Jotego/JTFPGA member niknak, a long time classic gaming community member on Discord inquired about adding support in the JTTWIN16 FPGA core for a very obscure (in the west) rom hack of the arcade original version of Gradius II.
Titled Gradius II xh, this modification/hack changes the game to be more like a so called training mode, to help one get familiar with game mechanics before challenging the original game on regular difficulties. On boot it offers different speeds of automatic rapid fire, which loop of the game the player can start on, and options to start on any part of the game’s 8 stages immediately to polish one’s skill in a particularly difficult area. This fan hack was dumped and shared online from an original but previously modified Gradius 2 motherboard, acquired by Tailsnic Retroworks. The original author of this hack is unknown, but the build date on the game’s splash screen reads April 19th 2008, at 7:53pm.
If anyone has information relating to the identity of the original doujin/mod author (and/or if that author wishes to step forward) please contact myself or another MGS staff number and we will amend this article with credit for their work as soon as possible.
Currently the hack is playable on certain versions of the MAME emulator. Official support for MiSTer FPGA and Analogue Pocket JTTWIN cores is currently being considered by JTFPGA staff.
As is often the case, an .mra and the appropriate game files have been packaged together and can be found if one knows to ask or where to look, but we here at MGS cannot provide any concrete information on that topic.
A link to popular and long-time YouTube 1CC/long-play channel Replay Burners has been included (embedded below) to demonstrate the features of the mod/doujin, as well as all credit I could locate and/or provide for those involved in making this playable to a wider audience.
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[Credit Niknak, Tailsnic Retroworks, lord_d0t, Toya, of the JTFPGA Discord server]