Capcom Play System Changer

The CP System was an arcade system board developed by Capcom that ran game software stored on removable daughter boards. Over two dozen arcade games were released for the CPS-1 before Capcom switched game development to its successor, the CP System II.

Among the 33 games released for the original CP system are Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and its first two sequels, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.

After releasing a number of arcade game boards designed to run only one game, Capcom embarked on a project to create a motherboard that could be used to run multiple games to reduce hardware costs and make the system more attractive to arcade operators.

Capcom began developing CPS hardware around 1986, when Capcom president Kenzo Tsujimoto proposed a concept inspired by the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). He saw the rise of home video games as competition for arcade machines, so he said "the only way to make money is to give people twice what they can get at home."

Capcom developed the CPS hardware for about two and a half years, during which time they developed two special microchips they called CPS Super Chips, equivalent to the power of ten regular arcade printed circuit boards (PCBs) at the time. The development of two chips costs £5,500,000 or $9,800,000 (equivalent to $22,000,000 in 2021).

The system was infected with many counterfeit versions of their games. In particular, there were so many bootleg versions of Street Fighter II that in some countries they were more common than the official version. This problem was largely fixed by Capcom in a later version of the CP System II.

The CP system hardware was also used in Capcom's unsuccessful attempt to break into the home console market, the CPS Changer, a domestic version of the CP system similar to the Neo-Geo AES.

Specifications

• CPU:
  • Primary: Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz (some later 12 MHz boards)
  • Secondary: Zilog Z80 @ 3.579 MHz
• Coprocessors: 2x CPS Super Chip
• Sound Chips:
  • Yamaha YM2151 @ 3.579 MHz
  • Oki OKI6295 @ 1 MHz (samples 7.576 kHz)
• display
  • Resolution: raster, 384×224 at 59.6294 Hz
  • Color Depth: 16-bit (12-bit RGB with 4-bit brightness value)
  • Available colors: 65 536
  • Screen colors: 4096 (192 global palettes of 16 colors each)
• Sprites:
  • Simultaneously displayed: 256 (per scan line)
  • Dimensions: 16×16, max. 16 colors (15 unique + 1 transparent)
  • Possibility of vertical and horizontal flipping
• Tiles: sizes 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 with 16 colors (15 unique + 1 transparent)
• Tile cards: 3 cards, 512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048 pixels
• 68 KB RAM: 64 KB WORK RAM + 192 KB VRAM (Shadow)
• PPU: 192 KB VRAM + 16 KB Cache
• Z80 RAM: 2 KB WORK RAM