CP System II
The CP System II or CPS-2 is an arcade system board that Capcom first used in 1993 for Super Street Fighter II. It was the successor to their previous CP System and Capcom Power System Changer arcade hardware and was succeeded by the CP System III hardware in 1996, of which the CPS-2 would outlive by over four years. The arcade system had new releases for it until the end of 2003, ending with Hyper Street Fighter II.
History
The earlier Capcom system board, the original CP System, while successful, was very vulnerable to bootleggers making unauthorized copies of the games. In order to rectify the situation, Capcom took the CP System hardware with minimal changes and employed encryption on the program ROMs to prevent software piracy. Due to the encryption, the system was never bootlegged until unencrypted program data became available.The CP System II consists of two separate parts; the A board, which connects to the JAMMA harness and contains components common between all CP System II games, and the B board, which contains the game itself. The relationship between the A and B board is basically the same as that between a home video game console and cartridge. CP System II A and B boards are color-coded by region, and each board can only be used with its same-colored mate. The exception to this is that the blue and green boards can be used together.
The B boards hold battery-backed memory containing decryption keys needed for the games to run. As time passes, these batteries lose their charge and the games stop functioning, because the CPU cannot execute any code without the decryption keys. This is known to hobbyists as the "suicide battery". It is possible to bypass the original battery and swap it out with a new one in-circuit, but this must be done before the original falls below 2V or the keys will be lost.
Consequently, the board would just die anyway, meaning even if used legally it would not play after a finite amount of time.
Due to the heavy encryption, it was believed for a long time that CP System II emulation was next to impossible. However, in January 2001, the CPS-2 Shock group was able to obtain unencrypted program data by hacking into the hardware, which they distributed as XOR difference tables to produce the unencrypted data from the original ROM images, making emulation possible, as well as restoring cartridges that had been erased because of the suicide system.
In January 2007, the encryption method was fully reverse-engineered by and Nicola Salmoria. It has been determined that the encryption employs two four-round Feistel ciphers with a 64-bit key. The algorithm was thereafter implemented in this state for all known CPS-2 games in MAME.
In April 2016, Eduardo Cruz, Artemio Urbina and Ian Court announced the successful reverse engineering of Capcom's CP System 2 security programming, enabling the clean "de-suicide" and restoration of any dead games without hardware modifications.
Region colors
| Region | Case | Version screen |
| Japan | Green plastic | White text |
| U.S.A. | Blue plastic | Red text |
| Euro/Etc./World | Blue plastic | Blue text |
| Asia | Grey plastic | Yellow text |
| Hispanic | Orange plastic | Green text |
| Brazil | Orange plastic | Magenta text |
| Oceania | Blue plastic | Orange text |
| Rental | Yellow plastic | |
| Black metal "all-in-one" |
Technical specifications
- CPU:
- *Primary: Capcom DL-1525 @ 16 MHz
- *Sound: Kabuki DL-030P or standard Z80 @ 8 MHz
- Capcom custom chipset:
- *GPU: CPS-A & CPS-B Graphics Processors @ 16 MHz
- *Sound chip: Lucent DL-1425 Q1 QSound DSP16A Processor @ 4 MHz
- *DRAM Refresh Controller: DL-2227
- *I/O Controller: DL-1123
- Display:
- *Active resolution: 384×224 pixels
- *Overscan resolution: 512×262
- *Sprites: 900 on screen
- Colors:
- *Depth: 32-bit
- *Palette: 16,777,216 colors
- *Alpha transparency: 256 levels
- *Colors on screen: 4096
- *Colors per tile: 16
- RAM: 1328 KB
- *A-Board: 1 MB FPM DRAM, 280 KB SRAM
- *B-Board: 16 KB SRAM
- *Communication Board: 8 KB SRAM
- Maximum ROM capacity: 322 Mbit
- Dimensions : 40 x 27 x 8 cm
List of games
| English title | Release date | Developer | Japanese title | Genre |
| Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers Super Street Fighter II: Tournament Battle | 1993-09-10 | Capcom | Super Street Fighter II | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Eco Fighters | 1993-12-03 | Capcom | Ultimate Ecology | Shoot 'em up |
| ' | 1994-01-13 | Capcom | Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom | Beat 'em up |
| Super Street Fighter II Turbo | 1994-02-23 | Capcom | Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Alien vs. Predator | 1994-05-20 | Capcom | Alien VS Predator | Beat 'em up |
| ' | 1994-07-05 | Capcom | Vampire: The Night Warriors | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Ring of Destruction: Slammasters II | 1994-08-08 | Capcom | Super Muscle Bomber: The International Blowout | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Armored Warriors | 1994-09-16 | Capcom | Powered Gear: Strategic Variant Armor Equipment | Beat 'em up |
| ' | 1994-12-08 | Capcom | X-Men: Children of the Atom | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| ' | 1995-03-02 | Capcom | Vampire Hunter: Darkstalkers' Revenge | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| ' | 1995-04-20 | Capcom | Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Street Fighter Alpha | 1995-06-05 | Capcom | Street Fighter Zero | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| ' | 1995-09-22 | Capcom | Rockman: The Power Battle | Platformer |
| Marvel Super Heroes | 1995-10-24 | Capcom | Marvel Super Heroes | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| ' | 1995-12-07 | Capcom | 19XX The War Against Destiny | Shoot 'em up |
| ' | 1996-02-06 | Capcom | Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara | Beat 'em up |
| Street Fighter Alpha 2 | 1996-02-27 | Capcom | Street Fighter Zero 2 | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo | 1996-05-29 | Capcom | Super Puzzle Fighter II X | Puzzle game |
| ' | 1996-07-08 | Capcom | Rockman 2: The Power Fighters | Platformer |
| Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold | 1996-08-05 | Capcom | Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Quiz Nanairo Dreams: Nijiirochō no Kiseki | 1996-08-26 | Capcom | Quiz Nanairo Dreams: Nijiirochō no Kiseki | Quiz game |
| X-Men vs. Street Fighter | 1996-09-09 | Capcom | X-Men vs. Street Fighter | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Battle Circuit | 1997-03-19 | Capcom | Battle Circuit | Beat 'em up |
| Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire | 1997-05-19 | Capcom | Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter | 1997-06-20 | Capcom | Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Capcom Sports Club | 1997-07-22 | Capcom | Capcom Sports Club | Sports game |
| Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix | 1997-09-04 | Capcom | Pocket Fighter | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Vampire Hunter 2: Darkstalkers' Revenge | 1997-09-13 | Capcom | Vampire Hunter 2: Darkstalkers' Revenge | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Vampire Savior 2: The Lord of Vampire | 1997-09-13 | Capcom | Vampire Savior 2: The Lord of Vampire | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| ' | 1998-01-12 | Capcom | Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Street Fighter Alpha 3 | 1998-06-29 | Capcom | Street Fighter Zero 3 | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |
| Giga Wing | 1999-02-22 | Takumi | Giga Wing | Shoot 'em up |
| ' | 1999-05-27 | Capcom | Jyangokushi: Haō no Saihai | Puzzle game |
| Dimahoo | 2000-01-21 | Eighting/Raizing | Great Mahō Daisakusen | Shoot 'em up |
| ' | 2000-04-12 | Takumi | Mars Matrix | Shoot 'em up |
| 2000-06-20 | Eighting/Raizing | 1944 The Loop Master | Shoot 'em up | |
| Mighty! Pang | 2000-10-10 | Mitchell | Mighty Pang | Platformer |
| Progear | 2001-01-17 | Cave | Progear no Arashi | Shoot 'em up |
| Puzz Loop 2 | 2001-02-05 | Mitchell | Puzz Loop 2 | Puzzle game |
| Janpai Puzzle Chōkō | 2001-08-20 | Mitchell | Janpai Puzzle Chōkō | Puzzle game |
| Hyper Street Fighter II: The Anniversary Edition | 2003-12-22 | Capcom | Hyper Street Fighter II | Head-to-Head Fighting Game |