CP System II
Capcom announced the development of the CP System II in 1990. The system arrived in arcades during 1993 with Super Street Fighter II. It consisted of two distinct physical boards called A and B. The A board connected to standard JAMMA harnesses found in most cabinets. This main unit held components common across all games on the platform. The B board contained the actual game software inside a plastic case. These two parts worked together like a console and its cartridge. Region-specific color coding distinguished each board pair from others. Japan received green plastic cases with white text. U.S.A. units used blue plastic with red lettering. European systems also featured blue plastic but with blue text instead. Asian markets got grey plastic enclosures marked with yellow writing. Hispanic regions saw orange plastic paired with green text. Brazil received orange plastic with magenta markings. Oceania utilized blue plastic with orange text. Rental versions came in yellow plastic without specific region colors. A black metal all-in-one version existed for special configurations. Only blue and green boards could be mixed together legally.
Piracy plagued the earlier CP System hardware before 1993. Bootleggers made unauthorized copies of games easily. Capcom responded by encrypting program ROMs on the new system. This encryption prevented software piracy until unencrypted data leaked out. In January 2001, the CPS-2 Shock group hacked into the hardware itself. They obtained unencrypted program data through reverse engineering efforts. The group distributed XOR difference tables to produce clean data from original ROM images. This breakthrough made emulation possible for the first time. It also allowed restoration of cartridges erased by failed batteries. Andreas Naive and Nicola Salmoria fully reverse-engineered the method in January 2007. Their work revealed two four-round Feistel ciphers using a 64-bit key. Eduardo Cruz, Artemio Urbina, and Ian Court announced successful security programming reversal in April 2016. This enabled clean de-suicide and restoration of dead games without hardware changes. MAME source code implemented this algorithm for all known CPS-2 titles.
Battery-backed memory stored decryption keys needed for game execution. These batteries lost their charge as years passed by. Games stopped functioning once the CPU could not execute any code. The situation became known as a suicide battery failure. A board would simply die even if used legally over time. Users had to pay Capcom fees to replace these components before total loss. Original batteries fell below 2 volts after a finite amount of time. Keys were lost permanently when voltage dropped too low. Bypassing the original battery required swapping it out while still in-circuit. This repair had to happen before the original unit reached critical levels. Consequently, functional hardware became unplayable without intervention. Technical support for battery replacements ended on the 28th of February 2019. Most official support for the hardware ceased earlier on the 31st of March 2015. Manufacturing of new CP System II hardware stopped on the 22nd of December 2003.
The primary CPU was a Capcom DL-1525 running at 16 MHz. This chip functioned as an encrypted version of the Motorola 68000 processor. Sound processing used either Kabuki DL-030P or standard Z80 chips at 8 MHz. Graphics processors CPS-A and CPS-B operated at 16 MHz alongside the main CPU. A Lucent DL-1425 Q1 DSP16A Processor handled audio at 4 MHz. Active resolution reached 384 pixels wide by 224 pixels high. Overscan resolution extended to 512 by 262 scanlines. Up to 900 sprites could appear on screen simultaneously. Color depth supported 32-bit RGBA format with 16 million colors available. Alpha transparency offered 256 levels of control per pixel. Each tile utilized only 16 colors from the palette. Total RAM capacity reached 1328 kilobytes including DRAM and SRAM types. The A board held one megabyte of FPM DRAM plus 280 KB of SRAM. Maximum ROM capacity allowed
for 322 Mbit or roughly 40 MB of data. Physical dimensions measured 40 centimeters by 27 centimeters by 8 centimeters.
Forty-one titles were released across the platform lifespan. Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers launched first in September 1993. Eco Fighters appeared as a shoot-em-up in December that same year. Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom arrived in January 1994 as a beat-em-up. Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors debuted in July 1994 featuring fighting mechanics. Alien vs. Predator combined action with beat-em-up gameplay in May 1994. Street Fighter Alpha entered the scene in June 1995. Mega Man: The Power Battle followed in September 1995. X-Men: Children of the Atom arrived in December 1994. Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness offered strategic variant armor equipment in April 1995. Giga Wing emerged as a shooter from Takumi in February 1999. Dimahoo came from Eighting/Raizing in January 2000. Mars Matrix: Hyper Solid Shooting arrived in April 2000. Progear appeared from Cave in January 2001. Puzz Loop 2 and Janpai Puzzle Chōkō
provided puzzle experiences in early 2001. Hyper Street Fighter II closed out production in December 2003.
Up Next
Common questions
When was the CP System II arcade system board announced by Capcom?
Capcom announced the development of the CP System II in 1990. The system arrived in arcades during 1993 with Super Street Fighter II.
How did region-specific color coding distinguish CP System II boards?
Japan received green plastic cases with white text while U.S.A. units used blue plastic with red lettering. European systems featured blue plastic but with blue text instead and Asian markets got grey plastic enclosures marked with yellow writing.
Who hacked the CP System II encryption in January 2001?
The CPS-2 Shock group hacked into the hardware itself in January 2001 to obtain unencrypted program data through reverse engineering efforts. Andreas Naive and Nicola Salmoria fully reverse-engineered the method in January 2007 revealing two four-round Feistel ciphers using a 64-bit key.
What caused suicide battery failure on CP System II boards?
Battery-backed memory stored decryption keys needed for game execution until these batteries lost their charge as years passed by. Games stopped functioning once the CPU could not execute any code after original batteries fell below 2 volts.
When did technical support for CP System II battery replacements end?
Technical support for battery replacements ended on the 28th of February 2019. Most official support for the hardware ceased earlier on the 31st of March 2015 and manufacturing of new CP System II hardware stopped on the 22nd of December 2003.