The Bubble System is an arcade system board

Arcade system board

An arcade system board is a dedicated computer system created for the purpose of running video arcade games. Arcade system boards typically consist of a main system board with any number of supporting boards...

 designed by Konami

Konami

is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...

 and used across many arcade game

Arcade game

An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...

s in the early eighties.

The Bubble System was supposed to have a unique new form of data storage for arcade-style video games. It used bubble memory

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...

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

Konami used their new G400 BIOS for this project, and modified it a bit. The main CPU was a Motorola 68000

Motorola 68000

The Motorola 68000 is a 16/32-bit CISC microprocessor core designed and marketed by Freescale Semiconductor...

 at 10 MHz. There was a separate Zilog Z80

Zilog Z80

The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...

 for sound control, which drove two AY-3-8910s, a custom Konami SCC

Konami SCC

The Konami SCC is a custom sound chip that was developed by Konami with Yamaha. It is one of several sound/memory management chips Konami developed in-house that ended up in use in home computer and video game systems from the late 1980s into the 1990s until the fourth generation systems were...

 (K005289), and a VLM5030 speech synthesizer. It had a Scramble wiring harness.

A Bubble Memory game can be identified by its booting

Booting

In computing, booting is a process that begins when a user turns on a computer system and prepares the computer to perform its normal operations. On modern computers, this typically involves loading and starting an operating system. The boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the...

 sequence. It displays a "warming up" screen, accompanied with a countdown timer and a small musical tune (called "Morning Music"). The reason this was implemented was because Bubble Memory had to be heated to around 40-50°C for it to work properly.

Bubble Memory was not a fully developed technology by the time it was used in the Bubble System, and as a result it is currently very rare to find a working Bubble System. The system proved to be unpopular because it had a high sensitivity to magnetic fields (which was not suitable for an arcade environment, with unshielded speakers and degauss coils), and were also considerably more expensive than ROM chip-based boards. Most games on this system were eventually ported to standard ROM chips, and the system was discontinued.

Still, Konami has made homages to the Bubble System in 2 recent games; with Morning Music being one of the playable tracks in Keyboardmania

Keyboardmania

Keyboardmania 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. Notes are represented on-screen by small bars that scroll downward above an image of the keyboard itself...

.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jguHUyKCRd4&mode=related&search=, and the intro of Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits

Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits

Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits, released as Konami Arcade Collection in Japan and Konami Arcade Classics in Europe and Oceania, is a collection of 15 classic arcade games by Konami for the Nintendo DS.-Lineup:...

 featuring the song too.

Bubble System games

• Gradius
  Gradius
  The Gradius games, first introduced in 1985, make up a series of scrolling shooter video games 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...
  
  (ported to ROM chips as Nemesis)
• TwinBee
  Twinbee (video game)
  is a cartoon-themed vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up game originally released by Konami as a coin-operated video game in in Japan. It was the very first game to run on Konami's Bubble System hardware. TwinBee was ported to the Family Computer and MSX in and has been included in numerous...
  
  
• Galactic Warriors
  Galactic Warriors (1985 arcade game)
  is a fighting arcade game developed and published by Konami. It is Konami's second fighting game released after their arcade-hit Yie Ar Kung-Fu. It is also the first fighting game with multiple playable characters with different move sets, as well as the first mecha-based fighting game...
  
  
• Konami RF2 (ported to ROM chips as Konami GT
  Konami GT
  Konami GT is a 1985 racing videogame released by Konami, off their GX400 architecture. The player drives a sportscar with a turbo mode that can be activated by the gearshift, but wastes more fuel and puts the player at a higher risk of hitting an obstacle...
  
  )