell added, Organised Nemesis '90 Kai, Gradius III AND IV and Gradius V sections for better viewing.

Also added some Trial version screen shots to Gradius III AND IV (thanks JUN).

Resized all the fonts on the site so I can try a few different layouts again.

A formal announcement from KCET is that Gradius V will be release on 22nd July 2004 (thanks JUN for the updated information)

IRC has now change (see left below), I don't use IRC but I know a few people do.

17th April 2004

Box scan of Gradius V added (low res version, sorry) thanks to JUN.

12th April 2004

Japanese Konami fan JUN has confirmed the Japanese release date of Gradius V is the 29th July 2004, price andyen;7,329.

I was bored so I decided to make a Vic Viper Formation tribute, there are a few of Lord British as well, you can see how Vic Viper has changed over the years with each game. I would like to do more with Moai, Cores etc… I will see what I can do.

11th April 2004

Added 'Airforce Delta: Blue Wing Knights' to the Cameo Section as this game has lots of ships and planes from just about every Konami game you can think of.

10th April 2004

The Excellent MSX/PC Fan Based Gradius game Manesis has been added thanks to Eric, lots more fan based games to come over the next few months.

Cliff Cambell has sent one more excellent piece of Fan Art.

Also all new artist section added for the artist of many talents - Alteka - very nice desktop wallpaper and Vic Viper scratch build model, she is also working on a huge plush Vic Viper, more images soon.

8th April 2004

Moved the Fan Art section about a bit and added lots of new art work, updated the I-Mode games section, added Arcade Solar Assault PCB photo and lots of new screen shots for most of the arcade games. PlayChoice 10 Gradius rom added.

3rd April 2004

New Gradius V information, screen shots and lots more added. I decided to move the Cheats about and created a new cheats section to make it easier to find the games cheats.

28th March 2004

Konami TYO's site has been updated with some new stuff including background wallpaper to download and Internet Rankings for the game Gradius V (same as Gradius IV Fukkatsu) but not working until the game is out.

23rd March 2004

Added rankings to the Forum (they vary depending on how many post you have made), also moved a few bits about and created some new sections.

21st March 2004

Updated the Fan Based games section with G TYPE and lots of images for the other games, I'm still working on a better layout for this section but it usable at the moment

18th March 2004

Added a few images to the History section and to the Games/I-Mode Gradius section

17th March 2004

Konami TYO now has an official Gradius V web page, not much information yet but it shows the game is coming soon.

14th March 2004

Added a poster scan of the Japanese version of Gradius V, thanks Jun

6th March 2004

Fixed some broken external links on the Emulation page, I've also got around to making the Fan Art section a bit better as well as adding some very good pencil art work from Cliff Campbell. I've gone through the site and removed lots of the thumbnails, I decided to just have the images on the pages instead, loading times are a bit longer but it does make some the pages look better.

2nd March 2004

Even more Gradius for the Japanese mobiles 'Gradius Neo -IMPERIAL-' this game look like you play the Core instead of Vic Viper. Also added a fan based game Maridius, sort of Mario and Gradius rolled together in one game, very interesting, thanks to Eric for the information.

28th February 2004

Added a magazine scan for PC Engine Parodius Da! And I've also sorted out the Internet Explorer problems. Changed all the gif's to png's across the whole site (smaller file sizes means faster loading) except the animation gif's as you cannot animate a png (as far as I know).

Finally update the Fan Based games section with links and information, you just have to play GR-S as it is the best PC based fan Gradius game available, very professional.

18th February 2004

Well the 18th February has been and gone so I guess Amazon.com with their release date for the US version of Gradius V must have been wrong.

8th February 2004

Updated the Emulation section with the latest emulators available, also added Bubble System BIOS rom that can be played in the M1 music player (warming up tune from Gradius and TwinBee).

There are problems with the Emulation section if you have the latest patches from Microsoft installed for IE6, I will see if there is a way around it over the next week or so, Mozillia Firefox 0.8 web browser works fine.

Out of the 6782 accesses last week, 978 were Netscape, the rest were Internet Explorer 6.0 (1252 were Internet Explorer 5.0). I will check at work tomorrow to see if it has the same problem.

6th February 2004

Another Gradius game has appeared from nowhere called Gradius Neo for the NTT DoCoMo phone system in Japan, hopefully they will bring this game out in the west as it looks very good.

1st February 2004

Changed the Gradius V logo to a much better resolution version, also changed a few images on the Gradius V page and added one more divx movie from the game.

According to the Tokyo Game Show 2003 (Titles on Exhibit) pdf document I found online, it says the Japanese version of Gradius V has a release date of Winter 2004, I've read elsewhere that the UK and US release are next month, this seems kind of strange.

29th January 2004

Some pictures of the intro and more in-game images from Gradius V, the game does look very cool, I can't wait.

25th January 2004

Added three short DivX movies of Gradius V recorded last year at E3 to the PS2 section. Still no definite release date, it's been over a year and I hope it's worth the wait.

11th January 2004

Updated all the arcade roms to the correct names and check all 24 games.

3rd January 2004

M1 v0.7.4b - Arcade Rom Music Player, sorted out a few bugs, Emu Hype's News Page for the latest version, don't forget to get the BridgeM1 has also been updated to v0.5.1a.

2nd January 2004

M1 v0.7.4 - Arcade Rom Music Player has been updated, see R. Belmont's WIP Emporium or Emu Hype's News Page for the latest version, don't forget to get the BridgeM1 v0.5.1 front end and track listing.

Also updated the Emulation page to included the M1 player, updated all the latest links and information. Gradius and Salamander PC Engine Magazine scan added to the PC Engine Gradius section, (thanks JUN).

Gradius V release date listed on on Amazon.co.uk is 5th March 2004.

 

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Site History - 2003

28th December 2003

Famicom TwinBee Disc System images added, Gradius and Salamander Audio Cassette and CD Single information, Salamander Video and Laser Disc images (courtesy of JUN), some book scans , TwinBee I-mode images. Lots of other little tweaks here and there. Puzzle game called 'Cue Brick' contain some cameo appearances by some Gradius characters.

24th December 2003

Some new images and information straight from a Konami fan 'JUN' in Japan added to the Gradius V section. Also added some more I-appli, I-mode information to the TwinBee section.

23th December 2003

The game is now two years old and as a holiday bonus I have added Gradius Generation to the Emulation section. As this is the Japanese version of the

game its also good to see if there where differences from Gradius Advance (UK) and Gradius Galaxies (US) that you have probably played on the actual handheld console.

13th December 2003

Konami are bringing the mobile gaming to the west including the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and the USA on Vodaphone Live and Verizon - Get it Now, the

only games listed are Gradius, Frogger and Castlevania.

11th November 2003

New Gradius V logo added to the PS2 section and a link to the Tokyo Game Show 2003 where Gradius V was shown.

7th November 2003

PSX TwinBee RPG character pictures and box scans, Kukeiha logo's to the Music CD section, History of the Konami Logo in the History section, Game Boy

Advance Gradius Generations hidden 5000 bonuses and some more tips (the game is two years old now), Famicom 'Gradius ArchiMENdes Hen' Rom Image added to the Emulation section.

Still no more news on Gradius V yet but it will probably be out February 2004 (or so I have read elsewhere)

26th October 2003

Updated the emulation page with the latest emulators and sorted out a few dead links, also tested the games with the new version of some of the

emulators.

11th October 2003

Konami are re-releasing some of their back catalog on the PlayStation.

Gradius Gaiden | Detana TwinBee Deluxe Pack | Gokujou Parodius Deluxe Pack

28th September 2003

Added some hints and cheats to Detana!! TwinBee on the PSX and Saturn, move around Nemesis 90' Kai and added a few other bit here and there, mainly

just clearing my 'Gradius To Sort' folder.

27th September 2003

Sort some of the site code out (CSS etc…) and changed the navigation button in the Games section.

No new news on Gradius V yet.

29th August 2003

Four new Gradius Home World logos added (you will get a random when you load this page).

18th August 2003

Added some pictures and information for Parodius and TwinBee for the J-Appli I-Mode phone

17th August 2003

I have added a small ring tone section, when I understand WML better I will make a little Ring Tones and Graphics page, but in the mean time you can play

with these two tunes. They work with my Nokia 3510i, they are standard midi files so should work with any polyphonic phone, just type those URL's into the WAP browser on your mobile and it

will say tone received, you will only be charged only for the connection time (depends on your operator but T-Mobile for me was about 15 pence each).

This was only tested in the UK as I can't test overseas but I see no reason why it shouldn't work.

Congratulations from Gradius III

1st Level tune from ThunderCross II

31st July 2003

Added some new images and information to the Gradius V section, also I have ordered R Type Final for the PS2, hopefully it will be here by tomorrow and it

will tide me over until Gradius V comes out next year.

I have also tested all the PSX games with the ePSXe Emulator and they all play except Parowars and Gradius, see the Emulation section for details.

23rd July 2003

Move the Site History into the Gradius Home World section of the site. R Type Final is out on PS2 but I don't have a copy of it yet but it looks very good.

18th July 2003

I was getting a bit bored with the black stars background and fancied a change to a much lighter background, sorted out quite a few animated gif's and some

problem graphics because of the new background.

7th July 2003

Added a new Japanese Gradius game to the Fan Material section (under games) here is the link to this wonderful Windows based game GR-S

5th July 2003

New small icons on the Fan Material and Multimedia sections, also added the last two sets of arcade roms to the emulation section, Sexy Parodius and Salamander 2.

29th June 2003

Added TwinBee Yahho-! Arcade rom to the emulation section

24th June 2003

Updated the emulation section with some nice pictures and sorted out some bad links.

21st June 2003

Is Gradius V being developed by Treasure or KCET?, You Decide, take a look at my updated Gradius V page.

20th June 2003

The bandwidth Anti leeching is working, I now have some spare bandwidth, so I have added Gokujou Parodius arcade ROM image to the emulation section, moved the Cameo Appearances section around a bit so its easier to read.

13th June 2003

Sorted out the bad links in the emulation section

10th June 2003

More Anti leechingmeasures put into effect on the emulation section.

7th June 2003

Finally got around to making some small navigation buttons for the games page.

2nd June 2003

I've protected all the rom images with an Anti leechscript because of other sites cross linking and stealing my band width.

25th May 2003

Added three pictures to the Konami Official Art section under Fan Material taken from the PSX games CD Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius ~ forever with me ~, Mame 0.69 has been released, mainly bug fixes but some new game added also, no effect to the few Salamander 2 problems.

Changed the background picture on this page and the other pages also,

finally made some new main navigation buttons on the left.

16th May 2003

Arcade Salamander 2 is now fully playable in the latest release of Mame 0.68, Moved the music section about so its much easier for me to update and hopefully easier for you to view.

14th May 2003

Added some PS2 Gradius V screen shots taken from the E3 show, moved the Konami CD section under Multimedia about quite a a bit and merged the two CD sections into one.

13th May 2003

Famicom Parodius da! Added, thanks go to ckain, I would say it nearly a complete list apart from the Game Boy Advance and some of the Arcade roms (I have them but am choosing not to put them up at this time)

9th May 2003

Famicom TwinBee, Gradius II, Gradius and Salamander screen shots and rom images added.

4th May 2003

Added Hints, Tips and Cheats information to MSX, PC8801, X68000, PSX and Saturn game sections, Also added Game Boy Advance Gradius Generations cheats. Moved the rom image links from inside each game section to just the emulation section, also added file sizes. Added some pictures to PSX ParoWars.

3rd May 2003

Arcade Gradius II GOFER no yabou and Gradius III operator manual and control scans, pictures of the real Easter Island Moai in the Fan Material section.

2nd May 2003

PS2 Gradius III and IV The Best Release box scan, Famicom Moero TwinBee Cartridge Version scan, Famicom TwinBee 3 Guide Book scan, lots of CD scans and information on some of the Kukeiha Club music CDs also, TwinBee RPG pictures all supplied by JUN.

Famicom Moero TwinBee - Cinnamon Hakase wo Sukue!, Yume Penguin Monogatari, TwinBee 3 Poko-Poko Daimaou rom images added.

Added one new fan picture to the Fan Material section

Made the navigation border on the left (only on this page) black until I get time to make some new navigation button (the text only was had to read with the planet background)

29th April 2003

Arcade Salamander 2 screen shots added and some weapon pictures for Java I-mode Gradius and Salamander. Operator Manual scan for Arcade Gradius and lots of other screen shots added to the arcade sections

28th April 2003

Added some pictures and information about the Game Simulation Videos of Gradius and Salamander and a magazine scan of the Gradius III and IV Fukkastu no Shinwa for the PS2 but supplied by JUN. Also added an Old Gradius Polls page for the previous voting's.

22nd April 2003

Just a small update of every section to make the tables more constant across the site and make the pages have no sideway scroll bars at 1024 x 768 at this

is the resolution most people use (17inch monitors), its just my TFT runs at 1280 x 1024, I'll have to remember to check page as I make them in future.

21st April 2003

Updated the Emulators section to include links to the various emulators I use.

20th April 2003

PSX Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius Guide and Cheats section added (also contains some Saturn version cheats), a few images added to the Games/Cameo section.

19th April 2003

Added TwinBee da! (Game Boy) info, rom etc… to the Emulation and History Sections.

10th April 2003

Gokujou Parodius, Sexy Parodius and TwinBee Yahho-! Are now supported by Mame 0.67 , Salamander 2 missed out on this release of Mame.

6th April 2003

Made a new Japanese GHW logo and made it cycle between the two (Japanese - English GHW Logo), added a game rom list to the Emulation section

1st April 2003

Changed the complete layout of the site, added Japanese game text to each page, made navigation much easier, checked every rom image to see if any where damaged zip files, sorted out tons of broken links and so much more its too much to list.

Also this is the first time I've spent a week testing the site instead of just uploading it and changing bits as I go.

I hope you like the new layout, talk about it in the Forums.

The Emulation section is a bit empty at the moment, this will have guides on which emulators the rom images have been tested with, as well as links to the emulator web sites and hopefully some guides on how to get the harder emulators (X68000 etc..) to work.

Mame TwinBee Yahoo-! Is looking good and may be in the next release.

28th March 2003

Changed a few bit here and there (bad links, typos etc..), updated the History sections to make them easier to read. Still no news or extra screen shots of

Gradius V yet :(

27th March 2003

ANUBIS Zone of the Enders and some other Salamander/Gradius references in the Cameo Appearance section including a fighting game Kyukyoku Sentai Dadandarn.

Also added some TV Commercial screen shots to the Famicom games, thanks to JUN

15th March 2003

Added information on the new CD Salamander Arcade Soundtrack

13th March 2003

Added some more CD listings to Music World (thanks to JUN again ^_^).

New poll added (I would like to see what comes out top).

12th March 2003

Mame WIP page list that work on the Konami GX driver (Gokujou Parodius, Sexy Parodius) are looking good and may be in the next Mame release.

28th February 2003

Sorted out a few bad links and moved a few little bits about.

26th February 2003

All the arcade rom images have been removed as my bandwidth is maxing out for the second month running (I only get 10GB transfer per month). Changed the Forum from Phorum to the excellent (and much better to use) phpBB forum.

25th February 2003

Added the release date and code numbers for Gradius III and IV best pack from Japan, also Salamander 2 CD track listings both thanks to JUN.

23rd February 2003

More CD track listings from JUN, also a information on a remix Techno Gradius tune from Germany, thank to Gruß Gernot for the info.

22nd February 2003

Gradius game on eBay started today on a 10 day auction finishing on 04th March 17:28. Lots of games for the PSX, Saturn. Music CDs and lots more - go

take a look.

21st February 2003

Removed the Buying and Selling section as no games were being sold, I will list the games on eBay probably next week. Also thanks go to a Japanese

Konami fan "JUN" for some track listing and CD cover scans (images not up yet).

20th February 2003

More Voting Polls added. Not much else as I don't have the time at the moment.

15th February 2003

Change the Voting Poll to php (could not mix SSI and PHP).

14th February 2003

Added the first of many short Voting Polls. Change the Poll to server side include instead of php. If you can think up a Poll send me a question and the

list of answers and I will add it to the list on the right.

10th February 2003

Updated the Forum code to the latest version, now loads much faster, also changed the colours to make it easier on the eyes. Not much else added apart

from a few tweaks to some pages.

30th January 2003

I've split the History section into four pages so they load much faster now, also added some more TwinBee pages but not much added to each page yet (I

still have lots of scanning and retouching to do). No more Gradius V news yet but I will keep my eyes open.

24th January 2003

Moved lots about and change the main navigation again, sorted out bad links, table widths etc… (very boring stuff)

20th January 2003

One image added to the fan art section.

18th January 2003

Added some TwinBee RPG picture to the PSX section, also in other news a GREAT NEW game called GRADIUS V is coming out for the PlayStation 2 (should be

out in the autumn), I wonder if this will also get a western release.

11th January 2003

Changed the Main GameStone page about slightly (no more banners) and also changed a few colours here and there, sorted out the page layout so the site is

optimised for 1024x768, this seems to be the default size for desktops these days (nearly all computers sold come with a 17&quot; monitor which runs nicely at this resolution). Change the

PayPal donation buttons so you can leave a short message when you make a small donation.

5th January 2003

Split Gradius and Salamander in the History Section, change the PSX ParoWars and Sexy Parodius logos and added one extra screen shot to each section.

4th January 2003

Split the misc game section into three sections, Merchandise, Cameo Appearances and Other Gradius Games, this speeds up loading and make viewing easier.

Also added cross linking to all the game sections, ie 'Sexy Parodius is also available on Arcade, PSX, Saturn' etc… Removed PlayChoice10 Gradius II &amp; Salamander and Arcade Jikkyou

Oshaberi Parodius ~forever with me~ because the games do not exist. Added the very hard to find roms of X68000 TwinBee and Detana!! TwinBee, also PC Engine Detana!! TwinBee rom added and

updated the History and Site Index sections too.

3rd January 2003

Thanks go to Federico Mazza for the first small donation, excellent and thanks again. I've scanned some of the Gokujou Parodius Art Book and they are

large and in Japanese so what I am going to do is crop the images just to show the original art work, sketches etc…

 

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Site History - 2002

28th December 2002

Arcade TwinBee Yahho-! Rom added (no emulator at the moment), Super Famicom Pop 'n TwinBee and TwinBee Rainbow Bell Adventure Roms added. Some more screen shot of the new Konami J-APPLI I Mode Gradius game (Misc Gradius Games Section)

27th December 2002

Added Japanese translations of Gradius, Salamander, Parodius and TwinBee to the History section, also Japanese translation to Arcade Parodius. Level and weapon guide for Arcade Detana TwinBee. All text in now encoded with UTF-8 Unicode (Internet Explorer will display the Japanese text fine)

26th December 2002

Arcade Rom Image of Detana TwinBee/Bells and Whistles, also lots of pictures to the same page. One more music CD scan added to Music World.

25th December 2002

Some more CD front covers added. Added some extra screen shots to the Arcade Parodius, Gokujou Parodius and Sexy Parodius

24th December 2002

Arcade Rom Image of TwinBee has been added and updated the History section with the correct names and original prices for the TwinBee games, added a few more CD covers. Also added some very nice art work to the Arcade Sexy Parodius page.

23rd December 2002

Even more Music CD cover scans added.

22nd December 2002

A few more Music CD cover scans have been added.

21st December 2002

Changed the poster and cover scans in Gradius III AND IV for the PlayStation 2, added seven pages from the Gradius II GOFER no yabou Art Book for the X68000.

20th December 2002

Lots of cover images of the music CDs added to the Music World.

15th December 2002

Added three more games to the Buying and Selling section and reduced all of the prices for the other games, I also now except PayPal payments in &pound;UK for United Kingdom buyers.

14th December 2002

Removed all the mp3s from the CD section, I am planning of adding (at a later date) one track from each CD.

13th December 2002

Some art picture to the X68000 Gradius II GOFER no yabou page and the second instruction sheet for the Arcade Salamander 2. Changed the music World section into two sections to speed up loading times.

25th November 2002

Lots of Track listings have been added to the Music World section

24th November 2002

Updated and added lots of new links to the Links section, also updated all the Bablefish Translation links so they should work OK now.

23rd November 2002

Added a Salamander Video Cassette and Pencil case to the Misc Games Section

22nd November 2002

Salamander 2 Arcade version instruction scans are now up and Spectrum cover scans complete, also updated the Music World section navigation and layout.

21st November 2002

More scans added, all the boxes, instructions, cartridges for the Famicom games.

20th November 2002

Added box scans of Salamander for the C64 and Spectrum. Also box scans of Gradius II GOFER no yabou for the X68000. I have scanned lots of images I am just retouching and resizing them for the site.

18th November 2002

I've just bought a new scanner so there will be lots of scanned images over the next month or two

10th November 2002

Update the Misc Gradius Section to contain cameo appearances of Gradius characters and game downloads so you can take a look.

9th November 2002

Cleaned up the Music World Section and went through my entire collection of games and music CDs checking original prices, code numbers and game names.

8th November 2002

Moved the GHW updates to this page from the main page, made all the font on most of the pages larger (I viewed the site on a system at work and the whole site text looked quite small).

7th November 2002

Added a 'Site Index' to Gradius Home World section and one more site added to the Links section.

3rd November 2002

Changed to look of Gradius Home World and updated the Forum and Guestbook. Added NOCHEX payment buttons in the Gradius - Buying &amp; Selling section (only for UK buyers).

2nd November 2002

Change the Gradius - Buying &amp; Selling section so you can now click on a PayPal logo to buy the items. Move all the Gradius game layouts around to display better.

27th October 2002

Today I updated the Guestbook so its now my own php version (much faster), I also transferred over all the messages from the old one.

26th October 2002

Added my first Gradius forum to the Gradius Home World section.

22nd October 2002

Rom images and screen shots for all the MSX games. Information and screen shots for Wai Wai World SOS Parsley Castle in the Misc section.

21st October 2002

Lots of screen shots for PC Engine games (Parodius da!, Gradius II GOFER no yabou and Salamander) and the arcade game Parodius da!. Change the History section about to make it more readable, also added quite a few images to that section too and added a very basic Saturn section.

20th October 2002

I found the Windows version of Gradius Deluxe Pack and have added a rom image of it to the W9x section

19th October 2002

More broken links sorted, added a few games to the Misc Gradius section and added lots of information to Solar Assault in the arcade section of Gradius Home World

16th October 2002

Simplified the Gradius Home World navigation slightly and cured a few other small problems.

15th October 2002

Adjusted some of the prices in the Gradius - Buying &amp; Selling section and you now get FREE postage to the UK and a fixed price for postage to the US (other locations will be worked out when I know your location ) take a look. Also added four Silk tunes to the SILK music section.

13th October 2002

Added Gokujou Parodius da! And Sexy Parodius da! Arcade rom images to the arcade section, again you can play the music from the roms with the GX music player also on the same page, but there are no emulators for these games yet (I'm sure MAME will emulate them soon).

7th September 2002

I have added the Salamander 2 rom image to the arcade section, you can play the music from the rom with the GX music player also on the same page.

27th August 2002

There seems to be some more Gradius games on Japanese I Mode J-Sky mobile phones, here's the links to Konami's homepage ONE | TWO Gradius, Gradius B, Gradius C and Salamander, there is also movie of Salamander which I will put on this site in a few days and the games look virtually the same as the arcade version.

26th August 2002

Changed the navigation around a bit on Gradius Home World

23rd August 2002

Added the excellent music CD MidiPower Pro 7 to the Music World section of Gradius Home World in mp3 format, this CD has some of the best arranged versions of Gradius tunes, reduced some of the prices on the Gradius - Buying &amp; Selling section.

10th August 2002

A new section added, Gradius - Buying &amp; Selling of Gradius related material. I have quite a list of games for sale in this section for the Arcade, PSX, Saturn and lots more rare items. See this section if you have been looking for a certain game or music CD for a long time because I may well have it for sale.

Gradius Home World is now over FIVE years old, a big THANK YOU to everybody who has emailed me and gave their support.

8th July 2002

Added better screen shots to the Game Boy Advance section of Gradius Generations.

Nemesis is the Japanese name for the Game Boy games (not Gradius) also added the Nemesis and Nemesis II ROM IMAGES for the Game Boy.

18th June 2002

Added a site search facility from Google (see bottom of the page). You can now search the whole of the site or the rest of the Internet.

5th June 2002

Playchoice 10 section and added a few pictures of Gradius including the Vs Gradius ROM. Other ROMS added MSX Parodius da!, Game Boy Parodius da!, Arcade Parodius da!, moved the Arcade roms about a bit and added all the clone versions.

4th June 2002

Added the ROM IMAGES for the Amstrad CPC 464 version of Nemesis and Salamander as well as some screen shots.

I have also removed the NeoGeo section because I cannot find any reference to these games on the net or on Konami's web site, I only added them because I thought I saw Salamander running on the NeoGeo way back in 1992/3.

26th May 2002

Added ROM IMAGE for Gradius on the C64 (very hard to find online and quite rare)

23rd May 2002

Moved the Gradius Links from the Links page above into Gradius Home World (much better navigation).

I have also decided to re-scan all the game boxes, manual inserts and images for Gradius Home World at 300dpi (they are 72dpi at the moment), when the site first went live on the 26th July 1997 web space was expensive (I only had 5meg from Demon Internet) I now have much more and I think it is time for even better quality.

22nd May 2002

Finally found the ROM IMAGE for the PC88 version of Gradius, this version is almost identical to the X1 version.

21st May 2002

Added a PC88 Gradius section, no screen shots or information yet.

19th May 2002

Two screen shots and the very hard to find ROM IMAGE for the Sharp X1 Gradius, see the X1 section for information

16th May 2002

Added a language translator from AltaVista's Babel Fish so you can have the site in your local language.

Thank you to David Lowenstein some Gradius Links and I have added even more Gradius links (10 in total). I have also added translated links to all the Japanese links.

11th May 2002

Another version of Gradius I have never seen before, Gradius for the Sharp X-1 computer (I will be putting up some picture in the next few weeks).

Made the navigation of Gradius Home World much better and also sorted out some bad link in the Apex Computer Productions section of Zzap! World 64

3rd May 2002

Added two more tunes from the Gradius Deluxe Pack, Gradius Piano Tune (the track when you complete Gradius On the PSX/Saturn) and reorganised Gradius Music World section (better navigation)

1st May 2002

Lots of mp3 Gradius music added, way to many to list so take a look. Also there is a new Gradius CD out in Japan with called GRADIUS - ARCADE SOUNTRACK. It’s a 2 CDs set containing: Original Game Soundtracks from Gradius, Gradius II, Gradius III &amp; Gradius IV. Plus 6 music tracks from the PSX, Saturn and PS2 versions plus 7 arranged tracks. I will try to get hold of some of these CDs and put up some mp3s from it.

Gradius - Arcade Soundtrack KMCA-155-156, &yen;3800 in Japan.

30th April 2002

I have upgraded my ISP (no more pop-up windows) and I now have three times more web space, so I have now added quite a few mp3s to the music section of Gradius Home World.

31st March 2002

New better pictures of the various machines (computer and console) that run Gradius Games

30th March 2002

Added a page counter and Super Famicom Rom Images and one Game Boy game. New background picture for Gradius Home World. Plus a new Misc Gradius section showing unusual Gradius related stuff.

24th March 2002

Added lots of box scans and images for the Famicom and X68000 games. Also added disk images for the X68000 and Arcade games.

Whenever you see Floppy Image means the game can be download for evaluation (you will require an emulator to play these games, please do not ask me about them because I don't have time to sort that out.

12th March 2002

My 3rd Winamp skin 'Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius da!' is now complete, take a look Gradius Winamp skin

9th March 2002

I have made a new Gradius Winamp skin and added two others I found on the web, all the games below have now been sold ^_^

26th February 2002

I have now decided to sell the Vulcan Venture arcade JAMMA board I own and a few other games on eBay

Arcade JAMMA Vulcan Venture | PSX Parodius da! PAL Version | PSX Gradius Deluxe Pack Japanese Version, all of these auctions have finish.

8th February 2002

My Lunar Rescue arcade machine is now for sale on eBay, ends 17-Feb-02 13:04:38 GMT (only for the UK). This machine is now sold and has been removed from this site.

1st February 2002

Added rom images for Gradius, Parodius da! And Salamander to the PC Engine section of Gradius Home World section

Gradius Tunes added to Mid's, Sid's &amp; Other Tune section of Gradius Home World

Four tunes added to the Silk (Oomori Kinuku the voice of Priss from Bubblegum Crisis) music page,

25th January 2002

Big update, this site is now hosted by 1and1 Hosting, I'm sorry the site was down for a few days, domain name transfers are not as easy as they should be.

A few updates to the Gradius Home World section, removed the cross linking between versions of the games (makes navigation less confusing).

More information added to the Silk music page.

Merged the Arcade section with Lunar Rescue (I don't have many boards left anyway)

Datahits tunes are now back including Sanxion 'Thalamusic' from the Zzap! 64 Sampler cassette

I will be putting up some more mp3s of Gradius and Silk, if you want a particular tune, please email and I will put up the most requested and then rotate then once a month or fortnightly maybe.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2001

30th December 2001

Well another year and another update, because I now have broadband ADSL fitted (very fast!!!!) I can no longer upload to Freeola (unless I dial into them with a modem (too slow) and I don't have a modem because I used to have ISDN) I am going to have to cut down this site and move it to a new hosting service (this will not effect the site because of the domain name transfer).

The site used to be other 102MB but now I have cut it down to just over 58.8MB (I only get 100MBs with my new hosting company).

Sections removed are from the Arcade section: Dragon's Lair (I have sold my machine so this seams appropriate), Thunder Force, Thunder Cross, Psychic 5 (I still have this board for sale)

24th December 2001

The Datahits and Sanxion mp3 tunes will not be back for a quite a bit of time now (no server space), sorry

16th December 2001

Added lots of information to GBA Gradius Generations page, and Game Boy Advance Logo. Added a few more pictures to the Dragon's Lair page

5th December 2001

Removed all the dead links from the Links section

14th December 2001

Sorted out loads of bad links (again), when I upgraded to Win 2000, it changed some of the files names and directories to uppercase. Then Dreamweaver decided to update the links to uppercase too, I went back to Win 98SE and the site worked OK on a Windows machine but on a web server (case sensitive) some pages had no pictures and some link where dead. They should all be OK now (I hope ^_^ )

10th December 2001

Change the navigation on Gradius Home World and added some more pictures to Gradius Generations, quite a few people ask me where to get Gradius/Salamander/Parodius da! Games from…. I get most of mine from eBay (see link on top right). Just search for 'Gradius' or 'Salamander' or 'Parodius da!' and make sure you search Available to your location (world search). There is usually lots of excellent games and systems on there.

28th November 2001

Added level information and more screen shots to GBA Gradius Generation page (that's the name of the Japanese version of the game).

27th November 2001

I have decided the C64 and Spectrum version of Nemesis and Salamander are old enough for rom images to be added to their relative sections, I am still looking for the US C64 version Gradius rom image to add to the C64 page.

24th November 2001

Game Boy Advance game 'Gradius Advanced' (UK version at the over inflated price of &pound;35!!!! That is a bit steep don't you think) has been released on 8th November 2001 (The US version is called Gradius Galaxies), also the Japanese version is coming out next year in 17th January 2002, a bit strange that the Japanese version comes out 'after' the western release, unless it is going to be different maybe.

16th November 2001

Sorry about all the broken link etc, I have now sorted most of them out.

17th September 2001

I have added more screen shots to the GBA Gradius Galaxies page and some more pictures to the Music World section

22nd July 2001

Added four screen shots for the Game Boy Advance game 'Gradius Galaxies'

20th June 2001

Hugh change made the Gradius Home World, totally redesigned the site navigation and sorted out lots of problems. Added so much (box scans, game endings, screen shots) the list is endless, take a look!!!, I have now added cross navigation in Gradius Home World. I.e… If you choose Gradius III on the Super Famicom you can jump straight to other versions of the games (Arcade, PlayStation 2), Also have Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius da! ~forever with me~ &amp; Parodius da! Original Soundtrack on CD, so box scans will be in Music World

39th May 2001

Box scans of Gokujou Parodius da! For the Super Famicom added to Gradius Home World

28th May 2001

Box scans of Parowars added to PSX Selection of Gradius Home World

19th May 2001

Added some scans from the Philips Programming manual for the VP380 (I believe it’s the same for all Philips players) thanks go to Marioni Matteo for the scans, I have just acquired Gokujou Parodius da! For the Super Famicom, so box scans will be up soon.

5th May 2001

I am selling my Suzuki SV650SY motorbike (UK only).

My Suzuki motorbike has now been sold :)

26th April 2001

Changed around the Dragon's Lair and Lunar Rescue pages and added more information, A major update to how Gradius Home World looks and feels, also new logos and links. I hope you like the new look.

22nd April 2001

Added some pictures of my Table Top arcade game Lunar Rescue ARCADE, I have also bought Parowars for the PSX, box scans will be online soon, I may be selling my Vulcan Venture arcade JAMMA PCB on Ebay in a few weeks, I will put a link on here when it is online, it will be a 10 day auction and will be international too, more when I get around to it. (If I decide to sell it that is), I also have Gradius III Super Famicom (SOLD) in very good condition on Ebay right now (Auction Ends on: Sunday, 29 Apr, 2001 at 13:45:00 BST),And some arcade PCB's (Thunder Cross, Sky Kid, Psychic 5) (ALL THREE SOLD) on there too. See are Jamma Board Arcade Selection

16th April 2001

Change some of Zzap! World 64/Zzap!64 Magazine Selection (still not edited the last 10 issue though, but I will get around to it). That's about it really

21st March 2001

I have sorted out (most) some bad links and the navigation should be better again. I hope you like the new look. (No people have signed my guestbook yet though), Added some very nice 3D Vic Viper fan art to the Fan Art of Gradius Selection of Gradius Home World, these are very nice 3D pictures indeed, Also added some pictures of my Dragon's Lair arcade machine, I will add some pictures to the Lunar Rescue page when I get time, My complete site is now one one server (Geocities and Fortune City are still there at the moment but I will be deleting them soon). It makes site maintenance so much easier.

7th March 2001

Added information about the Game Boy Color games by the Roland Brothers 'Infinite Lives Ltd' have worked on (formally Digital Graffiti, formally Apex Computer Productions), They have got a site in the workings but its not online yet.

3rd March 2001

Gradius Home World Added scans (finally) for Super Famicom Parodius da! Front and back of the box and front page manual scan, ARCADE I have also scanned some photographs of my three arcade machines, When I have edited and resize them I will added them to the arcade Selection, Also added my first guestbook.

28th February 2001

Changed the main site view (this page) and moved Zzap! World 64 off of the Fortune City web server and onto my own site (no more banners at the top of every page and the pages should load faster) It also make site maintenance easier too, I am trying a new look for this site and it will take a few weeks/months to sort out but its getting there, Also my copy of Parodius da! For the Super Famicom has arrived, I will add the scans and information when I get around to it.

14th January 2001

I decided to add pictures of the consoles and computers to the various Selection of Gradius Home World. The site is starting to look a lot more slick now I think. Also added a few more pictures to some of the Gradius pages.

13th January 2001

I have just spent all morning grabbing and editing images for Sharps X68000 personnel computer version of Gradius, Gradius II GOFER no yabou, Salamander and Parodius da!. Also added an SNK NeoGeo Selection to Gradius Home World (I forgot all about these versions). Added game endings to the PC Engine, Super Famicom and Gameboy, Still waiting for my copy of Parodius da! For the Super Famicom to arrive (the cheque got lost in the post).

11th January 2001

I have just been through my own Gradius pictures directory and dug out some pictures and animations that I planed to add (and never got around to) but I've off work ill, so I thought I would be a bit productive and sort these orphans pictures out. I have added so many there are too many to list so you will just have to check out the site.

8th January 2001

Added lots of pictures to most of the Selections of Gradius Home World. Company logos, game titles and screen shots for most of the games.

6th January 2001

I just acquired the video 'Salamander 1' on eBay. It’s the story of Gradius and the attack of Bacterian which originally came out in 1989 in Japan by Konami and was subtitled in 1995 by Western Connections. Its not a bad piece of anime (crap subtitling though). I will be adding some small mpg video's, pictures and information soon, Added back cover scan for Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius da! To the Super Famicom Selection of Gradius Home World

1st January 2001

Added some pictures and animations to the Gameboy version of Parodius da!. Also added pictures to Gameboy Gradius The Interstellar Assault.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 2000

30th December 2000

The front box scan is now online for Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius da!, I also found some screen shots for the game, Also added today are the Character pictures for this game (they took me ages to sort out). And weapon animations are coming soon too!!!. And changed the main 'stars' background image (the one on every page of Gradius Home World) it looks much nicer now.

28th December 2000

I have now received Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius da! For the Super Famicom and the box scan should be up in a few days. My first impressions of the game is that it has lots of speech, it saves your high scores, Joypad configuration (just like the PSX version), very nice music and the graphics. The wacky end of level bosses are amazing (on one stage it’s a very large girl with bunny ears that meeooohh's when you shot her). Great stuff.

20th December 2000

I have just bought Parodius da! And Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius da! For the Super Famicom, I will add box scans and reviews for these two when I receive them (one of them is coming from the US). I bought both of these games on eBay.

18th December 2000

Finally started the updating again. Sorted out the small text size on some the Gradius Home World page (I viewed my own site at an Internet Café and the text was way to small), I also changed the text colour on most of the pages (a bit to light so I made them darker) It's still not quite there but its getting there.

17th November 2000

Added a few extra buttons and changed the JAMMA arcade boards page (I have sold a few games). And thanks to Chris Hardy (author of the JunoFirst emulator) for some help in fixing some of my JAMMA game boards and Lunar Rescue which had the One Player Thrust/Shoot button that was not working but now works fine.

5th October 2000

Changed a few small parts of Gradius Home World and also changed the site logo again (I have tried to make it very smooth and I think I have finally got it), Also added two Gradius Gaiden tunes to Gradius Music World part of Gradius Home World

24th September 2000

Finished the second half of Part Six for Creature Feature on the Apex page Zzap! World 64

15th September 2000

Change the Silk page logo and change some of that page layout.

9th September 2000

Change the site layout a bit.

6th September 2000

Yes there is one more Parodius da! Games on the Super Famicom that came out in 1995 Jikkyo Oshaberi Parodius da!. Gradius Home World, Many thanks to Kay Otto for this information.

5th September 2000

Added half of Part Six of Creature Feature on the Apex page Zzap! World 64

3rd September 2000

I have learnt a few new graphic techniques and have use them in this and Zzap! World 64, Also change the site feel for this page (nice and light now)

16th August 2000

I just spent about three hours going though the whole site to sort out all of the html (I checked it all by hand) I also got to grips with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) so the whole site should now be much more consistent (same font, colours etc), Also sorted out some of the Apex page for better navigation) Zzap! World 64

12th August 2000

Made some new page backgrounds for the Apex page and learnt some new techniques, also had to do over half the gif animations again because of transparency (very boring)

10th August 2000

Updated Gradius Home World completely. The Frames are gone and the navigation is the best yet. Very easy to use and looks good at 800x600 and 1024x768. (about the only annoying thing is that I have to import all the Japanese text again because it's not displaying correctly (ho-hum))

9th August 2000

Part Five of Creature Feature is now done and a total rework of the Zzap! Selection of Zzap! World 64

4th August 2000

Lots of animations of Clyde, some enemy's and Part Four of the Diary Zzap! World 64

3rd August 2000

Added animations of Clyde and Part Two and Three of the Diary (Creatures) Zzap! World 64

28th July 2000

Added a lots and lots of pictures to the Apex Selection and started the Creature Feature Selection (The Diary of a Game from Zzap!64 and Commodore Force) which is taking ages because I have to type them all in by hand (Omnipage don't work to well on coloured backgrounds). So far Part One is completed and the other six parts have all the pictures.

27th July 2000

Large update to Apex Computer Production page part of Zzap! World 64, Added 'You Die Here' mp3 from Gradius Gaiden Gradius Home World

25th July 2000

More information and Hints for Gradius IV Fukkatsu on the Gradius Home World page

8th July 2000

Finished the new Gradius Home World site logo and sorted out a few problems (that's the trouble when you update most of the site at once), Plus now I have got to grips with Dreamweaver Templates I'm thinking of getting rid of the frames, just to get the site working OK in 800x600 resolution

7th July 2000

Sorted out Gradius Music World and got to grips with Dreamweaver's Template system (it really make site navigation production much easier), Also changed the history Selection in Gradius Home World

6th July 2000

Just got back from my holiday in Ibiza and it was the best. Good music and night life, anyway, I have made the Gradius Home World page much easier to navigate and also I have colour coded the different machines versions, I'm also working on a new logo for Gradius Home World because the old one is looking a bit long in the tooth, And I might start scanning some C64 games for the Lemon Site (some of the scans I have seen on there are not that well scanned and I have the games and a good scanner so well.)

18th June 2000

Moved the Silk page about a bit and added two mp3's off the CD 'The Story So Far', Deleted a few links on the Links page, change the GameStone Art Selection a little and deleted lots of orphaned files and dodgy bits of html code here and there.

2nd June 2000

Added front and back cover scans of the Silk CD's

27th May 2000

Edited one more Zzap!64 (issue 32) 10 issue's to go

26th May 2000

This page has now moved to my new domain www.gamestone.co.uk

20th May 2000

Finally edited one more Zzap!64 (issue 36) 11 issue's left to edit, the last time I edited an issue was the 8th August 1999 :(, Also news on compatibility of PS2 games (Gradius games that is ^_^, And also added a GameStone Art Selection

16th May 2000

Started a new Section SILK (Japanese Music group staring KINUKU)

30th April 2000

Added front cover scans and cheat information to the Gradius III and IV pack for the PS2

26th April 2000

Just got my hands on Gradius III and IV for the PS2 and Gradius III has an easier difficulty option and Gradius IV Fukkatsu is just brilliant, Note:- The PS2 can play PSX games but Gradius II GOFER no yabou on the Gradius Deluxe Pack runs about half speed (The music plays the right speed though) but Gradius runs OK.

12th April 2000

Just sorted out some more bad links.

24th March 2000

I have just updated my main system and I'm playing Final Fantasy VIII and Unreal, so there will be no updates for a while.

8th March 2000

Changed the main layout of the whole site for better navigation and added Gradius III, IV to the PSX2 page, Lots more info and pictures from the 'Gradius III and IV' game on the PS2

4th March 2000

My ISP made this page disappear and my e-mail also stopped working but its back up again on a new ISP and a new web address, I have also move all C64 related item's to the Zzap! 64 page and I have renamed it Zzap! World 64, as well as a full revamp to make the site look much more pleasing, The Gradius on the PlayStation2 is 'Gradius III and IV' with Gradius III and Gradius IV Fukkatsu (and a nice intro too) I have a box scan on the PlayStation2 page in Gradius Home World, The game comes out on the 13th April 2000 for the PS2 (Japanese release), Sorted out lots of bad links and orphan files.

4th February 2000

Change the site logo (I thought it looked a bit naf) and added a links banner for anyone who wants to link to this site, Also tweaked the Zzap!64 Selection with some new graphic effects

28th January 2000

Created a new logo for the site

21st January 2000

Finally edited one more Zzap!64 (issue 37) 12 issue to go

14th January 2000

Change a few Selection in Gradius Home World (Gradius III arcade mainly)

2nd January 2000

Added lots of images to the Thunder Cross Selection, Including Thunder Cross II images.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 1999

28th December 1999

Changed the navigation on the Gradius Home World Selection again and added text form menus to this page too, Also added information to the Arcade Gradius III page and three tunes to the Gradius III in the Music World Selection.

24th December 1999

Added Gradius III to the arcade Selection of Gradius Home World and tweaked the layout of the main Gradius Home World navigation. Also some new picture here and there.

5th December 1999

Changed the Gradius IV Fukkatsu tune for some new ones.

26th November 1999

Updated the Apex page for better navigation and look (in line with the rest of the site) and added some Up and Down buttons to Gradius Home World

21st November 1999

Tweaked the Gradius Home World page a bit for the 800x600 viewers out there

19th November 1999

Changed this page for the 'LEAN' approach (no rubbish, just the bare essentials for speed and scaleable(Looks OK at 800x600 now))

18th November 1999

Changed the colours and layout of Gradius Music World Selection of Gradius Home World and it looks so much better now

12th November 1999

Some new pictures in the Gradius Home World Selection (scans of the adverts for the C64) and changed some colours on this page (my brother was moaning that it was not colourful enough), plus I might be changing this page (it does not resize) so unless you are in 1024x768 it looks a bit crap).

24th October 1999

Added random gif anims to a few gradius pages as well as more link changes, plus a photo scan of my Dragon's Lair arcade machine in the Jamma Board Information Selection and 167 image grabs from the Laser Disc.

21st October 1999

Sorted out the broken links on the Gradius Home World Selection and added pictures of the New Gradius game for the NGPS, And I am thinking of adding a Thalamus Selection (C64 games Sanxion, Delta, Armalyte etc…)

17th October 1999

Moved the Gradius Home World page around for better navigation and there a new Gradius on the way on the NGPS (PlayStation2). I believe it’s the Gradius III/Gradius IV Fukkatsu pack but with a new 3D game on the pack as well. (Pictures coming in a few days)

28th September 1999

Moved the Zzap!64 page around a lot and made it work so much better.

20th September 1999

Change the JAMMA Board Information page around a bit (more tweaking)

17th September 1999

I have changed this page around a bit (Hope you like it). Also added a list of computers I own/have owned (About Me page) and changed the colours on most of the site so the pages are much easier to read and look much better too

15th September 1999

The Demon site will be a dead link on the 1st October 1999 Thank You

12th September 1999

The Demon site is now gone so that's that. I have moved some most of the Geocities site onto this server now (they give me 100meg web space) so it seamed pointless to have everything all over the place (update nightmare). The Geocities site is now Gradius Music World, Changed the Datahits tape Selection and the mp3's are now back online

6th September 1999

The Demon site (crash1.demon.co.uk) will no longer be updated and will be off line within the month, this site will now take over.

5th September 1999

I have changed my ISP so this page will move to http://www.gamestone.dabsol.co.uk Give this a few weeks and this page will have moved. Please update your links to this site accordingly, The reason I am changing is that Demon has slowed down so much these days and I am not getting what I am paying for. I have been with Demon for 2 and a half good years. RIP Demon

19th August 1999

Sorry there has been no updates for a long time, I have been playing a new game 'Outcast' (a very good game indeed) and I have only just completed it. I have started editing some more Zzaps but I got very bored so I stopped (for now anyway). The bloody JAVA on this page is now gone (for good)

17th August 1999

Added new logo and change some Zzap! Stuff (added Commodore Force information) I will not be scanning the issues until the Zzap's have been done

8th August 1999

I don't like those pop up description much (they run quite slow) so I might get rid of them (Bloody Java), Edited One more Zzap!64 (issue 45) Yes my favourite number 13!!! To go

7th August 1999

Added some pop up description stuff (Java) to the main buttons on the left (this is just experimental, tell me if you don't like it), Also edited Four more Zzap!64's (31, 40, 46 and 47) Only 14 more to edit

2nd August 1999

Moved this page about (it now uses Layers for layout) and put your cursor over this Game Stone title above

1st August 1999

Sorted out a few bad links and added an about me page and added two more Zzap!64's (52 and 53) that leaves just 18 Issue to edit.)

17th July 1999

Added Atari ST and C64 box scans to The Great Giana Sister page

15th July 1999

Added two Thunder Cross midi's and cleaned up the page layout a bit, Change the Thunder Force layout and navigation, Added a Thank You page

9th July 1999

Tweak most all the site with new display colours and clean the html on most of the page so they all should look much better now, Also added new smaller buttons on the left of this page

3rd July 1999

Added all the Psychic 5 tunes in mp3 format, Also added a new Selection 'Thunder Cross' with some mp3 music and pictures

29th June 1999

Finally named the main site and changed this page layout

27th June 1999

One issue of Zzap!64 done (issues 33) 70/90 done, And added a 'before and after' edit Selection to show how much the issues are cleaned up after editing

24th June 1999

Changed some of the Thunder Force zone, Also another two more Zzap!64's done (issues 14 and 57) only 21 issues togo

23rd June 1999

All the Zzap!64 are on-line now on Fortunecity.com (I'm already using 15meg of the 20meg web space just on Zzap!'s alone)

22nd June 1999

Two more Zzap!64's done (issues 12 and 82)

16th June 1999

Changed the 'Girl From Tomorrow' page around a bit

15th June 1999

Note: the seven issues below are not online because I now have run out of web space, so if anyone has lots of space on a server somewhere (Only for the Zzap! 64's). The problem I have is they will take over 20 meg when all have been edited. Thanks in advance, Seven YES SEVEN!!!! More Zzap!64's done (issues 10, 58, 64, 83, 86, 87 and 88)

14th June 1999

Five!!! More Zzap!64 issues done (issues 44, 72, 73, 80 and 89) 65% complete,

13th June 1999

Added some Gradius IV and Gradius Gaiden mp3's to the Gradius Music World Selection (get them while you can because they will not be up for long),The Girl From Tomorrow is my

latest page (not much yet but hey I have only just started it) I intend on updating more arcade board stuff (in the end), Program-Project page (game programming)

11th June 1999

Three Zzap!64 issues done (issues 09,74, 76) Both exam's finished (finally), I will be working on the site more now (after my holiday next week that is)

2nd June 1999

Four Zzap!64 issues done (issues 51, 63, 64, 65) and only two exam's (next Monday and Friday) to go for the end of the year. Second piece of course work completed too. I have also completed my first programming game project (I will put it online soon)

9th May 1999

One more Zzap!64 issue done (issues 61) and one nearly done (up in a few days) I think I've done quite well, I have finished one piece of course work and passed two exams. Just two more exam's to go (2nd week in June) and one more piece of course work (to be in on 28th May)

3rd May 1999

I know, so much for studying (it gets very boring doing something you're not that interested in), anyway bfn. I would like to make better background pictures for most of the site (the stars in Gradius Home World are quite boring) well I will get around to doing it sooner than later (and I want to make a banner for this site too). I still have to get round to scanning lots of other stuff too (lots of good stuff to put up) but that's another day. Change the Apex Selection a little bit (change layout and colours too)

Updated the Jamma Board Selection (made font bigger and made it look better in general)

Added a few more link to the Links Selection

2nd May 1999

Apex is now known as Digital Graffiti (thanks for the encouragement boys) Large update to the Apex Selection (box scans and Manual OCRs and gif anims)

28th April 1999

Moved 'Gradius Music World' to my main server (all the mp3 are now off line until further notice)

27th April 1999

The site will not be updated for the next two months, I have two exams and two pieces of course work to do for my degree. So bye for now and see you in two months. My 'Gradius Music World' Selection is on Geocities (which I'm not happy with). The site uses Java for there logo on every page and it's messing with the Japanese text (and the second pop up window is very annoying). So I might be moving it to another location. I might be even put it in a new Selection (not in the Gradius Home World frame) One more Zzap!64 done (issues 59)

Yes I am now half way through the collection (45/90)

26th April 1999

Added to Gradius Music World (This CD's very nice). It also includes music from the over three Gradius games (and a speech, weapon noise track too), a CD well worth getting,

After looking at my site on my brother's computer I have changed some of the font sizes on the site (they were a bit too small. Also edited one more Zzap!64 (issues 85) 44 out of 90 done. I have the Gradius IV music CD now so scans will be up later in the week and I might put up one or two mp3's (If I have space)

20th April 1999

Three more issues of Zzap!64 done (issues 34, 41, 42), 43 out of 90 done (nearly half way)

18th April 1999

Added lots of scans to the Apex Computer Productions Selection and sorted out better navigation for PC Engine Gradius etc…

9th April 1999

Moved the Super Famicom and PlayStation Selection around so navigation is easier now. My brother decided to start updating his Monster World page again (makes a change)

6th April 1999

More gif character animation's for the Psychic 5 Selection

5th April 1999

Large update to the Psychic 5 Selection and general tweaks to most of the Gradius Selection (sorting out the Japanese font and more image buttons etc…)

2nd April 1999

I have just got a new web page production tool so the site will be converted to this new standard (its much better for doing site maintenance) The program's 'Dreamweaver 2' (I use to use Frontpage 98 but the program can be very stressful)

31st March 1999

Yes FOUR issue's of Zzap!64 done (issue's 18, 38, 77, 84)

As you can see I have changed the layout of this page (and a few others) hope you like it, its taken along time to do (this page that is), I have messed around with lots of table etc…

30th March 1999

I cannot believe it FOUR issue's of&nbsp; Zzap!64 done (issue's 19, 67, 69, 79), I am finding the older issues take quite a bit longer to edit when compared to the later issues (from 50 or 60 onward you can edit 2-3 in an hour), but its now 40% complete so its getting there.

26th March 1999

Two more issues of Zzap!64 done (issue 55 and 56)

25th March 1999

Finally updated the Gradius Music World Selection (Much easier to navigate now) and I should be getting Gradius IV Fukkatsu and Gradius Remix CD's within the next two weeks (I will put up some mp3's when I get them).

21st March 1999

One more issue of Zzap!64 done (issue 68), I am now 1/3 of the way through the Zzap! 64 Issue edits.

19th March 1999

One Issue Zzap!64 done (49)

Added information about the Gradius IV Fukkatsu CD (I should have this CD within a few weeks), I will put up some mp3's when I get it, I would like to change the layout of the 'Gradius Music World' Selection of this site, but I have too much college work to do at the moment (I will sort it out in the future)

18th March 1999

One Issue Zzap!64 done (48)

10th March 1999

Added the Apex page (don't bother its just a list of the games they made at the moment, Change this start page layout (still not quite happy with it though, its looks to cramped).&nbsp; You don't have to scroll up and down no more (much better)

5th March 1999

Three more on the ready (Zzap! 64 issue 35, 50 and 75)

3rd March 1999

One more done (Zzap! 64 issue 60), My ISP (demon) has increased my web space from 15 to 20 meg, so I might put up some more mp3's. (I have calculated it will take 18meg for the Zzap! Scans alone)

I am editing Zzap!64 at one, maybe two issue per day (week days only), so just a few months to go, Yeah Three issue's done (Zzap! 64, issue's 13, 62 and 66)

2nd March 1999

Yet another issue of Zzap! 64 edited (issue 11)

1st March 1999

Yep One more issue of Zzap! 64 (issue 7) done

26th February 1999

Edited two more issues of Zzap! 64 (20% complete)

24th February 1999

Edited two more issues of Zzap! 64 (74 issues to go)

23rd February 1999

Edited three more issues of Zzap! 64 (76 issues to go), The page seems to be coming along quite nicely now, it shouldn't take more than a few months to get it finished.

16th February 1999

Change the Zzap! Navigation (again) the pages look much better (you don't have to scroll up and down now) (if you run at 1024x768 that is), Edited three more issues of Zzap! (11/90 Completed) only 79 issues to go…… Take a look!

14th February 1999

Moved the Zzap! 64 pages around (navigation is much better now) and edited one more issue.

7th February 1999

New Salamander and other animations, New Gradius Home world navigation buttons, Get this program it's excellent (It make web page style button and tile backgrounds) and its totally FREE

31st January 1999

Edited three more issue of Zzap!64

30th January 1999

Updated the site navigation (should be much better now)

25th January 1999

Started a 'Great Giana Sisters' page (not much yet)

18th January 1999

Re-edited some Gradius pictures (they look much better now)

17th January 1999

Nice ship animations for Gradius Gaiden, Edited two more issues of Zzap! 64, Added some information about Psychic 5

14th January 1999

Move a few bits around and made the navigation better. (still learning this html stuff)

3rd January 1999

More Thunder Force updates

1st January 1999

Happy New Year Updated the Thunder Force page with ship and title screen shots. (not much else), I know people are thinking 'what about Gradius Home World' well there's not much happening on the Gradius front so I thought about a change of direction and the Thunder Force series of games are another great set of shoot'em-ups.

 

[T O P]

 

Site History - 1998

29th December 1998

Added a Zzap! 64 magazine page, updated the Datahits page with Zzap! Sampler tape cover scans.

25th December 1998

Very Merry Christmas Thunder Force page online (quick version), Psychic 5 homepage online, a very nice arcade game (not much at the moment apart from the title tune in mp3 format) Go to the Main Site Index (top left of screen) for the Site Index, Thunder Force page (another very good set of shoot'em-up's any help on this would be very appreciated.

20th December 1998

Removed all the Gradius Gaiden mp3's (run out of web space again) and I might be adding some Salamander arcade mp3 tunes (there a lot smaller).&nbsp; Updated the Gradius all logo below with Gradius IV Fukkatsu.

19th December 1998

Added a C=64 Data Hits page (nothing to do with Gradius mind you) this page has scans of the tape inlay and the much credited Sanxion tune from the Zzap! Sampler tape in mp3 format.

23rd November 1998

Finally an update for a change, Well not much but some screen shots and all the weapon lists for Gradius IV Fukkatsu

13th October 1998

Gradius IV Fukkatsu has been released in the arcades (Japan Only), I will have one screen shot and I will try to get more information as it becomes available.

3rd June 1998

Sorted out some html errors etc…. And updated the Main Versions page, More box scans for the PC Engine versions of Gradius, Salamander and Parodius da!, Added 'Jikkyo Oshaberi

Parodius da! ~forever with me~' on the PSX, Nice poster of Parodius da! For PSX, More pictures on PSX Gradius Deluxe Pack, Updated the links page (It has some content now), New fan pictures, Gradius Music MP3's online (Thanks to Robin Burrows for the donated Web space)

23rd February 1998

Added Fan pictures page, Re-organised the Super Famicom and PlayStation Selections, Added pictures for Parodius da! (Super Famicom), Yes lots more pictures and a review for Solar Assault Gradius and its been worth the wait, Box and manual scans of Gradius III Super Famicom (and some screen shots for the bonus levels).