Capcom Play System 3

CP system III, CPS-3 or Capcom Play System 3 is an arcade board that was created and introduced by Capcom in 1996 with the Red Earth game (called Warzard in Japan). It is extremely powerful in the management of 2d; Some fans of the fighting games were amazed by the resolution of the characters on screen and fluent animations in titles like Street Fighter III, in addition to other games of this hardware. This was the last arcade card manufactured by Capcom.

The CPS-3 contains an enormous amount of security mechanisms. The games are duplicated on CD, which contains the encrypted content of the games, and a security cartridge containing a battery with a decryption chip and the game BIOS. When the CPS-3 board is turned on at the beginning, the contents of the CD are stored in a SIMs bank. The data is decrypted through the security cartridge. The security cartridge is extremely sensitive to any manipulation attempt, which will eventually remove the decryption key and the cartridge will end up being useless.

Very little is known about true hardware specifications. It is believed that the CPU is based on a SH-2, with the possibility of two CPUs in a master/slave configuration.