CP System

The CP System (CPシステム) or CPS-1 is an arcade system board developed by Capcom which was first used by the game Forgotten Worlds. The first three games in Capcom's Street Fighter II series, The World Warrior, Champion Edition, and Turbo: Hyper Fighting, all ran on this board. More than two dozen arcade titles were released for CPS-1, before Capcom shifted game development over to its successor, the CPS-2.

Technical specifications

 * CPU:
 * Primary: Motorola 68000 @ 10–12 MHz (16/32-bit CISC instructions @ 1.75–2.1 MIPS )
 * Secondary: Zilog Z80 (8/16-bit) @ 3.579 MHz (8/16-bit instructions @ 0.52 MIPS )


 * Sound chips:
 * Yamaha YM2151 @ 3.579545 MHz: 8 FM synthesis channels
 * Oki MSM6295 @ 7.576 MHz: Stereo, 4 ADPCM channels, 4-bit ADPCM (8-bit PCM) depth, 32 kHz sampling rate


 * GPU chipset: Capcom CPS-A & CPS-B @ 16 MHz


 * Display:
 * Monitor: Raster, progressive scan, rotation support
 * Resolution:
 * Horizontal orientation: 384×224 (active), 512×256 to 518×259 pixels (overscan)
 * Vertical orientation: 224×384 (active), 256×512 to 259×518 pixels (overscan)
 * Refresh rate: 59.6 Hz, 59.61 Hz, 59.6294 Hz
 * Color depth: 12-bit RGB with 4-bit brightness value
 * Color palette available: 65,536 (4096 unique with 16 brightness levels each)
 * On-screen colors: 3072 (192 global palettes with 16 colors each) to 4096


 * Sprites:
 * Simultaneously displayable: 256 (per scanline)
 * Sprite size: 16×16 to 256×256
 * Colors per sprite: 16 (15 unique + 1 transparent)
 * Sprite capabilities: Vertical & horizontal flipping, sprite buffering, double buffering
 * Sprite texels: 16 MHz video clock cycles, 268,324 (59.6294 Hz) to 268,456 (59.6 Hz) pixels per frame, 1036 to 1048 sprite texels per scanline


 * Background planes:
 * Tilemaps: 3 tile layers
 * Tilemap sizes: 512×512, 1024×1024, 2048×2048
 * Tile sizes: 8×8, 16×16, 32×32
 * Colors per tile: 16 (15 unique + 1 transparent)
 * Tilemap capabilities: Scrolling, line & row scrolling, parallax scrolling
 * Bitmaps: 2 starfield layers
 * Bitmap capabilities: Scrolling, parallax scrolling


 * RAM: 466 KB (64 KB main, 384 KB video, 16 KB cache, 2 KB sound)
 * 68000: 64 KB work RAM + 192 KB VRAM (shadow)
 * PPU: 192 KB VRAM + 16 KB cache RAM
 * Z80: 2 KB work RAM

History
After a number of arcade game boards designed to run only one game, Capcom embarked upon a project to produce a system board that could be used to run multiple games, in order to reduce hardware costs and make the system more appealing to arcade operators.

The system was plagued by many bootleg versions of its games. In particular, there were so many bootleg versions of Street Fighter II, that they were more common in some countries than the official version. This problem was virtually eliminated by Capcom in the later CP System II.

The CP System hardware was also utilized in Capcom's unsuccessful attempt at home console market penetration, the CPS Changer (Capcom's answer to the Neo Geo AES).

CP System Dash
A year before releasing the CP System II, Capcom released an enhanced version of the original CP System dubbed the CP System Dash, which released in December and had some features that would later be used in the CP System II, such as the Q-Sound chips.

The CP System Dash boards have four interlocking PCBs and are contained in gray plastic boxes. To combat piracy, "suicide batteries" were implemented, which power the volatile RAM which contained the ROM decryption tables. If the batteries' voltage should drop below +2V, or if an attempt was made to dump the encryption codes, the decryption algorithms stored in RAM would be lost, and the CPU would no longer have valid code to execute, rendering the game inoperable, and necessitating the operator sending the board to Capcom to be fixed, at his own expense. Unlike the CP System II, CP System Dash sound ROMs were encrypted using "Kabuki" Z80s.

Technical specifications

 * Input:
 * 8-way arcade joystick
 * 3 to 6 buttons
 * CPU:
 * Main CPU: 68000 @ 10 MHz
 * Sound CPU: "Kabuki" Z80 @ 8 MHz
 * Sound chip: Q-Sound @ 4 MHz
 * Display:
 * Raster
 * Horizontal orientation
 * 384×224 resolution
 * 60 Hz refresh rate
 * 3072-4096 out of 65,536 colors

Capcom Power System Changer
A home version of the CP System, the Capcom Power System Changer was released in 1994. Capcom released the CPS Changer as an attempt to sell their arcade games in a home-friendly format. The CPS Changer adapter was basically an encased SuperGun (Television JAMMA adapter), and was compatible with most JAMMA standard PCBs. Capcom's "protection" against people using the CPS Changer on other arcade boards was the physical shape of the device. On a normal JAMMA PCB it would not attach firmly and tended to lean at odd angles, but it would work. The CPS Changer has outputs for composite video, S-video and line-level mono audio.

The CPS Changer featured an adapter that allowed the user to plug in the "CPS Fighter", a joystick controller Capcom originally released for the Super Famicom (and later the Mega Drive) when they released the Super Famicom version of Street Fighter II in.

All of the CPS Changer games were based on the CPS arcade hardware. The CPS Changer games were simply arcade PCBs in a special plastic shell suitable for home use. This concept was later re-used in the CP System II hardware. Some CPS1 games were changed slightly for home release, sometimes including debugging features or other easter eggs.

The CPS Changer was sold as a package deal of the console itself, one CPS Fighter joystick controller, and the Street Fighter II &prime; (Dash) Turbo game for 39,800 yen. Additional games were sold for about 20,000 yen.

The final game for the CPS Changer was a back-ported version of Street Fighter Zero. Originally released on the CP System II hardware, this special CPS Changer version, released at a premium 35,000 yen, was degraded slightly for the older hardware: it had fewer frames of animation for the game characters, fewer onscreen colors, and the sound and music effects were sampled at a lower rate.