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The Beige Years

Capcom Built Arcade Games That Killed Themselves

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Capcom's CPS2 arcade board was built to kill itself, and the hacker who cracked it kept the secret to protect Capcom.

Here is how its suicide battery held off the Super Street Fighter II pirates for years, until the cure for dead boards armed them.

Subject
Capcom's CP System II, 1993
Chapters
8
Sources
8
Credits
15
Corrections
0

Sources

8
  • Article5
  • Interview2
  • Book1

The sources the story leans on most, primary sources first. Read dates are when the page was consulted; the live page may have changed since.

  1. [1]
  2. [2]
  3. [3]
  4. [4]
  5. [5]
    Article Ange Albertini ("Crashtest" of the CPS-2 Shock team)

    Preserving arcade games

    youtube.com/watch?v=vg7LPcFUxg8 ↗
  6. [6]
  7. [7]
  8. [8]

Image & music credits

15
  • License unknown10
  • CC BY-SA 2.02
  • CC BY 2.01
  • CC BY-SA 4.01

13 photos, 1 font, from the hosts linked below. Each file name links to the file's page, which carries the full license terms.

#UseFileAuthorLicense
1 Photo Street Fighter II arcade machine.jpg John Turner CC BY 2.0
2 Photo Security Bits.jpg Sparr Risher CC BY-SA 2.0
3 Photo https://archive.org/details/arcademanual street-fighter-alpha-3/page/n5 archive.org License unknown
4 Photo https://archive.org/details/game-machine-magazine-19930901p/page/n16 archive.org License unknown
5 Photo https://archive.org/details/game-machine-magazine-19931215p/page/n13 archive.org License unknown
6 Photo NiCd VARTA battery leakage on circuit board (IMG 3313).jpg John R. Southern CC BY-SA 2.0
7 Photo cps2 keytable mame0160.png MAMEdev, src/mame/machine/cps2crpt.c, MAME 0.160 (2015), lines 754-763 License unknown
8 Photo https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/GkCAfrfgFnjGjUBcK4wqvvHgMwTM aORRPA5cUf4cWn7jkeLi daiMK3REEKS0Z8uWo8i3IuYK-iLNZuBcagd1T7LCa 1jR3xyDk0NyIzyRdL lG9FXdQs4L54 Z6Lj8hm1eypX Eduardo Cruz, Arcade Hacker blog, 'Capcom CPS2 Security Programming Guide' (2016), http://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2016/09/capcom-cps2-security-programming-guide.html License unknown
9 Photo https://gitlab.com/loic.petit/cps2-reverse/-/raw/master/93646B/pcb-images/93646B.jpg Loïc Petit, cps2-reverse (GitLab), 93646B PCB image License unknown
10 Photo https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4bV0zn9jFvlqD5OpCR1lkP-rYZizXNYcB1FCVG1douIjRFn -76eb6eUrMEN9l3WM64dpq14GmAhIxCN1Ip-HEcrT8aM49BW6NldCOk4U551GvlJ2mD2ifkvs3JkcabUltVcJ7dUzzsVR/s1600/bboard.png Eduardo Cruz, Arcade Hacker blog, 'A Journey Into Capcom's CPS2 Silicon - Part 1' (2017), the B board's custom chips marked License unknown
11 Photo https://archive.org/details/re-play-volume-19-issue-no.-1-october-1993-compressed/page/n137 archive.org License unknown
12 Photo playmeter 1995-11 p24 capcom tradein.jpg Play Meter, Vol. 21 No. 12, November 1995, p. 24, Coin-Op News (archive.org scan play-meter-volume-21-number-12-november-1995, the item cropped from page n23) License unknown
13 Photo https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Vs1hIGvjyHzUQ4f8tjauouz9AgXKSwqmRrhZx88ikcUWu2oBzL6uugKS2n7J AhYHWGKUk8iyKjwF9D- nV YOIdLNCTKvfWhrphAJDXOxeQ-xJhRBpfy3e9sR1R2BfsbJJdYG7 Eduardo Cruz, Arcade Hacker blog, 'Capcom CPS2 Security Programming Guide' (2016), http://arcadehacker.blogspot.com/2016/09/capcom-cps2-security-programming-guide.html License unknown
14 Font https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/ IBM VGA 8x16 from VileR's Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack CC BY-SA 4.0

Music: Street Fighter II (Capcom, 1991), composed by Yoko Shimomura with Isao Abe; recorded from the arcade ROM in MAME 0.289

Corrections

No corrections logged since publication.

Found something wrong? Write to [email protected] with the timestamp and the source that contradicts it. Corrections are logged here with the date.