CPS-3

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The CPS-3 (CPシステムIII, shīpī shisutemu surī^?) or Capcom Play System 3 is an arcade system board that was introduced by Capcom in 1996 with the game Warzard (known as Red Earth outside Japan).

1 History
2 Specifications
3 List of games
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

The CPS-3 was the last arcade system board manufactured by Capcom. It features a security mechanism; games are supplied on a CD, which contains the encrypted game contents, and a security cartridge containing the game BIOS and the SH-2 CPU ^[1] with integrated decryption logic, with the per-game key stored in battery-backed SRAM. When the CPS-3 board is first powered on, the contents of the CD are flashed onto a bank of SIMMs on the motherboard, where it is executed. The program code is then decrypted at run time via the security cartridge. The security cartridge is sensitive to any sort of tampering, which will result in the decryption key being erased and the cartridge being rendered useless.

Games became unplayable when the battery inside the security cartridge died, which had to be replaced at cost to the owner. Furthermore, the CPS-3 was only capable of 2D graphics at a time when most games were being developed with 3D hardware in mind.

In June 2007, the encryption method was reverse-engineered by Andreas Naive, making emulation possible. The encryption turned out to be a fairly straightforward combination of rotates and XORs.^[1]

[edit] Specifications

Main CPU: Hitachi HD6417099 (SH-2) at 25 MHz
Storage:
- SCSI CD-ROM drive
- RAM (variable amount)
- Flash ROM: 8 x 16 MiB
Sound chip: 16-channel 8-bit sample player, stereo
Maximum number of colors: 32768 (15 bit colour, 555 RGB)
- Palette size: 131072 pens
- Colors per tile (backgrounds / sprites): 64 (6 bits per pixel) or 256 (8 bits per pixel), selectable
- Colors per tile (text overlay): 16 (4 bits per pixel)
Maximum number of objects: 1024, with hardware scaling
Scroll faces: 4 regular + 1 text overlay 'score screen' layer
Scroll features: Horizontal & vertical scrolling, linescroll, linezoom
Framebuffer zooming
Color blending effects
Hardware RLE decompression of 6 bpp and 8 bpp graphics through DMA
Resolution, pixels: 384×224 (standard mode) / 496×224 (widescreen mode)
Known games on this hardware: 6

[edit] List of games

Release date	Developer	English title	Japanese title	Genre
1999-09-13	Capcom	JoJo's Bizarre Adventure	JoJo no Kimyōna Bōken Miraie no Isan (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険未来への遺産)	Versus Fighting
1998-12-02	Capcom	JoJo's Venture	JoJo no Kimyōna Bōken (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険)	Versus Fighting
1996-11-21	Capcom	Red Earth	Warzard (ウォーザード)	Versus Fighting
1997-02-04	Capcom	Street Fighter III: New Generation	Street Fighter III (ストリートファイターIII)	Versus Fighting
1997-09-30	Capcom	Street Fighter III, 2nd Impact: Giant Attack	Street Fighter III 2nd Impact (ストリートファイターIII 2nd Impact)	Versus Fighting
1999-05-12	Capcom	Street Fighter III, 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future	Street Fighter III 3rd Strike (ストリートファイターIII 3rd Strike)	Versus Fighting