Konami's Gradius II is now playable on the Analogue Pocket and MiSTer FPGA, thanks to improvements made by Jotego on the JTTWIN16 beta FPGA core.
"This game was originally failing because the scroll settings that affect the sprite location were not applied at the expected time," explains the developer, who has released the updated beta via his Patreon. "That caused the game not to detect any collisions, so the ship would just have a peaceful travel to the boss scene and then stay there as you cannot hit the boss. Gladly, it is working now."
Jotego's weekly update also includes the following:
- JTALIENS: fixed low drum volume in Crime Fighters
- JTVIGIL: fixed sound distortion
- JTTWIN16: fixed too low sound in Dark Adventure
- The missing version field in Analogue Pocket fields that caused troubles for updaters in the last release is filled now. Updater should work correctly with the new files.
Also known as Vulcan Venture, Gradius II launched in 1988 and was ported to the Famicom, PC Engine CD and Sharp X68000 – all of these ports were exclusive to Japan. The coin-op was later released on Saturn and PS1 in the Gradius Deluxe Pack and PSP as part of Gradius Collection. The game has also been released on Switch and PS4 as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives collection.
This is not to be confused with the MSX Gradius 2, which is a completely different game.
Patreon supporters can download the core now.