The Bubble System is an

arcade system board An arcade video game takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. Most arcade video games are coin-operated, housed in an arc ...

Konami , is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company, video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machin ...

and used across many

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade v ...

s in 1985. Konami announced coin-op

arcade video game An arcade video game takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. Most arcade video games are coin-operated, housed in an arca ...

s for the system on January 12, 1985. The Bubble System introduced a unique new form of data storage for arcade-style video games. It used

bubble memory Bubble memory is a type of non-volatile computer memory that uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as ''bubbles'' or ''domains'', each storing one bit of data. The material is arranged to form a series o ...

cartridges, a sort of non-mechanical magnetic storage system. It was said to have a higher reliability than mechanical

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

s or

tape drive A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability. ...

s. Konami used a modified version of their new G400 BIOS for this project. The main CPU was a

Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...

at 10 MHz. There was a separate

Zilog Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples wer ...

for sound control, which drove two

AY-3-8910 The AY-3-8910 is a 3-voice programmable sound generator (PSG) designed by General Instrument in 1978, initially for use with their 16-bit General Instrument CP1600, CP1610 or one of the PIC1650 series of 8-bit microcomputers. The AY-3-8910 and ...

s, a custom

Konami SCC , is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Chūō, Tokyo, it also produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, pachinko machines, slot machines, and arcade cabinets. Konami has casinos ...

(K005289), and a

Sanyo , stylized as SANYO, is a Japanese electronics company and formerly a member of the Fortune Global 500, ''Fortune'' Global 500 whose headquarters was located in Moriguchi, Osaka, Moriguchi, Osaka prefecture, Japan. Sanyo had over 230 subsidiari ...

VLM5030

speech synthesizer Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or Computer hardware, hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system conve ...

. It had a Scramble wiring harness. Bubble Software can be identified by its

booting In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so som ...

sequence. First, a synthesized voice speaks the phrase "Presented by Konami. Getting ready", followed by a countdown from fifty (which often ends before reaching zero). The screen then displays "WARMING UP NOW - PRESENTED BY KONAMI", accompanied with a second countdown timer and a small musical tune (called the "Morning Music"). The reason this was implemented was because bubble memory must be heated to around for it to work properly, and the game must be copied from the bubble memory into RAM, before it can be run. Despite what the screen says, the heating process takes place during the voice-based countdown stage (which is of variable length and is temperature-dependent), while the loading process happens during the (fixed-length) on-screen countdown stage. The Bubble System became a commercial failure. It was considerably more expensive than

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * R ...

chip-based boards and extremely sensitive to

electromagnetic field An electromagnetic field (also EM field or EMF) is a classical (i.e. non-quantum) field produced by (stationary or moving) electric charges. It is the field described by classical electrodynamics (a classical field theory) and is the classical c ...

s that could render the game unplayable. Most games on this system were eventually ported to standard ROM chips, and it was discontinued. Konami has made homages to the Bubble System in several games; with the Morning Music being one of the playable tracks in ''

Keyboardmania ''Keyboardmania'' (alternately ''KEYBOARD MANIA'', and abbreviated KBM) is a rhythm video game created by the Bemani division of Konami. In this game up to two players use 24-key keyboards to play the piano or keyboard part of a selected song. No ...

and '' Bemani#NOSTALGIA, NOSTALGIA

and the intro of '' Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits'' featuring the song too.

Bubble System games

*''

Gradius is a series of shooter video games, introduced in 1985, developed and published by Konami for a variety of portable, console and arcade platforms. In many games in the series, the player controls a ship known as the Vic Viper. Games *''Scr ...

'' (ported to ROM chips as ''Nemesis'' for overseas distribution) *''

TwinBee is a vertically scrolling shooter released by Konami as an arcade video game in 1985 in Japan. Along with Sega's ''Fantasy Zone'', released a year later, ''TwinBee'' is credited as an early archetype of the " cute 'em up" type in its genre. It w ...

'' *''

Galactic Warriors is a 1985 fighting arcade video game developed and published by Konami. It is Konami's second fighting game released after their 1985 arcade-hit '' Yie Ar Kung-Fu''. It is also the first fighting game with multiple playable characters with dif ...

'' *''Konami RF2'' (ported to ROM chips as ''

Konami GT ''Konami GT'', originally known as ''Konami RF2 - Red Fighter'', is a 1985 racing video game developed and released by Konami, using their GX400 arcade architecture. The player drives a sports car which must reach various checkpoints without run ...

'' for overseas distribution)

References

System16.com: Bubble System hardware
{{Konami Konami arcade system boards 68k-based arcade system boards

Bubble System games

See also

References