List of Sega arcade system boards

The following is a list of arcade system boards released by Sega. For games running on these system boards, see List of Sega arcade games.

Sega VIC Dual

Sega released the Sega VIC Dual arcade system board in 1977 as one of the first systems to use the Zilog Z80 microprocessor. Some of the games on the system include Depthcharge (1977), Frogs (1978), Heiankyo Alien (1979), Head On (1979), Carnival (1980), and Samurai (1980).^[1]

• CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 1.934 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.28 MIPS),^[2] or Intel 8080 @ 1.934 MHz^[1] (8-bit instructions @ 0.28 MIPS)^[3]
• Sound board: Custom (mono)
• Color model: Monochrome (1977) or RGB (1979)
• Color palette: 64^[4]
• Colors on screen: 2 (1977) or 8 (1979)
• Display resolution: 256×224^[1] to 328×262
• Refresh rate: 60 Hz

Sega Z80

Sega Z80 is an arcade system board that is named after the Zilog Z80 processor it uses as its main CPU. It released in 1980, with games such as Moon Cresta,^[5] using a modified version of the Namco Galaxian system board. In 1981, Jump Bug added parallax scrolling^[6] and replaced the sound chip. In 1982, Super Locomotive replaced the Namco Galaxian hardware with more advanced custom Sega hardware,^[5] including sound and graphics chips that would later be used in the System 1/2/16 and Sega Space Harrier boards.

Specifications

• Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 3.072 MHz^[5] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.45 MIPS^[2])
• Sound hardware: Namco Galaxian sound hardware (one programmable 4/8-bit waveform channel, three 4-bit square wave channels, two 17-bit noise channels, one modulated noise pulse channel)
• GPU chipset: Namco Galaxian video hardware
• Display resolution: 256×224^[7] to 384×264 (horizontal), 224×256 to 264×384 (vertical)
• Refresh rate: 60.60606 Hz (V-sync)
• Color model: RGB^[8]
  • Color palette table: 224 (PROM)
  • Colors on screen: 32 (palette RAM)
• Background planes:
  • Tilemap plane: 8×8 tile sizes, scrolling
  • Bitmap plane: Star generator, scrolling
• Sprite capabilities: 8×8 to 16×16 sizes, 4 colors per sprite, 15 sprites per scanline, 240 sprite pixels per scanline, sprite flipping, sprite animation^[9]

Jump Bug added the following upgrades in 1981:

• Sound chip: General Instrument AY-3-8910 @ 1.78975 MHz
• Background planes: Parallax scrolling^[6]

Super Locomotive included the following upgrades/modifications in 1982:

• Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz^[5] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 1.16 MIPS^[2])
• Audio CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz^[5] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 1.16 MIPS^[2])
• Sound chips: Sega SN76496^[5] (modified Texas Instruments SN76496) @ 4 MHz, Sega SN76496 @ 2 MHz^[5]
• GPU chipset: Sega 315-5011 (sprite line comparator), Sega 315-5012 (sprite generator)
• Display resolution: 248×224 to 256×256
• Refresh rate: 60 Hz
• Color palette table: 1568
• Colors on screen: 768
• Color per sprite: 16
• Sprite pixels: 4 MHz clock cycles (60 Hz refresh rate), 66,666 pixels per frame (256 scanlines), 260 sprite pixels per scanline, 32 sprites per scanline
• Tilemap planes: 2 background layers

Bank Panic included the following upgrades/modifications in 1984:

• Sound chips: 3× Sega SN76496 @ 3.86712 MHz^[5]
• Tilemap planes: 2 layers (foreground, background)
• Display resolution: 256×224^[7] to 330×256

Sega G80

Sega G80 is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1981. The G80 was released in both raster and vector versions of the hardware.

G80 specifications

• Main CPU:^[10]
  • Raster: Zilog Z80 @ 8 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 1.16 MIPS^[2])
  • Vector: Zilog Z80 @ 3.86712 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.561 MIPS^[2])
• Sound boards:
  • Sega USB (Universal Sound Board)
    • MCU: Intel i8035^[11] @ 3.12 MHz^[12] (8-bit instructions @ 3.12 MIPS, 1 instruction per cycle)^[13]
    • Sound chip: Sega Melody Generator (programmable sound generator)
  • Speech Board^[10] (optional)^[12]
    • MCU: Intel i8035/i8039^[10] @ 3.12 MHz^[12] (8-bit instructions @ 3.12 MIPS)^[13]
    • Speech synthesizer: General Instrument SP0250 (linear predictive coding)
  • Sega System 1 sound board (optional, used for Sindbad Mystery in 1983)
    • Sound chips: Sega SN76496 @ 4 MHz, Sega SN76496 @ 2 MHz
• Raster graphics board: Sega Video I
  • Raster display controller: Sega Raster Display Controller^[10] @ 15.468 MHz
  • Display resolution: 256×224^[11] to 328×262 (horizontal), 224×256 to 262×328 (vertical)
  • Color palette table: 256 (8-bit RGB PROM)^[10]
  • Colors on screen: 64 to 128 (palette RAM)^[10]
  • Tilemap planes: 2 layers, horizontal and vertical scrolling, 8×8 tiles, 4 colors per tile^[10]
  • Sprite capabilities: 28 to 32 sprites per scanline, 224 to 256 sprite pixels per scanline, 4 colors per sprite, 8×8^[10] to 16×16^[11] sizes
• Vector display controller: Sega Display Controller^[10]
  • Color depth: 64 (6-bit RGB)

VCO Object

VCO Object,^[14] also known as Sega Z80-3D system, was released by Sega in 1981. It was the first system specifically designed for pseudo-3D sprite-scaling graphics, using analog scaling. It was used for the third-person racing video game Turbo (1981), the stereoscopic 3D shooter game SubRoc-3D (1982), and the third-person rail shooter Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom (1982).^[14] SubRoc-3D also introduced an active shutter 3D system, jointly developed by Sega with Matsushita (now Panasonic).^[15]

Specifications

• CPU:^[14]
  • Turbo & SubRoc-3D: Z80 @ 5 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.725 MIPS^[2])
  • Buck Rogers: 2× Z80 @ 5 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 1.45 MIPS^[2])
• Sound board: Sega Sound Board^[16]
  • Sound chip: Custom
  • Audio output: Stereo^[17]
• Display resolution:
  • Standard resolution: 256×224 to 320×264 (horizontal), 224×256 to 264×320 (vertical)
  • Analog scaling resolution: 512×224 to 640×264 (horizontal), 224×512 to 264×640 (vertical)
• Refresh rate: 60 Hz (V-sync)
• Frame rate: 30 frames per second (SubRoc-3D),^[15] or 60 frames per second (Turbo, Buck Rogers)
• Color palette: 832 (Turbo), or 768 (SubRoc-3D), or 1536 (Buck Rogers)
• Colors on screen: 256 (Turbo, SubRoc-3D), or 1024 (Buck Rogers)
• Background planes:
  • Tilemap layer: 8×8 pixel tiles, 4 colors per tile, scrolling, tile flipping
  • Bitmap layer
• Sprite capabilities: Pseudo-3D sprite-scaling (analog scaling), line buffer, 64 sprites on screen, 16 sprites per scanline, 4 to 8^[14] colors per sprite
  • Sprite pixels: 4.992 MHz (standard) to 9.984 MHz (scaling) pixel clock, 83,200 (standard) to 166,400 (scaling) pixels per frame, 315 (standard) to 630 (scaling) sprite pixels per scanline
• SubRoc-3D capabilities: Stereoscopic 3D, active shutter 3D system^[15]

Sega Zaxxon

The Sega Zaxxon hardware was released by Sega in 1982 as the first system dedicated to producing isometric graphics, first used for the isometric shooter Zaxxon (1982). It was also used for several other games, including the isometric platformer Congo Bongo (1983).

Specifications

• Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 3.04125 MHz^[18] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.441 MIPS^[2])
• Sound board: Sega G80 Sound Board
• Graphics board: Sega Zaxxon-VIDEOII / 834-5167 Video Board
• Display resolution: 256×224^[18] to 384×264 pixels
• Color palette table: 512 (9-bit RGB PROM)
• Colors on screen: 256 (palette RAM)
• Tilemap planes:^[19] 2 layers (foreground, background), 8×8 tiles, 4 or 8 colors per tile, tile flipping, vertical/horizontal/diagonal scrolling, isometric perspective
• Sprites: 4 or 8 colors per sprite, sprite flipping, shadows
  • Sprite sizes: 8 and 32 heights, widths of 8, 16 and 32 pixels
  • Line buffer: 256 sprite pixels per scanline, 8 (32-width) to 32 (8-width) sprites per scanline

Congo Bongo added the following specifications in 1983:

• Additional CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 2 MHz^[18]
• Sound board: Sega 834-5168 Sound Board
• Additional sound chips: 2× SN76496 @ 4 MHz
• Colors on screen: 512

Sega Laserdisc

The Sega Laserdisc hardware was released by Sega in 1983 as the first system dedicated to producing laserdisc video games. The first game to use it was Astron Belt (1983) and the last to use it was the holographic game Time Traveler (1991).

Specifications

• CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 5 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.725 MIPS)^[2]
• JAMMA board: Sega PCB CN1
• Audio board: Sega PCB CN2 (stereo output)
• Laserdisc player: Hitachi-Sega VIP-9500SG^[20]
  • Video resolution: 580×480 (580 dots, 480 lines), 525 scanlines (480 visible),^[21] interlaced video
  • Refresh rate: 59.94 Hz
  • Frame rate: 29.97 frames per second
  • Color depth: 16,777,216 (24-bit true color)
  • Audio: LaserDisc, stereo output
• Graphics overlay:
  • Display resolution: 256×256 pixels, progressive scan
  • Refresh rate: 59.94 Hz
  • Color palette table: 512 (PROM)
  • Colors on screen: 256 (color RAM)
  • Tilemap plane:
    • Tile size: 8×8 pixels
    • Tilemap size: 32×32 (1024) tiles, 256×256 pixels
    • Colors per tile: 2
  • Sprite plane:
    • Sprite sizes: 8×8 to 256×8 pixels
    • Sprites on screen: 32 sprites per scanline, 256 sprite pixels per scanline

Sega System series

Sega System 1

Sega System 1 is a type of arcade hardware used in various Sega arcade machines from 1983 until 1987. For most of its run it coexisted with Sega System 2 (1985–1988) and as a result had many similar features (the only major difference being that System 2 had two separate circuit boards instead of one). In its four-year span it was used in some 20 different arcade games, including Choplifter, Flicky, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, Wonder Boy, and Wonder Boy in Monster Land. System 2 is an updated version of the System 1.

System 1 specifications

• Board composition: Arcade components were contained on one circuit board
• Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz^[22] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz^[22] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chips: Sega SN76496 @ 4 MHz, Sega SN76496 @ 2 MHz
• GPU: Sega 315-5011 (sprite line comparator), Sega 315-5012 (sprite generator), 315-5049 (tilemap chip)
• Display resolution: 256×224 to 640×260 pixels
• Refresh rate: 60.0952 Hz (V-sync)
• Colors on screen: 2048
• Color palette: 4096
• Tilemap planes: 2 background layers^[22] (1 static, 1 scrolling), 8×8 tiles
  • Tilemap sizes: 256×256 for both planes (System 1), or 512×512 for scrolling plane and 256×256 for fixed plane (System 2)
• Sprites: Dual line buffers, double buffering, 32 sprites per scanline, 16 colors per sprite, sprite flipping, hardware collision detection,^[22] 8 to 256 width, 8 to 256 height
  • Sprite pixels: 10 MHz pixel clock cycles (60.0952 Hz refresh rate), 166,402 pixels per frame (260 scanlines), 640 sprite pixels per scanline

Sega System 16

The Sega System 16 is an early 16-bit arcade system board released by Sega in 1985.^[23] Over its lifespan, roughly forty games were released on this hardware, making it one of Sega's most successful arcade platforms. It was produced in two variants, the System 16A and System 16B. Some games released using this hardware include: Shinobi, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, and Dynamite Dux.

In order to prevent piracy, as well as illegal bootleg games, many System 16 boards used an encryption system. A Hitachi FD1094 chip, containing the main CPU as well as the decryption key, was used in place of a regular CPU.

The System 16's pairing of a Motorola 68000 CPU and a Zilog Z80 coprocessor would prove to be a popular and durable arcade hardware configuration well into the 1990s. Capcom's CPS-1 and CPS-2 boards were built on a similar foundation, as was SNK's Neo Geo hardware. Sega would later use the 68000/Z80 combination to power its Genesis/Mega Drive home console.

System 16 specifications

• Main CPU: Hitachi FD1094 (Motorola 68000) @ 10 MHz^[24][25][26] (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 1.75 MIPS)^[2]
• Main MCU: Intel i8751 @ 8 MHz^[24] (8-bit instructions @ 8 MIPS, 1 instruction per cycle)^[27]
• Sound CPU: NEC uPD780C-1 (Zilog Z80 clone)^[28] @ 4 MHz^[24][25] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound MCU: Intel i8048 @ 6 MHz^[28] (8-bit instructions @ 6 MIPS)^[13]
• FM synthesis sound chip: Yamaha YM2151 @ 4 MHz (8 FM synthesis channels)
• PCM sound chip: NEC uPD7751^[25] @ 6 MHz^[28]
  • ADPCM channels: 3^[28]
  • Audio bit depth: 8-bit^[28]
• GPU chipset: 315-5011 sprite line comparator, 315-5012 sprite generator, 2× 315-5049 tilemap chips, 315-5107 & 315-5108 display timers, 315-5143 & 315-5144 sprite chips, 315-5149 video mixer
  • Performance: 12.5874 MHz sprite line buffer render clock, 6.2937 MHz sprite line buffer scan/erase & pixel clock^[28]
• Memory: 16kB + 2 kB (System 16A)^[29]
• Display resolution: 320×224^[25] to 342×262 (horizontal), 224×320 to 262×342 (vertical), progressive scan
• Color palette: 98,304^[30]
• Colors on screen: 4096 (unique colors)^[25] to 6144 (with shadow & highlight)
• Graphical planes: 1 sprite layer, 1 text layer, 2 tile layers^[25][26] (row & column scrolling,^[31] 8×8 tiles)
• Sprite capabilities: Dual line buffers, double buffering,^[31] 128 on-screen sprites,^[25][26] 800 sprite pixels (800.75 sprite processing ticks) per scanline, 100 sprites per scanline,^[28] 16 colors per sprite,^[31] 8 to 256^[28][31] width, 8 to 256^[28][31] height

System 16B specifications

System 16B included the following upgrades in 1986:

• Sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 5 MHz^[26] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.725 MIPS)^[2]
• PCM sound chip: NEC uPD7759 ADPCM Decoder @ 640 kHz^[26]
  • ADPCM channels: 8^[32]
  • Audio bit depth: 9-bit^[32]
  • Other features: 8 kHz sampling rate, up to 128 KB audio ROM and 256 samples^[32]
• GPU chipset: 315-5196 sprite generator, 315-5197 tilemap generator, 315-5213 sprite chip, 315-5248 & 315-5250 math chips^[31]
• Sprite capabilities: Sprite-scaling^[26]

Sega System 24

The Sega System 24 is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1988. It was produced for coin-operated video arcade machines until 1996. Some games released using this hardware include: Bonanza Bros., Hot Rod, and Gain Ground.

Sega System 24 specifications

The System 24 used two Motorola 68000 processors at 10 MHz. One was for input/output, while the other was used by the game. The board holds 1360 kB of RAM and 256 kB of ROM. It was the first Sega arcade system that required a medium resolution arcade monitor. The color palette is 4352 on screen selectable from 32,768,^[33] or with shadow & highlight, 16,384 on screen selectable from 98,304.^[30] The system could support up to 2048 sprites on-screen at once.

Sound was driven by a YM2151 at 4 MHz; it was capable of delivering 8 channels of FM sound in addition to a DAC used for sound effects and sampling. Early System 24s loaded their program from floppy disks. Games could also use hardware ROM boards to store games. No matter which storage device was used, a special security chip was required for each game an operator wanted to play.^[33]

• CPU: Hitachi FD1094 @ 10 MHz^[34] & Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 3.5 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chips: Yamaha YM2151 @ 4 MHz (8 FM synthesis channels), DAC (sound effects and speech synthesis)^[33]
  • Audio output: Stereo speakers, stereo headphones^[33]
• GPU chipset: Sega 315-5242 Color Encoder 315-5292 Tilemap Generator, 315-5293 Sprite Generator, 315-5294 Priority Mixer, 315-5295 Object Generator
  • Graphical capabilities: Sprite zoom, scrolling, row & column scrolling,^[35] parallax scrolling
• Memory:
  • RAM: 1360 KB
  • ROM: 256 KB
• Storage media: Floppy disk, ROM board
• Resolution: 496×384 to 656×424 pixels, progressive scan
• Color palette: 32,768 (unique colors)^[33] to 98,304 (with shadow & highlight)^[30]
• Colors on screen: 4352 (unique colors)^[33] to 16,384 (with shadow & highlight)
• Tilemaps:
  • Tilemap layers: 4 (2 scrolling and 2 windowed)^[33]
  • Tile size: 8×8 pixels
  • Tiles per scrolling tilemap: 4096^[33]
  • Scrolling tilemap size: 512×512 pixels
• Sprites:
  • Colors per sprite: Up to 256^[36]
  • Sprite size: 8 to 1024 pixels in width/height^[36]
  • Sprite virtual space: 4096×4096 pixels^[36]
  • Sprite pixels per line: 4096
  • Sprites per line: 4 (1024×1024 pixels each) to 512 (8×8 pixels each)
  • Sprites on screen: 2048 on screen^[33]
  • Framebuffers: 2 framebuffers @ 512×384 pixels each, double buffering^[35]

Sega System 18

The Sega System 18 is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1989. System 18 had a very short run of games but most boards on this hardware were JAMMA standard. Most of these games also have the "suicide battery" as associated with Sega's System 16 hardware. It also contained the VDP used by the Sega Mega Drive console.

System 18 specifications

• Main CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz^[37] (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 1.75 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 8 MHz^[37] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 1.16 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chip: 2 × Yamaha YM3438 @ 8 MHz + Ricoh RF5c68 @ 10 MHz (8-channel PCM chip, remarked as Sega Custom 315)
• Graphics chips: Sega System 16B chipset, Yamaha YM7101 VDP
• Display resolution: 320 × 224
• Color palette: 98,304^[30]
• Colors on screen: 4096 (unique colors)^[37] to 8384 (with shadow & highlight)
• Board composition: Main board + ROM board
• Graphical capabilities: 128 sprites on screen at one time, 4 tile layers, 1 text layer, 1 sprite layer with hardware sprite zooming, translucent shadows,^[37] sprites of any height and length, row & column scrolling^[31]

Kyugo

Kyugo is an arcade system board released in 1984, co-developed with Japanese company Kyugo. It was used for three Sega games: Flashgal and Repulse in 1985, and Legend in 1986.^[38] It was also used by several other companies from 1984 to 1987.

Kyugo specifications

• CPU: 2× Zilog Z80 @ 4.608 MHz^[38] (8/16-bit instructions @ 1.34 MIPS^[2])
• Sound chips: 2× General Instrument AY-3-8910 @ 1.5 MHz^[38] (6 PSG channels)
• Display resolution: 288×239 to 512×256 (horizontal), 224×288^[38] to 256×512 (vertical)
• Refresh rate: 60 Hz
• Color palette: 4096 (12-bit RGB)
• Colors on screen: 256^[38] (8-bit RGB)
• Tilemap capabilities: 3 planes (foreground, background, text), 8×8 tiles, 4 colors per foreground tile, 8 colors per background tile, vertical scrolling, side-scrolling, tile flipping
• Sprite capabilities: 16×16 size, 8 colors per sprite, sprite flipping, 2 KB sprite RAM, 32 bytes per sprite, 64 sprites on screen
• Sprite pixels: 320 sprite pixels per scanline, 20 sprites per scanline

Super Scaler series

Sega Space Harrier

Sega Space Harrier, also known as Sega Hang-On, is an early 16-bit system released in 1985, originally designed for the racing game Hang-On and third-person rail shooter Space Harrier (1985). It was also used for the racing game Enduro Racer (1986). This was the first in Sega's Super Scaler series of pseudo-3D arcade hardware. At the time of its release, this was the most powerful game system.^[39]

The pseudo-3D sprite/tile scaling in Sega's Super Scaler arcade games were handled in a similar manner to textures in later texture-mapped polygonal 3D games of the 1990s.^[40] Designed by Sega AM2's Yu Suzuki, he stated that his "designs were always 3D from the beginning. All the calculations in the system were 3D, even from Hang-On. I calculated the position, scale, and zoom rate in 3D and converted it backwards to 2D. So I was always thinking in 3D."^[41]

Specifications

• Main CPU: Motorola MC68000 & Hitachi FD1094 (Motorola 68000) @ 10 MHz^[42] (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 3.5 MIPS)^[2]
• MCU: Intel i8751 @ 8 MHz (Space Harrier)^[42] (8-bit instructions @ 8 MIPS)^[27]
• Sound CPU: Z80 @ 4 MHz^[42] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound board: Sega 834-5670
• Sound chips:
  • FM synthesis chip: Yamaha YM2151 @ 4 MHz^[42] (8 FM channels)
  • PCM chip: SegaPCM^[42] (315-5218) @ 4 MHz (stereo output, 16 PCM channels, 12-bit audio,^[43] 31.25 kHz sampling rate^[42])
• GPU: Sega Super Scaler chipset
  • Graphics chips: 315-5011 sprite line comparator, 315-5012 sprite generator, 2× 315-5049 tilemap chips, 2x 315-5107 horizontal timing control, 315-5108 vertical timing control, 315-5122 timing chip
  • Performance: 12.5874 MHz sprite line buffer render clock, 6.2937 MHz sprite line buffer scan/erase & pixel clock^[28]
• Display resolution: 320×224 to 400×262 pixels, progressive scan (non-interlaced)
• Frame rate: 60 frames per second^[44]
• Color palette: 32,768 (Hang-On), or 98,304 (Space Harrier, Enduro Racer)^[30]
• Colors on screen: 6144
• Graphical planes:^[42]
  • 2 tilemap layers: Row & column scrolling^[31]
  • Text layer
  • Sprite layer: Hardware sprite-scaling
  • Road layer: 512×256 resolution^[40]
  • Translucent shadows (Space Harrier)
• Sprite capabilities: Hardware sprite-scaling, 128 sprites on screen per frame,^[44] thousands of sprites scaled per second,^[45] dual line buffers, double buffering,^[28] 800 sprite pixels (800.75 sprite processing ticks) per scanline, 100 sprites per scanline,^[28] 8 to 256^[28] width, 8 to 256^[28] height

Sega OutRun

Sega OutRun is a 16-bit arcade system released in 1986 for the driving game Out Run (1986). It was also used for Super Hang-On (1987) and Turbo Outrun (1989). It is the second in Sega's Super Scaler series of pseudo-3D arcade hardware.

Specifications

• Main CPU: 2× Motorola 68000 @ 12.5 MHz^[46] (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 4.375 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz^[46] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chips:
  • FM synthesis chip: Yamaha YM2151 @ 4 MHz (8 FM channels)
  • PCM chip: SegaPCM (315-5218) @ 4 MHz (stereo output, 16 PCM channels, 12-bit audio,^[43] 31.25 kHz sampling rate^[42])
• GPU: Sega Super Scaler chipset
  • Graphics board: Sega 837-6064 / 171-5377 VIDEO Board @ 25.1748 MHz (315-5197 Sega Custom Tilemap Generator, 315-5211 Sega Custom Sprite Generator, 315-5242 Sega Custom Color Encoder)
  • Road graphics chips: 315-5155 Sega Road Bit Extraction, 315-5222 Signetics PLS153N Road Mixing
• Display resolution: 320×224 to 400×262, progressive scan
• Refresh rate: 60.0543 Hz (V-sync)
• Frame rate: 30 frames per second^[47]
• Color palette: 98,304^[30]
• Colors on screen: 12,288
• Graphical planes:^[46]
  • 2 tilemap layers: System 16B tilemap system, row & column scrolling, parallax scrolling^[48]
  • 1 text layer
  • 1 sprite layer: Hardware sprite-scaling/zooming
  • 1 road layer: Can draw 2 roads at once, 512×256 pixels each,^[40] tiled bitmaps^[49]
  • Translucent shadows
• Sprite capabilities: Framebuffered sprites with zooming capabilities, 128 on-screen sprites per frame,^[46] thousands of sprites scaled per second,^[45] 16 colors per sprite^[50]
• Sprite pixels: 25.1748 MHz video clock cycles (60.0543 Hz refresh rate), 419,199 pixels per screen refresh (262 scanlines), 1600 sprite pixels per scanline, 128 sprites per scanline

Sega X Board

The Sega X Board is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1987. As the third in Sega's Super Scaler series of arcade hardware, it was noteworthy for its sprite manipulation capabilities, which allowed it to create high quality pseudo-3D visuals. This trend would continue with the Y Board and the System 32, before the Model 1 made true 3D arcade games more financially affordable.

X Board specifications

• Main CPU: Hitachi FD1094 (Motorola 68000) @ 12.5 MHz, Motorola MC68000 @ 12.5 MHz^[51] (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 4.375 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz^[51] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chips:^[51]
  • FM synthesis chip: Yamaha YM2151 @ 4 MHz (8 FM channels)
  • PCM chip: SegaPCM (315-5218) @ 4 MHz (stereo output, 16 PCM channels, 12-bit audio,^[43] 31.25 kHz sampling rate^[42])
• GPU: Sega Super Scaler chipset @ 50 MHz
  • Main graphics chips: 315-5197 tilemap generator, 315-5211A sprite generator, 315-5242 color encoder, 315-5275 road generator, 315-5278 sprite ROM bank control
  • Math chips:^[31] 315-5248 hardware multiplier, 315-5249 hardware divider
• Display resolution: 320×224^[51] to 400×262,^[43] progressive scan
• Refresh rate: 59.6368^[51] to 60^[52] Hz (V-sync)
• Frame rate: 59.6368^[51] to 60^[52] frames per second
• Board composition: Single board
• Color palette: 98,304^[30]
• Colors on screen: 24,576
• Graphical planes:^[51]
  • 4 tile layers
  • 1 text layer
  • 1 sprite layer with hardware sprite zooming
  • 1 road layer, can draw 2 roads at once
  • Translucent shadows
• Sprite capabilities: Dual sprite framebuffers, 512×256 framebuffer resolution,^[43] hardware sprite zooming,^[51] sprite rotation,^[52] thousands of sprites scaled per second^[45]
  • Sprite size: 8×8 to 512×256^[43] pixels
  • Colors per sprite: 16^[43]
  • Sprites per frame: 256 on screen at one time^[51]
  • Sprite pixels: 50 MHz video clock cycles, 833,333 (60 Hz) to 838,408 (59.6368 Hz) pixels per frame (262 scanlines), 3180 to 3200 sprite pixels per scanline, 256 sprites per scanline

Super Monaco GP (1989) added the following upgrades:

• Additional boards: Network Board, Sound Board, Motor Board
• Additional CPU: 2× Zilog Z80 @ 8 MHZ (2.32 MIPS)
• Additional sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz (0.58 MIPS)
• Additional sound chip: SegaPCM @ 4 MHz (additional 16 PCM channels,^[43] totalling 32 PCM channels)
• Sound output: 4-channel surround sound

Sega Y Board

The Sega Y Board is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1988. Like the X Board before it, the Y Board was known for its pseudo-3D sprite manipulation capabilities, handled by Sega's custom Super Scaler chipset.

Y Board specifications

• Board composition: CPU Board + Video Board
• Main CPU: 3× MC68000 @ 12.5 MHz^[53] (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 6.563 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound CPU: Z80 @ 4 MHz^[53] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 0.58 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chips: YM2151 @ 4 MHz, SegaPCM @ 15.625 kHz
• Sound chips:^[53]
  • FM synthesis chip: Yamaha YM2151 @ 4 MHz (8 FM channels)
  • PCM chip: SegaPCM (315-5218) @ 4 MHz (stereo output, 16 PCM channels, 12-bit audio,^[43] 31.25 kHz sampling rate^[42])
• GPU: Sega Super Scaler chipset
  • Graphics board: Sega 837-6566 Video Board @ 50 MHz (315-5196 sprite generator, 315-5213 sprite chip, 315-5242 color encoder, 315-5305 sprite generator, 2× 315-5306 video sync & rotation, 315-5312 video mixer)
  • Math chips:^[31] 315-5248 hardware multiplier, 315-5249 hardware divider
• RAM: 778 KB (SRAM
  • Main RAM: 208 KB (64 KB CPU 1, 16 KB CPU 2, 64 KB CPU 3, 64 KB shared)
  • Video RAM: 566 KB (32 KB Y-sprites, 4 KB B-sprites, 2 KB rotation, 16 KB palette, 512 KB framebuffer^[43])
  • Sound RAM: 6 KB (2 KB Z80, 4 KB SegaPCM
• Display resolution: 320×224^[53] to 342×262, progressive scan
• Sprite resolution: Up to 512×512 pixels
• Refresh rate: 59.6368^[51] to 60 Hz (V-sync)
• Frame rate: 59.6368^[51] to 60 frames per second
• Color palette: 2,097,152 (4096 palette banks with 512 colors each),^[53] to 16,777,216 with effects (shadow & highlight, luminosity, palette fade)
• Colors on screen: 24,576, to 98,304 with luminosity and palette fade
• Graphical planes: Three layers^[53]
  • B-sprite (front plane) layer: Priority on top, based on System 16B (line buffer^[31]) sprite system
  • Y-sprite (back plane) layer: Plugs into a full-screen rotation, large fillrate, dual framebuffers (based on X Board^[43]) that can be fully rotated
  • Sky gradient (background) layer: Bitmap plane
• Sprite capabilities: Linked list of sprites,^[53] shadow & highlight,^[31] palette fade, color rotations, different levels of luminosity, full sprite zooming & scaling on both sprite planes,^[53] full sprite & framebuffer rotation on Y-sprite plane, double buffering, dual line buffers on B-plane (512 sprite pixels per line),^[31] dual framebuffers on Y-plane
  • Sprite size: 8×8 to 512×512 pixels
  • Colors per sprite: 16 to 512^[53]
  • Sprites per frame: 68 KB sprite RAM, up to 2176 sprites (with 8x8 size and 16 colors each)
  • Sprite pixels: 50 MHz video clock cycles, 833,333 (60 Hz) to 838,408 (59.6368 Hz) pixels per frame (262 scanlines), 3180 to 3200 sprite pixels per scanline, 397 to 400 sprites per scanline

Sega Mega series

Sega Mega-Tech

The Sega Mega-Tech is an arcade system developed by Sega Europe in 1988. It is based on the Mega Drive/Genesis video game console hardware, and more or less identical.^[54] Its operation ability is similar to Nintendo's PlayChoice-10, where the credits bought give the user a playable time period rather than lives (usually 1 minute per credit), and can switch between games during playtime.

A few things were omitted, such as the expansion hardware allowing for Sega Mega-CD or Sega 32X as these were not developed at this point, so would not likely be offered as an arcade expansion. The PCB for the Mega-Tech also includes the ability to display to a second monitor, which contains a list of the games installed in the machine and also displays instructions for controlling the game, 1 or 2 player information, and a short synopsis of each game. The second monitor also displays the time left for playing.

Since the machine is basically a Mega Drive with timer control for arcade operations, porting games to the Mega-Tech was an easy task and so many games were released, most of them popular titles such as Streets Of Rage, Revenge Of Shinobi, Golden Axe, Sonic The Hedgehog and many more. The ability was also added for the machine to play Sega Master System titles, though fewer Master System titles were ported than Mega Drive titles. Some include the original Shinobi, Outrun and After Burner.^[55]

The Sega Mega-Tech was released in Europe, Australia, and Asia (including Japan), but not in North America.

Sega Mega-Play

The Sega Mega-Tech system was soon replaced by its successor, the Mega-Play, a JAMMA based system.^[54] This system utilized only 4 carts instead of 8. This version also utilizes traditional arcade operations, in which credits bought are used to buy lives instead.^[56]

Like the Mega-Tech, The Sega Mega-Play was released in Europe, Australia, and Asia (including Japan), but not in North America.

Sega System 14 / C / C-2

Sega's System 14, also known as System C and System C-2, is a Jamma PCB used in arcade games, introduced in 1989. This hardware is based closely on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis hardware, with the main CPU, sound processor and graphics processor being the same,^[57] but with the addition of the Altera EPM5032 and Sega 315-5242 color encoder increasing the color palette. The CPU clock speed is slightly faster (8.94 MHz instead of 7.67 MHz), there is no Z80, and the sound chip is driven by the CPU. The DAC is also replaced by the NEC µPD7759, the same as the System 16 hardware. 17 known games were created for the System C-2 hardware.

Specifications

• Board composition: Single JAMMA board^[57]
• Main CPU: MC68000 @ 8.948862 MHz^[57] (16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 1.566 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chip: YM3438 @ 7.670453, SN76496 @ 3.579545
• Optional sound chip: NEC µPD7759 @ 640 kHz^[57] (9-bit ADPCM @ 8 kHz sampling rate)^[58]
• Graphics chips: Yamaha YM7101 VDP, Altera EPM5032, Sega 315-5242 color encoder
• Video resolution: 320×224 pixels
• Color palette: 98,304^[30]
• Colors on screen: 6144
• Hardware features: Line scroll, column scroll, raster interrupt, 2 background planes (one with an option window), sprite plane, several levels of priority

Sega System 32

System 32 is an arcade platform released by Sega in 1990. It succeeded the Y Board and System 24, combining features from both. It used a NEC V60 processor at 16.10795 MHz, supporting 32-bit fixed-point instructions as well as 32-bit and 64-bit floating-point instructions. It used a new custom Sega graphics chipset combining the Y Board's pseudo-3D Super Scaler capabilities with the System 24's sprite rendering system. Notable titles included Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, Rad Mobile, OutRunners, and SegaSonic the Hedgehog.

There was another version of the System 32 hardware, called System Multi 32 or System 32 Multi, released in 1992. This was similar to the original, but had a dual monitor display, a new NEC V70 processor at 20 MHz, a new Sega MultiPCM sound chip, more RAM, and other improvements. This was the last of Sega's Super Scaler series of pseudo-3D arcade system boards.

System 32 specifications

• Main CPU: NEC V60 @ 16.10795 MHz^[59]
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit RISC^[60] instructions @ 3.524 MIPS (million instructions per second)^[61]
  • Floating-point unit: 32-bit and 64-bit operations^[62]
• Sound CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 8.053975 MHz^[59] (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 1.168 MIPS^[2])
• Sound chips:
  • FM synthesis chips: 2× Yamaha YM3438 (based on Yamaha YM2612) @ 8.053975 MHz (12 FM channels)
  • PCM sampling chip: Ricoh RF5c68 @ 12.5 MHz (8 PCM channels)
• GPU: Sega Super Scaler 317-5964 chipset (315-5242 video DAC/color encoder, 315-5386 tilemap generator, 315-5387 sprite generator, 315-5388 video mixer/color blender)^[59]
• RAM: 1684.125 KB
  • V60 main RAM: 584 KB (64 KB work, 8 KB shared, 512 KB random number generator)
  • V60 video RAM: 320.125 KB (128 KB video, 128 KB sprite attributes, 64 KB palette, 128 bytes mixer)
  • Framebuffer DP VRAM: 768 KB (16× 32 KB Hitachi HM53461ZP-12,^[63] 8× 32 KB NEC uPD42264^[64])
  • Z80 sound RAM: 12 KB (4 KB RF5c68, 8 KB shared)
• Display resolution: 320×224 to 416×262 pixels, progressive scan
• Frame rate: 60 frames per second
• Graphical capabilities: Color rotations, different levels of luminosity,^[59] 7 levels of global RGB brightness control,^[59][65] fading & lighting,^[66] shadow & highlight, 8 levels of alpha blending, tile flipping, line & row scrolling, palette indirection, dynamic priorities, per-color priority, per-component color control
• Color palette: 2,097,152 (4096 palette banks with 512 colors each^[59]) to 16,777,216 (with shadow & highlight and 7 levels of RGB brightness control)
• Colors on screen: 49,152 (16,384^[59] with shadow & highlight) to 786,432 (with luminosity and 8 levels of alpha blending)
• Graphical planes:
  • 4 tilemap background planes: Scaling, line-scrolling,^[59] line selection, line zoom, alpha blending, window clipping
  • 1 tilemap text layer
  • 1 bitmap layer
  • 1 background layer
  • 2 sprite layers
• Sprite capabilities: Linked lists of sprites, double buffering, dual framebuffers, technically infinite sprites of arbitrary size, sprite-scaling,^[59] sprite rotation,^[67][68] jumping & clipping capabilities, advanced hot-spot positioning, System 24 sprite rendering system^[36]
  • Sprite size: 8^[36] to 2048 pixels in width/height
  • Colors per sprite: 16 to 512^[59]
  • Sprites per frame: 128 KB sprite attribute RAM, 16 bytes per sprite, 8192 sprites per frame
  • Sprite pixels per scanline: 4096^[36]
  • Sprites per scanline: 512

System Multi 32 specifications

Sega System Multi 32 included the following upgrades in 1992:

• Main CPU: NEC V70 @ 20 MHz^[69]
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit RISC instructions @ 6.6 MIPS^[61]
  • Floating-point unit: 32-bit and 64-bit operations^[62]
• Sound CPU: 2× Zilog Z80 @ 8.053975 MHz (8-bit & 16-bit instructions @ 2.336 MIPS^[2])
• Sound chips:
  • FM synthesis chip: Yamaha YM3438 @ 8.053975 MHz (6 FM channels)
  • PCM sampling chip: Sega MultiPCM (28 PCM channels)
• GPU: 2× Sega Super Scaler 317-5964 chipset
• Display resolution: Dual monitor,^[69] 640×448 to 832×262 pixels, progressive scan
• Color palette: 4,194,304 (2,097,152 per screen) to 16,777,216 (with shadow & highlight and RGB brightness control)
• Colors on screen: 98,304 (49,152 per screen) to 1,572,864 (786,432 per screen)
• Graphical planes: 4 sprite layers
• Sprite capabilities: Multiple buffering, 4 framebuffers

Sega Model series

Sega Model 1

The Sega Model 1 is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1992. It was Sega's first polygonal 3D hardware. The first game for the system, Virtua Racing, was designed to test the viability of the platform and was never intended to be released commercially, but it was such a success internally that Sega did so anyway.

However, the high cost of the Model 1 system meant only six games were ever developed for it, among them the popular fighting game Virtua Fighter. Like the previous Super Scaler pseudo-3D arcade boards, the Model 1 3D arcade board was designed by Sega AM2's Yu Suzuki.^[41]

Model 1 specifications

• Main CPU: NEC V60 @ 16 MHz
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit CISC^[62] instructions @ 3.5 MIPS (million instructions per second)^[61][70]
  • Floating-point unit: 32-bit and 64-bit operations^[62]
• Graphics board: Sega 837-7894 171-6080D VIDEO PCB
• GPU coprocessors: 5× Fujitsu TGP MB86233^[71] (geometrizer, rasterizer, DSP, FPU)
  • Coprocessor abilities: Floating decimal point operation function, axis rotation operation function, 3D matrix operation function^[60]
  • Floating-point unit: 32-bit operations @ 16 MFLOPS (Mega-FLOPS)^[60][72] each (80 MFLOPS combined)
• Sound CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 12 MHz^[60]
• Sound chips: 2× Sega 315-5560 Custom MultiPCM^[60]
  • Audio capabilities: 28 PCM channels per chip (one for music, one for sound effects), 56 PCM channels total
• Sound timer: Yamaha YM3834 @ 8 MHz
• RAM: 1936 KB (1880 KB SRAM)
  • Main SRAM: 408 KB
  • Video memory: 1464 KB SRAM (192 KB display list, 576 KB tiles, 64 KB colors)
  • Audio memory: 64 KB (8 KB SRAM)
• Monitor display resolution: 496 × 384 pixels, 24 kHz horizontal sync, 60 Hz refresh rate, progressive scan (non-interlaced)
• Frame rate: 60 frames per second^[73]
• Colors: 65536 (16-bit high color depth^[60] and 256 luminance levels
• Graphical capabilities: Shading, flat shading, diffuse reflection, specular reflection, 2 layers of background scrolling, alpha blending, alpha channel,^[60] lighting
• Geometric performance: 180,000 polygons/sec (with all effects), 540,000 vectors/sec^[60]
• Rendering fillrate: 1,200,000 pixels/sec^[60]

Sega Model 2

The Sega Model 2 is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1993. Like the Model 1, it was developed in cooperation with Martin Marietta, and is a further advancement of the earlier Model 1 system. The most noticeable improvement was texture mapping, which enabled polygons to be painted with bitmap images, as opposed to the limited monotone flat shading that Model 1 supported. The Model 2 also introduced the use of texture filtering and texture anti-aliasing.^[74]

Designed by Sega AM2's Yu Suzuki, he stated that the Model 2's texture mapping chip originated "from military equipment from Lockheed Martin, which was formerly General Electric Aerial & Space's textural mapping technology. It cost $2 million to use the chip. It was part of flight-simulation equipment that cost $32 million. I asked how much it would cost to buy just the chip and they came back with $2 million. And I had to take that chip and convert it for video game use, and make the technology available for the consumer at 5,000 yen ($50)" ($85 in 2017) per machine. He said "it was tough but we were able to make it for 5,000 yen. Nobody at Sega believed me when I said I wanted to purchase this technology for our games." There were also issues working on the new CPU,^[41] the Intel i960-KB, which had just released in 1993.^[75] Suzuki stated that when working "on a brand new CPU, the debugger doesn't exist yet. The latest hardware doesn't work because it's full of bugs. And even if a debugger exists, the debugger itself is full of bugs. So, I had to debug the debugger. And of course with new hardware there's no library or system, so I had to create all of that, as well. It was a brutal cycle."^[41]

Despite its high pricetag, the Model 2 platform was very successful, and in early 1996 Sega began licensing the board to its competitors.^[76] The Model 2 featured some of the highest grossing arcade games of all time: Daytona USA,^[77] Virtua Fighter 2,^[76] Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, The House of the Dead, and Dead or Alive.^[76]

Model 2 has four different varieties: Model 2 (1993),^[77] Model 2A-CRX^[78] (1994),^[79] Model 2B-CRX^[80] (1994)^[81] and Model 2C-CRX (1996).^[82] While Model 2 and 2A-CRX use a custom DSP with internal code for the geometrizer, 2B-CRX and 2C-CRX use well documented DSPs and upload the geometrizer code at startup to the DSP. This, combined with the fact that some games were available for both 2A-CRX and 2B-CRX, led to the reverse engineering of the Model 2 and Model 2A-CRX DSPs.

Model 2 specifications

Main CPU (central processing unit)

• Main CPU: Intel i960-KB @ 25 MHz
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit RISC instructions @ 25 MIPS (million instructions per second)^[83]
  • Floating-point unit: 32-bit, 64-bit and 80-bit operations @ 13.6 MFLOPS (Mega-FLOPS, or million floating-point operations per second) (Whetstone)^[75]

GPU (graphics processing unit) video hardware

• Geometry Engine DSP coprocessors: 6× Fujitsu TGP MB86234 (Model 2/2A-CRX),^[71] or 2× Analog Devices ADSP-21062 SHARC (Model 2B-CRX), or 2× Fujitsu TGPx4 MB86235 (Model 2C-CRX)^[71]
  • Coprocessor abilities: Floating decimal point operation function, axis rotation operation function, 3D matrix operation function
  • Floating-point unit:
    • Model 2/2A-CRX: 32-bit operations @ 16 MFLOPS^[78] ×6 (96 MFLOPS)
    • Model 2B/2C-CRX: 32-bit & 40-bit operations @ 120 MFLOPS^[84] ×2 (240 MFLOPS)
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit & 48-bit instructions @ 80 MIPS (Model 2B-CRX)^[84]
• Hardware Renderer: Sega-Lockheed-Martin Custom rasterization & texture mapping hardware (Model 2),^[41] or 2× Fujitsu MB86271 AGP (Model 2C-CRX)^[85]
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit & 64-bit instructions @ 240 MIPS (Model 2C-CRX)^[86]
• Z-Sort & Clip Hardware (2× Fujitsu MB86272 Z-sorter in Model 2C-CRX)^[85]
• Sega System 24 tilemap engine

Audio hardware

• Sound CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 10 MHz (Model 2), or Motorola 68000 @ 12 MHz (Model 2A/2B/2C-CRX)
• Sound chip: 2× Sega 315-5560 Custom MultiPCM (Model 2), or Yamaha SCSP (Model 2A/2B/2C-CRX)
• Sound timer: Yamaha YM3834 @ 8 MHz (Model 2 only)
• PCM channels: 56^[77]
• PCM sample ROM: 16 Mbits (Model 2),^[77] or 68 Mbits (Model 2A/2B/2C-CRX)^[78]
• PCM quality: 16-bit depth,^[87] 44.1 kHz sampling rate (CD quality)^[78]
• SCSP features: 128-step DSP, 32 FM synthesis channels, 32 MIDI channels, 32 LFO channels^[87]

RAM (random access memory)

Total RAM: 9776 KB (Model 2/2A-CRX), or 18,388 KB (Model 2B/2C-CRX)

• Main RAM: 1152 KB (9 Mbits)^[80] (1024 KB work, 64 KB network, 64 KB serial)
• Video memory: 5984 KB (Model 2/2A-CRX), or 14,596 KB (Model 2B/2C-CRX)
  • Framebuffer VRAM:^[86] 1024 KB (Model 2/2A-CRX), or 1536 KB (Model 2B/2C-CRX)
  • Coprocessor buffer SRAM/SDRAM:^[86] 64 KB (Model 2/2A-CRX), or 8228 KB (Model 2B/2C-CRX)
  • Texture memory: 4096 KB SRAM/SDRAM^[86]
  • Luma: 128 KB (Model 2/2A-CRX), or 64 KB (Model 2B/2C-CRX)
  • Other: 672 KB (32 KB geometry, 576 KB tiles, 64 KB colors)
• Audio memory: 576 KB
• Backup SRAM/NVRAM: 16 KB
• Extra RAM: 2048 KB

Graphical capabilities

• Monitor display resolution: 496 × 384 pixels, 24 kHz horizontal sync, 60 Hz refresh rate, progressive scan (non-interlaced)^[80]
• Texture map resolution: Up to 1024 × 2048 pixels^[80]
  • Microtexture size: Up to 128 × 128 pixels
• Color depth: 16,777,216 (24-bit true color)^[80][88][89]
• Graphical features: Flat shading, texture mapping, perspective correction, texture filtering, texture anti-aliasing, microtexture, diffuse reflection, specular reflection, alpha blending, transparency,^[80] rasterization, mipmapping, level of detail,z-sorting and T&L (transform, clipping, and lighting)^[85]
  • Model 2C-CRX: Gouraud shading, hidden surface, z-buffering,^[85] point sampling, bilinear filtering, trilinear filtering^[89]
• Frame rate: 60 frames/sec^[77]
• Geometric performance:
  • Model 2: 300,000 textured quad polygons/sec^[77] to over 500,000 textured triangle polygons/sec,^[88] 900,000 vectors/sec^[77]
  • Model 2C-CRX: 490,000 textured polygons/sec (with clipping, lighting and Gouraud shading)^[90] to 900,000 textured triangle polygons/sec (with Gouraud shading)^[86]
• Rendering fillrate:
  • Pixel fillrate: 1.2 million pixels/sec (Model 2)^[77] to 120 million pixels/sec (2 million pixels/frame) (Model 2B-CRX/2C-CRX)^[80][82]
  • Texture fillrate: 36 million texels/sec (500 pixels/polygon) (Model 2C-CRX)^[91]

Sega Model 3

The Sega Model 3 is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1996. It was the final culmination of Sega's partnership with Lockheed Martin, using the company's Real3D division to design the graphical hardware. It was first unveiled at the 1996 AOU show.^[92] Upon release, the Model 3 was easily the most powerful arcade system board in existence,^[93] capable of over one million quad polygons per second and over two million triangular polygons per second.^[94] The hardware went through several "steppings," which increased the clock speed of the CPU and the speed of the 3D engine, as well as minor changes to the board architecture. Step 1.0 and Step 1.5 released in 1996,^[94][95] Step 2.0 in 1997,^[96] and Step 2.1 in 1998.^[97]

Well known Model 3 games include Virtua Fighter 3 (1996), Sega Super GT (1996), Harley-Davidson & L.A. Riders (1997), Sega Bass Fishing (1997), Daytona USA 2 (1998), Sega Rally 2 (1998), and The Ocean Hunter (1998), although it is the rarest of them. By 2000, the Sega Model 2 & 3 had sold over 200,000 arcade systems worldwide.^[98]

Model 3 specifications

• Main CPU: IBM-Motorola PowerPC 603e^[93] (32-bit & 64-bit instructions)^[99]
  • Step 1.0: 66 MHz^[94] (93.4 MIPS,^[99] 132 MFLOPS)^[100]
  • Step 1.5: 100 MHz^[95] (142 MIPS,^[99] 200 MFLOPS)^[100]
  • Step 2.0: 166 MHz^[96] (235 MIPS,^[99] 332 MFLOPS)^[100]
• Sound CPU : Motorola 68000 @ 12 MHz (2.1 MIPS)^[2]
• Sound chips: 2× Yamaha SCSP/YMF292-F^[93]
  • PCM audio: 64 voices/channels, 16-bit depth, 44.1 kHz sampling rate (CD quality)^[93][94]
  • Other features: 128-step DSP, 32 FM synthesis channels, 32 MIDI channels, 32 LFO channels,^[87] 4-channel surround sound,^[93] 16.5 MB audio ROM^[94]
• Optional sound board: MPEG Sound Board^[94]
  • Sound CPU: Motorola 68000 or Zilog Z80
  • Sound chip: NEC uD65654GF102
  • Features: MPEG audio compression, stereo output, steam individual mono channels to left and right speakers
• Video board:
  • Step 1.0: Sega 837-11859 MODEL3
  • Step 1.5: Sega 837-12875 MODEL3 STEP 1.5
  • Step 2.0: Sega 837-12716 MODEL3 STEP2
  • Step 2.1: Sega 837-13368 MODEL3 STEP2.1
• GPU: 2× Lockheed Martin Real3D/Pro-1000
  • Texture mapping: Mipmapping, perspective correction,^[93] texture filtering^[94]
  • Anti-aliasing:^[93] Texture anti-aliasing, multi-layered anti-aliasing^[94]
  • Shading: Flat shading, Gouraud shading, high-specular Gouraud shading, micro texture shading,^[93] fix shading^[94]
  • Lighting: Parallel light, pin-point light, 4 light spots,^[93] 4 spot lights^[94]
  • Other special effects: Zoning fog, 32 levels of translucency, clipping, model & texture LOD, fade in/out, 4095 moving models,^[93]
  • Other capabilities: T&L (transform, clipping, and lighting),^[93][101] alpha blending, trilinear filtering, trilinear interpolation,^[102] specular reflection, specular highlight,^[93] z-buffering,^[93] culling
• ALU: Mitsubishi 3D-RAM^[103]
  • Framebuffer resolution: 1280×1024
  • Capabilities: Blending, depth check, stencil & raster operations,^[103] pixel buffer, tiled rendering, z-compare, alpha blending, up to 400 million pixels/sec rendering fillrate^[104]
• Monitor display resolution: 496×384^[94] to 640x480,^[93] progressive scan (non-interlaced)^[93]
  • Refresh rate: 60 Hz, 60 frames per second
• Color depth: ARGB, 24-bit RGB^[105] true color (16,777,216 colors) and alpha opacity
• Geometric performance: 1,000,100 textured quad polygons/sec, 2,000,200 textured triangle polygons/sec,^[94] with all effects (Step 1.0)
• Rendering fillrate: 60 million^[93] to 400 million^[104] pixels/sec, 16 million coloured textures/sec^[93]

RAM: 33,321 KB

• Main RAM: 8192 KB (8 MB)^[94]
• Video RAM: 23,713 KB (8 MB texture memory, 1 MB display list, 4 MB culling, 4 MB polygons, 5 MB framebuffer 3D-RAM, 1152 KB tilemap generator VRAM, 33 KB SRAM cache)
  • 4× Mitsubishi 3D-RAM: 5 MB (4× 1.25 MB) fast framebuffer SD VRAM, 1 KB (4× 256 bytes) pixel buffer SRAM cache^[104][106]
  • 8× Hitachi HM5241605 SDRAM: 4 MB (8× 512 KB)^[107]
  • 16× Mitsubishi M5M4V4169 cache: 8 MB (16× 512 KB) SDRAM, 32 KB (16× 2 KB) SRAM^[108]
• Audio RAM: 1096 KB (64 KB main, 1032 KB SCSP)
• Other RAM: 320 KB (192 KB security, 128 KB backup static NVRAM)

Sega ST-V

ST-V (Sega Titan Video game system) is an arcade system board released by Sega in 1994.^[109] Departing from their usual process of building custom arcade hardware, Sega's ST-V is essentially identical to the Sega Saturn home console system. The only difference is the media: ST-V used ROM cartridges instead of CD-ROMs to store games. Being derived from the Saturn hardware, the ST-V was presumably named after the moon Titan, a satellite of Saturn.

The majority of ST-V titles were released in Japan only, but a notable exception was the port of Dynamite Deka, which became Die Hard Arcade. Games released for the ST-V include Virtua Fighter Remix,^[110] Golden Axe: The Duel and Final Fight Revenge. The shared hardware between Saturn and ST-V allowed for very accurate ports for the Saturn console.

ST-V specifications

• Main CPU processors: 2× Hitachi SH-2 (7604 32-Bit RISC) @ 28.6 MHz, in a master/slave configuration
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit RISC instructions @ 28 MIPS each, 56 MIPS combined^[111]
• DSP coprocessor: Custom Saturn Control Unit (SCU)^[112]
  • Fixed-point arithmetic: Up to 4 parallel instructions
• VDP1: 32-bit Video Display Processor, handles sprite/texture and polygon drawing^[112]
  • Framebuffers: Dual 256 KB framebuffers with rotation & scaling,^[112] three framebuffer sizes (512×256, 512×512, 1024×256)
  • 3D polygon capabilities: Texture mapping, shading, flat shading, Gouraud shading^[112]
    • Polygon rendering performance: 200,000 texture-mapped polygons per second, 500,000 flat-shaded polygons per second^[112]
  • Sprite/Texture capabilities: Rotation & scaling,^[112] flipping, distortion, virtually unlimited color tables, virtually unlimited sprites,^[113] System 24 sprite rendering system^[36]
    • Sprite/Texture memory cache: 512 KB^[112][114]
    • Sprite/Texture size: 8×1 to 512×255 pixels^[115]
    • Colors per sprite/texture: 16, 64, 128, 256, and 32,768^[116]
    • Sprites/Textures per frame: 512 KB sprite/texture memory, 32 bytes per sprite/texture,^[117] 16,384 sprites/textures per frame
    • Sprite/Texture pixels/texels per line: 4096^[36]
    • Sprites/textures per line: 512
  • Other features: Alpha blending, clipping, luminance, shadows, transparency, anti-aliasing^[118]
• VDP2: 32-bit Video Display Processor, handles background and scroll planes^[112]
  • Features: Transparency effects, shadowing, 2 windows for special calculations, 5 simultaneous scrolling backgrounds, 2 simultaneous rotating playfields, background scaling^[112]
  • Tilemap planes: Up to 4 scrolling tilemaps @ 512×512 to 1024×1024 pixels and 2 rotating tilemaps @ 512×256 to 1024×512 pixels, two tile sizes (8×8 and 16×16), column/row/line scrolling
  • Bitmap planes: Up to 2 scrolling bitmaps @ 512×256 to 1024×512 pixels and 1 rotating bitmap @ 512×256 to 512×512 pixels
• Sound CPU: Motorola 68000 @ 11.45456 MHz^[112]
• Sound chip: Yamaha YMF292-F SCSP @ 11.3 MHz^{[87][111][112]}
  • PCM audio: 32 channels, 16-bit depth, 44.1 kHz sampling rate (CD quality)
  • Other features: 128-step DSP, 32 FM synthesis channels, 32 MIDI channels, 32 LFO channels
• Main RAM: 4.04 MB^[112]
  • Main RAM: 2 MB
  • VRAM: 1.54 MB (including dual 256 KB framebuffers, 512 KB texture cache, and 512 KB background VRAM)^[111]
  • Audio RAM: 512 KB^[112]
• Display resolution: 320×224 to 720×576^[112]
• Frame rate: Up to 60 frames per second^[112]
• Colors: 16,777,216 (24-bit true color) on screen,^[112] up to 32,768 (15-bit high color) per sprite/texture, up to 16,777,216 colors per background

Sega NAOMI series

Sega NAOMI

The NAOMI (New Arcade Operation Machine Idea) is the successor to the Sega Model 3. Sega first demonstrated NAOMI publicly at the 1998 Amusement Machine Show (an annual trade show hosted in Tokyo by the Japan Amusement Machinery Manufacturers Association). After the show, Sega released the first NAOMI title to the Japanese market: The House of the Dead 2.

NAOMI uses some of the same electronic components as Sega's Dreamcast home game console: Hitachi SH-4 CPU, PowerVR Series 2 GPU (PVR2DC), and Yamaha AICA Super Intelligent Sound Processor based sound system. However, NAOMI has twice as much system memory, twice as much video memory, and four times as much sound memory.

Multiple NAOMI boards can be clustered to improve graphics performance and to support multiple-monitor output. A special game cabinet for the NAOMI, NAOMI Universal Cabinet, houses up to sixteen boards for this purpose. Multiple-board variants are referred to as NAOMI Multiboard hardware, which debuted in 1999.^[119]

Sega's NAOMI Satellite Terminal Hardware infrastructure enabled developers to make games with multiple control terminals, so several people could sit and play a game that has one large screen. The Satellite Terminal Hardware links up to 10 NAOMI boards.^[120] Multi-terminal systems like this made use of Memory Card Reader and Dispenser (MCRD) technology. Derby Owners Club (2000) and World Club Champion Football (2002) are two applications of these technologies.

Some NAOMI titles read game data from a GD-ROM optical disc, which is also the Dreamcast's software medium. Game data can also be stored in a 168-megabyte bank of solid-state ROM. GD-ROM support requires a specialized DIMM board in addition to the GD-ROM drive. When the NAOMI powers-on, it copies data from the comparatively slow GD-ROM to the faster DIMM memory. Thereafter, the game executes entirely in RAM.

Unlike Sega's previous arcade platforms (and most other arcade platforms in the industry), NAOMI is widely licensed for use by other game publishers. Among the licensees were Nintendo (which only licensed one game, Rhythm Tengoku: HD Remixed Edition), Bandai Namco Games, Capcom, Sammy Corporation, and Tecmo. Some of the games developed by licensees were Mazan, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (Capcom 2000), Rhythm Tengoku (Nintendo 2007), Dead or Alive 2 (Tecmo 1999) and Guilty Gear XX (Sammy 2002). Sammy developed a derivative platform, the Atomiswave, which has interchangeable game cartridges.

The last NAOMI titles were released in 2008: Sega's Melty Blood: Actress Again and Subtle Style's Akatsuki Blitzkampf Ausf. Achse.

NAOMI specifications

• CPU: Hitachi SH-4 @ 200 MHz
  • Features: 32-bit SIMD @ 200 MHz, floating-point unit, graphic functions
  • Performance: 360 MIPS and 1.4 GFLOPS
• GPU: NEC-VideoLogic PowerVR 2 (PVR2DC/CLX2) @ 100 MHz^[121]
  • Texture mapping: Bump mapping, mipmapping,^[122] environment mapping, texture compression,^[123] multi-texturing,^[124] perspective correction^[121]
  • Filtering: Point filtering,^[121] bilinear filtering,^[123] trilinear filtering, anisotropic filtering^[121]
  • Anti-aliasing: Super-sampling anti-aliasing (SSAA),^[121] full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA)^[124]
  • Alpha blending: 256 levels of transparency,^[121] multi-pass blending,^[124] translucency sorting^[124]
  • Shading: Perspective-correct ARGB Gouraud shading,^[124] shadows^[121]
  • Rendering: ROP (render output unit), tiled rendering, 32-bit floating-point Z-buffering, 32-bit floating-point hidden surface removal,^[124] 256 fog effects,^[121] per-pixel table fog^[124]
  • Other capabilities: Quad polygons, triangle polygons, GMV (general modifier volumes)^[121]
• Sound engine: Yamaha AICA Super Intelligent Sound Processor @ 45 MHz^[123]
  • Internal CPU: 32-bit ARM7 RISC CPU @ 45 MHz
  • CPU performance: 40 MIPS^[111]
  • PCM/ADPCM: 16-bit depth, 48 kHz sampling rate (DVD quality), 64 channels^[121]
  • Other features: DSP, sound synthesizer
• Operating system: Windows CE^[121] (with DirectX 6.0, Direct3D, and OpenGL)
• RAM: 56 MB (64 MB with GD-ROM)
  • Main RAM: 32 MB
  • VRAM: 16 MB^[122] (unified framebuffer and texture memory)^[124]
  • Sound memory: 8 MB
  • DIMM: 8 MB DRAM (GD-ROM variants only)
• Storage media:
  • ROM board: Up to 172 MB
  • Disc storage: GD-ROM (1 GB) drive @ 12× speed^[121]
• Display resolution: VGA,^[125] 320×240 to 800×608 pixels,^[126] progressive scan
• Color depth: 32-bit^[124] ARGB,^[121] 16,777,216 colors (24-bit color)^[122] with 8-bit (256 levels) alpha blending,^[121][124] YUV and RGB color spaces, color key overlay^[124]
• Polygon performance: 7 million textured polygons/sec (with shadows,^[127] lighting^[123] and trilinear filtering^[128]) to 10 million polygons/sec (with lighting)^[123][129]
• Rendering fillrate: 500 million pixels/sec^[130] (with transparent polygons) to over 3.2 billion pixels/sec (with opaque polygons)^[123]
• Texture fillrate: 100 million texels/sec (up to 1.6 billion texels/sec in Multiboard)

NAOMI Multiboard specifications

Sega NAOMI Multiboard included the following upgrades in 1999:^[119]

• CPU: 2× to 16× Hitachi SH-4 @ 200 MHz
  • Performance: 720 to 5760 MIPS, 2.8 to 22.4 GFLOPS
• GPU: 2× to 16× NEC-VideoLogic PowerVR 2 (PVR2DC/CLX2) @ 100 MHz
• Sound engine: 2× to 16× Yamaha AICA Super Intelligent Sound Processor @ 45 MHz
  • Internal CPU: 2× to 16× 32-bit ARM7 RISC CPU @ 45 MHz
  • CPU performance: 80 to 640 MIPS
  • PCM/ADPCM: 128 to 1024 channels
• RAM: 112 to 896 MB (128 to 1024 MB with GD-ROM)
  • Main RAM: 64 to 512 MB
  • VRAM: 32 to 256 MB
  • Sound memory: 16 to 128 MB
• Storage media:
  • ROM boards: 344 to 2752 MB
  • Disc storage: 2 to 16 GD-ROM drives
• Display resolution: 3-monitor widescreen VGA,^[119] 960×240 to 2400×608 pixels, progressive scan
• Polygon performance: 14 to 112 million textured polygons/sec (with lighting and trilinear filtering), or 20 to 160 million polygons/sec
• Rendering fillrate: 1 to 8 billion pixels/sec (with transparent polygons), 6.4 to 51.2 billion pixels/sec (with opaque polygons)
• Texture fillrate: 200 million to 1.6 billion texels/sec

Sega Hikaru

An evolution of the NAOMI hardware with superior graphics capabilities, the Hikaru was used for a handful of deluxe dedicated-cabinet games, beginning with 1999's Brave Fire Fighters, in which the flame and water effects were largely a showpiece for the hardware. The Hikaru hardware was the first arcade platform capable of effective Phong shading.

According to Sega in 1999: "Brave Firefighters utilizes a slightly modified Naomi Hardware system called Hikaru. Hikaru incorporates a custom Sega graphics chip and possesses larger memory capacity than standard Naomi systems. "These modifications were necessary because in Brave Firefighters, our engineers were faced with the daunting challenge of creating 3d images of flames and sprayed water," stated Sega's Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Barbara Joyiens. "If you stop and think about it, both have an almost infinite number of shapes, sizes, colors, levels of opaqueness, shadings and shadows. And, when you combine the two by simulating the spraying of water on a flame, you create an entirely different set of challenges for our game designers and engineers to overcome; challenges that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to overcome utilizing existing 3D computers. Hikaru has the horsepower to handle these demanding graphic challenges with clarity, depth and precision."^[131] In addition, the Hikaru also uses two Hitachi SH-4 CPU's, two Yamaha AICA sound engines,^[132] a Motorola 68000 network CPU, and two PowerVR2 GPU's.^[133]

Since it was comparatively expensive to produce, and most games did not necessarily need Hikaru's extended graphics capabilities, Sega soon abandoned the system in favor of continued NAOMI and NAOMI 2 development.

Hikaru specifications

• Main CPU: 2× Hitachi SH-4 @ 200 MHz^[132]
  • Features: 2× 128-bit SIMD @ 200 MHz, 2× floating-point units, graphic functions
  • Performance: 720 MIPS and 2.8 GFLOPS
• Network CPU: Motorola 68000
• Sound engine: 2× Yamaha AICA Super Intelligent Sound Processor @ 45 MHz^[132]
  • Internal CPU: 2× 32-bit ARM7 RISC CPU @ 45 MHz
  • CPU performance: 34 MIPS (2× 17 MIPS)^[123]
  • PCM/ADPCM: 16-bit depth, 48 kHz sampling rate (DVD quality),^[121] 128 channels^[132]
  • Other features: DSP, sound synthesizer
• GPU: 2× NEC-VideoLogic PowerVR 2 (PVR2DC/CLX2) @ 100 MHz^[121]
  • Texture mapping: Bump mapping, mipmapping,^[122] environment mapping, texture compression,^[123] multi-texturing,^[124] perspective correction^[121]
  • Filtering: Point filtering,^[121] bilinear filtering,^[123] trilinear filtering, anisotropic filtering^[121]
  • Anti-aliasing: Super-sampling anti-aliasing (SSAA),^[121] full-scene anti-aliasing (FSAA)^[124]
  • Alpha blending: 256 levels of transparency,^[121] multi-pass blending,^[124] translucency sorting^[124]
  • Shading: Perspective-correct ARGB Gouraud shading,^[124] shadows^[121]
  • Rendering: ROP (render output unit), tiled rendering, 32-bit floating-point Z-buffering, 32-bit floating-point hidden surface removal,^[124] 256 fog effects,^[121] per-pixel table fog^[124]
  • Other capabilities: Quad polygons, triangle polygons, GMV (general modifier volumes)^[121]
• T&L Graphics Engine: Sega Custom 3D^[131][132]
  • Lighting: Horizontal, spot, 1024 lights per scene, 4 lights per polygon, 8 window surfaces^[132]
  • Shading: Phong shading, shadow^[132]
  • Rendering: Fog, depth queueing
  • Other effects: Stencil, motion blur,^[132] particle effects, fire effects, water effects^[131]
  • Other capabilities: 2 bitmap layers, calendar
• Operating system: Windows CE^[121] (with DirectX 6.0, Direct3D, and OpenGL)
• RAM: 100 MB
  • Main RAM: 64 MB^[132]
  • VRAM: 28 MB^[132]
  • Sound SDRAM: 8 MB^[132]
  • Network SRAM: 32 KB
• Storage media: ROM Board, up 352 MB
• Color depth: 32-bit^[124] ARGB,^[121] 16,777,216 colors (24-bit color)^[122] with 8-bit (256 levels) alpha blending,^[121][124] YUV and RGB color spaces, color key overlay^[124]
• Display resolution: 31 kHz horizontal sync,^[132] 60 Hz refresh rate, VGA,^[125] progressive scan
  • Single monitor: 496×384^[132] to 800×608 pixels^[126]
  • Dual monitor:^[132] 992×768 to 1600×608 pixels
• Polygon performance:
  • With Phong shading, 4 lights per polygon, shadows, trilinear filtering, motion blur and all other effects: 4 million textured polygons/sec (2 million per GPU^[132])
  • With lighting, shadows, and trilinear filtering: 14 million textured polygons/sec (7 million per GPU^[127])
  • With lighting: 20 million polygons/sec (10 million per CPU/GPU^[123][129])
• Fillrate:
  • Rendering: 1 billion pixels/sec (with transparent polygons) to over 6.4 billion pixels/sec (with opaque polygons)
  • Textures: 200 million texels/sec
• Extensions: communication, 4-channel surround audio, PCI, MIDI, RS-232C
• Connection: JAMMA Video compliant

Sega NAOMI 2

In 2000, Sega debuted the NAOMI 2 arcade system board at JAMMA, an upgrade and a sequel of the original NAOMI with better graphics capability.

NAOMI 2's graphics-assembly contains two PowerVR CLX2 GPUs, a PowerVR Elan chip for geometry transformation and lighting effects, and 2X the graphics memory for each CLX2 chip. (Each CLX2 has its own 32MB bank, as the CLX2s cannot share graphics RAM). Due to architectural similarities and a "bypass" feature in the Elan device, the NAOMI 2 is also able to play NAOMI games (except for The House of the Dead 2) without modification.^{[134][135][136]}

With the NAOMI 2, Sega brought back the GD-ROM drive. For both NAOMI and NAOMI 2, the GD-ROM setup was offered as an optional combination of daughterboard expansion known as the DIMM Board, and the GD-ROM drive itself. The DIMM board contained enough RAM to allow an entire game to be loaded into memory at start up, allowing the drive to shut down after the game has loaded. This heavily reduces load times during the game, and saves on drive wear and tear.

Triforce

The Triforce is an arcade system board developed jointly by Namco, Sega, and Nintendo, with the first games appearing in 2002. The name "Triforce" is a reference to Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series of games, and symbolized the three companies' involvement in the project. The system hardware is based on the Nintendo GameCube with several differences, like provisions for add-ons such as Sega's GD-ROM system and upgradeable RAM modules. The Triforce was initially believed to have twice as much 1T-SRAM as the Nintendo GameCube (48MB instead of 24MB), but this was disproven by a teardown analysis of a Triforce board.^[137]

A few versions of the Triforce exist. The first two are the Type-1 and Type-3 units, the former using an external DIMM board (same as used on the Naomi and Naomi 2) while the latter integrates this component inside the metal casing. A custom Namco version exists which only accepts custom NAND Flash based cartridges, which has a different Media board and supposedly different baseboard.^[138] These boards use the same metal case design as the Type-3 Triforce.

Since 2012, amateur applications have been released for the Nintendo Wii that enable this GameCube-derived console to run Mario Kart Arcade GP, Mario Kart Arcade GP 2, F-Zero AX and Virtua Striker 4 Ver.2006. Triforce can be emulated in software by Dolphin.

Triforce specifications

• Main CPU: IBM PowerPC "Gekko" @ 486 MHz
• Graphics: Custom ATI/Nintendo "Flipper" @ 162 MHz.
• Color: 24-bit color (24-bit z-buffer)
• Hardware features: Fog, subpixel anti-aliasing, 8 hardware lights, alpha blending, virtual texture design, multi-texturing, bump mapping, environment mapping, mipmapping, bilinear filtering, trilinear filtering, anisotropic filtering, real-time hardware texture decompression (S3TC), real-time decompression of display list, embedded framebuffer, 1 MB embedded texture cache, 3-line deflickering filter.
• Sound DSP: Custom Macronix 16-bit DSP @ 81 MHz
• Main RAM: Main memory 24 MB of MoSys 1T-SRAM, approximately 10 ns sustainable latency.^[139][140]

Sega Chihiro

The Sega Chihiro system is a Sega arcade system board based on the architecture of the Xbox. The 733 MHz Intel Pentium III CPU and the Nvidia XChip graphics processor are common to both, but the Chihiro has a different MCPX chip with unique bootloader keys. The main system memory, at 128 MB, is twice that of a retail Xbox. In addition to this memory, the Chihiro also has additional RAM used for media storage - this was initially 512 MB but is upgradable to 1 GB. When the system is booted, the required files are copied from the GD-ROM to the RAM on the media board.

Because the Chihiro and Xbox share the same hardware architecture, porting from the Chihiro is theoretically easier than porting from a different arcade platform. In practice, there are a number of challenges - the first being that the half-size main memory restricts the size of your working set and the second being that fetching assets from Xbox DVD drive is orders of magnitude slower than fetching them from the 512MB/1GB of RAM on the media board. These challenges are not insurmountable, though - for example, the Xbox release of OutRun 2 was able to retain the look and feel of the original arcade version.

Chihiro specifications

• CPU: Pentium III @ 733 MHz, 133 MHz FSB
• System RAM: 128 MB soldered on main PCB
• Media RAM: 512 MB upgradable to 1 GB (DIMM on Media board)
• GPU: Nvidia XChip @ 200 MHz, (derived from GeForce 3), featuring programmable pixel and vertex shaders, hardware T&L, Quincunx FSAA, anisotropic filtering, bump mapping
• Sound: Cirrus Logic CS4630 Stream Processor, Nvidia nForce with 5.1 Dolby Digital decoding
• Media: GD-ROM, CF^[141]

Sega Lindbergh

The Sega Lindbergh arcade system board is an embedded PC running MontaVista Linux (The Lindbergh Blue system used Windows Embedded instead). Sega had initially planned to use Microsoft's Xbox 360 as the basis for the arcade board, but instead opted for an architecture based on standard PC hardware.

According to Sega-AM2 president Hiroshi Kataoka, porting Lindbergh titles (such as Virtua Fighter 5) to Sony's PlayStation 3 is generally easier than porting to Xbox 360, because the Lindbergh and PS3 use a GPU designed by the same company, Nvidia.^[142]

Lindbergh specifications

• CPU: Pentium 4 HT 3.0E (3.0 GHz, 1 MB L2 Cache, Hyper-Threading, 800 MHz FSB)
• RAM: 184-pin DDR SDRAM PC3200 (400 MHz) 512 MB × 2 (Dual)
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce 6800 AGP (NV40), 256 Bit GDDR3 256 MB, compatible with Vertex Shader 3.0 & Pixel Shader 3.0
• Sound: 64 channel, 5.1 ch S/PDIF
• LAN: On board, 10/100/1000 BASE-TX. JVS I/O Connector
• Serial: 2 Channel (can switch one channel between 232C and 422)
• Other: USB port × 4, high-definition output (DVI and VGA out), S-Video out, DVD Drive Support, Sega ALL.NET online support
• Operating System: MontaVista Linux^[143]
• Protection : High spec original security module.

The Sega Lindbergh standard universal sit-down cabinet uses a 1360 × 768 WXGA LCD display.

Aside from the standard Lindbergh system (Lindbergh Yellow), Sega developed a Lindbergh Red which includes the GeForce 7600gs and Lindbergh Blue system, which have different specifications. Some late Lindbergh Yellow games used a GeForce 7800 which the operator would need to install into the system replacing the original GeForce 6 series card.

The Lindbergh has been superseded by the Ring series (RingEdge and RingWide), so there will be no new arcade games developed for this system. The last game to run on Lindbergh was MJ4 Evolution.^[144]

Sega Europa-R

The Sega Europa-R is an arcade system board developed by Sega Amusements Europe.

Sega chose a PC-based design for this arcade board. This arcade board currently only runs two games, Sega Rally 3 and Race Driver: GRID (Stylized as simply GRID).

Europa-R specifications

• CPU: Intel Pentium D 945 (3.4 GHz, dual-core)
• RAM: 8 GB (2× 4 GB modules)
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce 8800
• Other: Compatible HDTV (High Definition), DVD drive support, Sega ALL.NET online support
• Protection: High spec original security module.

Sega Ring series

The Ring series of arcade machines are also based on PC architecture. Initially announced models include RingEdge and RingWide. The 2 pieces of hardware have Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009 as their operating system, mainly so other third-party companies would find it easier to produce games for the system.

RingEdge

The RingEdge is the main console of the Ring Series. It has better graphics and larger storage than the RingWide. It sports a better graphics card than the Lindbergh system, allowing for a higher performance graphically, all while costing less to produce. The use of an Intel Pentium Dual-Core (1.8 GHz per core) processor delivers better performance than Lindbergh's Pentium 4 (3.0 GHz) processor. A solid-state drive greatly reduces wear-and-tear due to a lack of moving parts, and also has much higher transfer rates than a hard disk drive, leading to better performance and loading times. The Ringedge also supports 3D game capability.

RingEdge specifications

• CPU: Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160 (1.8 GHz)
• RAM: 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-6400)
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce 8800GS with 384 MB GDDR3 SDRAM (Shader Model 4.0)
• Output: 2 DVI ports
• Storage: 32 GB SSD
• Networking: Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T)
• OS: Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009
• Sound: 5.1 channel HD Audio
• Other: 3 USB ports, Sega ALL.NET online support

RingWide

The RingWide is more basic than the RingEdge, and only has 8 GB (CompactFlash) of storage, while RingEdge has a four times larger storage (because of the use of the RAM Drive and SSD). The RingWide will be used to run games that are less graphics-intensive and that require less high-end specifications in order to cut down costs. Sega also appears poised to be designing a streaming hybrid for use with household TVs, similar to OnLive from the system's hardware as evident from this patent issued by them on November 17, 2009.^[145]

RingWide specifications

• CPU: Intel Celeron 440 (2.0 GHz)
• RAM: 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300)
• GPU: ATI Radeon HD 2xxx with 128 MB GDDR3 SDRAM (Shader Model 4.0)
• Output: 1 DVI port
• Storage: 8 GB CompactFlash
• Networking: Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T)
• OS: Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard 2009
• Other: 2 USB ports, 5.1 channel HD Audio, Sega ALL.NET online

RingEdge 2

The successor to RingEdge, RingEdge 2 unlike Sega's Naomi 2, is not designed to be a more powerful version of the original RingEdge board, it is simply a redesign based on newer hardware since the hardware of the original RingEdge board was going end of life. Games designed for the original RingEdge as well as the RingEdge 2 are completely interchangeable however they might have slightly better frame rates on the newer RingEdge 2 board due to some better specifications in some cases.

RingEdge 2 specifications

• CPU: Intel Core i3 540 3.07 GHz
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GT 545 GDDR5 with 1 GB GDDR5 memory (Direct3D 11.1/OpenGL 4.3)
• RAM: 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM (PC3-12800)
• Sound: 5.1 channel HD Audio
• Output: DVI-I, DVI-D, twin display output
• Connectors: JVS I/O connector, 4 channel serial port, 4× USB 3.0, 2× CAN bus
• Networking: Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T)
• Storage: 32 GB TDK GBDISK RS3 SSD
• OS: Windows Embedded Standard 2012 (Windows 7)
• Media: DVD or USB storage, network delivery (Sega ALL.NET)

Sega Nu

Releasing in November 2013. Nu is based on a mid-range PC running Windows Embedded 8.

Nu specifications

• CPU: Intel Core i3-3220 3.30 GHz
• RAM: 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM (PC3-12800)
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti with 1 GB GDDR5 memory (Direct3D 11.1/OpenGL 4.3)
• Sound: 5.1 channel HD Audio
• Output: VGC-P, UTT-P, twin display output
• Connectors: JVS I/O connector, 4 channel serial port, 4× USB 3.0, 2× CAN bus
• Networking: Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T)
• Storage: SATA SSD 64 GB, HDD 500 GB
• OS: Microsoft Windows Embedded 8 Standard
• Media: Blu-ray or USB 3.0 storage, network delivery (Sega ALL.NET)

Technical details

The "suicide battery" (System 18, System 16 and others) generally refers to an arrangement by which encryption keys or other vital data are stored in SRAM powered by a battery. When the battery dies, the PCB is rendered permanently inoperable, in the sense that there is no way to reprogram the RAM from within the PCB itself — hence the term "suicide". This can be considered a form of planned obsolescence, as the PCB is rendered useless, and the owner will have to buy a new PCB or arcade machine.

See also

• List of Sega arcade video games
• List of Sega video game franchises
• R-360
• List of game engines

References

External links

• Phantom's Arcade World
• Sega list @ PCBdB*