Konami GT is coming to Arcade Archives

Hamster Corporation is bringing Konami's 1985 arcade racer Konami GT to modern consoles on April 16. The release is part of the Arcade Archives series. It is the first time the game has been ported since a brief appearance on the Xbox 360 Game Room service in 2010.

The release is split across two tiers. Arcade Archives Konami GT is coming to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch for $7.99. Arcade Archives 2 Konami GT will launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and the Nintendo Switch 2 for $9.99. Both versions include Hamster's standard suite of display options, save states, and online leaderboards.

Defeated by magnets

Konami GT was originally released in Japan as Konami RF2 - Red Fighter. It was a spiritual sequel to the 1984 top-down racer Road Fighter. The game shifted the perspective to a first-person dashboard view. Players drive through six stages. They must dodge traffic and collect fuel drops delivered by airplanes.

The arcade original has a strange hardware history. Konami initially built the game for its Bubble System, a proprietary arcade board introduced in 1985. The Bubble System used magnetic bubble memory cartridges instead of standard ROM chips. Because the magnetic memory needed to reach a specific operating temperature to function correctly, the arcade cabinet actually had a built-in heater. When an operator turned the machine on, the hardware forced a 100-second countdown while the board physically warmed up. Konami even composed a specific track just for this loading screen, appropriately titled "Morning Music".

The format was a commercial failure. The boards were notoriously sensitive to electromagnetic fields. Arcade operators complained about constant hardware failures and the ridiculous boot times. Konami quickly abandoned the format and ported the game to its more reliable GX400 hardware for international release. The US version of Konami GT runs on this standard ROM board and skips the warm-up routine entirely.

Gas from the sky

The gameplay loop is straightforward but punishing. You steer a sports car through different environments like coastal highways and arid plains. Your goal is to reach the end of the six stages before your fuel gauge empties. You have a brake pedal, but slowing down is usually a bad idea. The only way to refuel is to catch gas canisters dropped onto the road by a plane flying overhead.

Hitting other cars or obstacles does not destroy your vehicle immediately. Instead, it drains your fuel gauge and bounces you around the track. If you run out of gas, your car coasts to a halt and the game ends. Hamster's port preserves these exact arcade mechanics. It perfectly retains the high difficulty curve of 1980s racing games.

The Arcade Archives 2 version on newer consoles also adds an exclusive Time Attack mode that is absent from the PlayStation 4 and Switch releases. Hamster has started splitting its catalog this way to support the newer console generation. The core emulation quality remains identical across both versions.

The 2010 Game Room port has been dead for years. This new release is currently the only official way to play a weird piece of Konami's mid-80s arcade catalog. You can find more details on Hamster's official website.