Namco System 11

The Namco System 11 is an arcade system board released by Namco in 1994. The actual hardware is based on Sony's PlayStation home console, and thus many games were ported to that console. The major difference between the two is that the System 11 used surface-mounted ROM chips to store the game data, whereas the PlayStation used CD-ROM. This meant that all System 11 games were unique to the particular system board, and could not be swapped out with another game.

System 11 was succeeded by the System 12 design.

Development

Although the System 11 was technically inferior to Sega's Model 2 arcade board, its lower price made it an attractive prospect for smaller arcades.[1][2] According to the June 1995 issue of Edge:

Namco took a significant risk in basing its Tekken coin-op on raw PlayStation hardware, considering that it would be competing directly with Sega's Model 2-powered Virtua Fighter 2 ... For once, a home system can boast an identical conversion of a cutting-edge coin-op ... Namco's research section managing director, Shegeichi Nakamura ... explains: "When Sony came along we decided to go for a low-cost system—in short, we've left the big arcade stores to Sega and VF2 and Tekken has been sold to smaller arcade centres" ... Namco has a further four titles planned for System 11, all of which are likely to make the jump to the PlayStation.[1]

System 11 specifications

PSX BASED

  • Main CPU: MIPS R3000A 32-bit RISC processor @ 33.8688 MHz, Operating performance - 30 MIPS, Instruction Cache - 4KB
  • BUS: 132 MB/s.
  • OS ROM: 512 KB
  • Sound CPU: Namco C76 (Mitsubishi M37702)
  • Sound chip: Namco C352
  • Main RAM: 2 MB
  • Video VRAM: 2 MB
  • Sound RAM: 512 kB
  • Graphical Processor: 360,000 polygons/s, sprite/BG drawing, Adjustable framebuffer, No line restriction, 4,000 8x8 pixel sprites with individual scaling and rotation, Simultaneous backgrounds (parallax scrolling)
  • Sprite Effects: Rotation, Scaling up/down, Warping, Transparency, Fading, Priority, Vertical and Horizontal Line Scroll
  • Resolution: 256x224 - 640x480
  • Colours: 16.7 million colors, Unlimited CLUTs (Color Look-Up Tables)
  • Other Features: custom geometry engine, custom polygon engine, MJPEG decoder

List of System 11 games

References

  1. 1 2 "Tekken". Edge. Imagine Media. 3 (21): 66–70. June 1995.
  2. ↑ Tokyo Drifter (April 2002). "Virtua Fight Club". GamePro. 14 (163): 48–50.
  3. 1 2 "The 1996 AOU Coin-Op Show: 3D Arcade Gaming Enters the Next Level!". Maximum: The Video Game Magazine. Emap International Limited (5): 116–7. April 1996.
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