Namco System 22

The Namco System 22 is the successor to the Namco System 21 arcade system board. It debuted in with Sim Drive in Japan, followed by a worldwide debut in  with Ridge Racer.

Overview
The System 22 was designed by Namco with assistance from graphics & simulation company Evans & Sutherland. While the System 21 hardware design had the main CPU provide a scene description to a bank of DSP chips which perform all necessary 3D calculations, much of the graphics in the System 22 is now handled by the Evans & Sutherland 'TR3' (Texture Mapping, Real-Time, Real-Visual, Rendering System) GPU chipset.

It was the first arcade system board to feature texture mapping, and it could handle Gouraud shading, transparency effects, and depth cueing, as well as anti-aliasing.

According to Namco America, the twin seat Ridge Racer arcade unit sold to distribution for $11995.00 in 1993, equivalent to $ in 2024. In Europe, the Ridge Racer Full Scale deluxe unit cost £150000 for arcade operators upon release, equivalent to £ or $ in 2024.

A variant of the system, called the Super System 22, was released in 1995. The hardware was largely similar to the System 22, but with a higher polygon rate and more special effects possible. Both were contemporaneous with rival Sega's Model 1 and Model 2 arcade boards.

Both the System 22 and Super System 22 can render significantly better graphics, more polygons with sharper texture-mapping, running in higher resolution and at a higher frame rate, compared to the graphics capabilities of the original Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 video game systems, but much less than what the Dreamcast can produce.

System 22 Specifications

 * Board composition: Motherboard, CPU board, DSP board, MROM board, Flash ROM board, Video board
 * Main CPU: Motorola 68020 @ 24.576 MHz
 * Fixed-point arithmetic: 32-bit instructions @ 7.6 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second)
 * Floating-point performance: 0.19 MFLOPS (Million Floating-point Operations Per Second)
 * + Custom Namco chips

Graphics

 * 2D GPU: Namco Custom Video chipset (C300, C304, C305 Palette, C335)
 * Display resolution: 640x480 pixels, 59.9042 Hz refresh rate, progressive scan
 * Color depth: 16,777,216 colors (24-bit true color)
 * 2D layers: Sprite layer with zooming, tilemap layer, character text layer
 * 3D GPU: Evans & Sutherland TR3 (Texture Mapping, Real-Time, Real-Visual, Rendering System)
 * Performance: 400 MFLOPS
 * 3D capabilities: Texture mapping, Gouraud shading, translucency effects, depth-cueing, fog effects, tiled rendering, T&amp;L (transform, clipping, lighting), Z-buffering, anti-aliasing, translucency effects, high-resolution textures
 * 3D DSP: 2× Texas Instruments TMS32025 @ 49.152 MHz (exact number of DSPs may vary)
 * Fixed-point arithmetic: 16-bit & 32-bit instructions @ 49.152 MIPS (24.576 MIPS per DSP, 0.5 MIPS per MHz )
 * Floating-point arithmetic: 16-bit & 32-bit operations @ 504,103 FLOPS (252,051.5 FLOPS per DSP, 5128 FLOPS per MHz )
 * Note: Exact number of DSP processors may vary
 * Geometric performance: More than 240,000 quad polygons per second (with texture mapping and Gouraud shading) (higher with Super System 22)

Sound

 * Sound CPU:
 * System 22: 2× Namco C74 (16-bit Mitsubishi M37702) @ 16.4 MHz
 * Super System 22: Mitsubishi M37710 @ 16.4 MHz
 * Sound chip: Namco C352 @ 16.4 MHz
 * Capabilities: 32 channels, 42 kHz sampling rate, 8-bit linear PCM, 8-bit muLaw PCM
 * Audio output: Stereo (standard), 4-channel Bose surround (deluxe)

Super System 22 Specifications
The Namco Super System 22, released in, includes the following upgrades:


 * 3D capabilities: More special effects
 * Geometric performance: More than 240,000 quad polygons per second (with texture mapping and Gouraud shading)
 * 2D sprite layer: Zooming & rotation
 * Sound CPU: Mitsubishi M37710 (16-bit MCU) @ 16.384 MHz

List of System 22 Games

 * Sim Drive (1992, limited release)
 * Ridge Racer (1993)
 * Ace Driver (1994)
 * Ridge Racer 2 (1994)
 * Cyber Commando (1995)
 * Rave Racer (1995)
 * Ace Driver: Victory Lap (1996)

List of Super System 22 Games

 * Air Combat 22 (1995)
 * Alpine Racer (1995)
 * Cyber Cycles (1995)
 * Dirt Dash (1995)
 * Time Crisis (1995)
 * Alpine Racer 2 (1996)
 * Alpine Surfer (1996)
 * Aqua Jet (1996)
 * Prop Cycle (1996)
 * Tokyo Wars (1996)
 * Armadillo Racing (1997)
 * Downhill Bikers (1997)