iNma
11th June 2007, 05:29 PM
This may very well count as one of the happiest days in my gaming life.
For those not in the loop, CPS-3 was a Capcom arcade system from the mid-to-late 90's that only ever got a very limited number of games. CPS-1 hosted things like Street Fighter II and Final Fight, not to mention Ghouls 'n' Ghosts and a whole load of others. CPS-2 kicked off with Super Street Fighter II, and hosted an enormous number of arcade games, including almost all the Vs. games and classic shooters like Gunbird 2 and Mars Matrix. CPS-3 was released just as the 3D game boom was taking off, and the dramatically reduced demand for 2D games as well as the cost of the system, both to develop for and for arcade operators to run, was huge. As a result, only 6 games were ever developed for the board: 3 Street Fighter III variants, 2 JoJo's Venture games, and an original IP called Warzard (one character of which, Tessa, repeatedly surfaces in other Capcom games to this day).
However, to those that have played any version of Street Fighter III, and particularly Third Strike, will know CPS-3 was capable of the mots astonishing 2D animation ever seen.
Capcom included a complicated encryption method to stop the rampant pirating of arcade games, and as such the system has only been cracked over the past week. This not only means emulation of CPS-3 is forthcoming, but may also be instrumental in saving many of the CPS-3 arcade boards for future generations.
Please look at the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPS-3) for a bit more info.
For those not in the loop, CPS-3 was a Capcom arcade system from the mid-to-late 90's that only ever got a very limited number of games. CPS-1 hosted things like Street Fighter II and Final Fight, not to mention Ghouls 'n' Ghosts and a whole load of others. CPS-2 kicked off with Super Street Fighter II, and hosted an enormous number of arcade games, including almost all the Vs. games and classic shooters like Gunbird 2 and Mars Matrix. CPS-3 was released just as the 3D game boom was taking off, and the dramatically reduced demand for 2D games as well as the cost of the system, both to develop for and for arcade operators to run, was huge. As a result, only 6 games were ever developed for the board: 3 Street Fighter III variants, 2 JoJo's Venture games, and an original IP called Warzard (one character of which, Tessa, repeatedly surfaces in other Capcom games to this day).
However, to those that have played any version of Street Fighter III, and particularly Third Strike, will know CPS-3 was capable of the mots astonishing 2D animation ever seen.
Capcom included a complicated encryption method to stop the rampant pirating of arcade games, and as such the system has only been cracked over the past week. This not only means emulation of CPS-3 is forthcoming, but may also be instrumental in saving many of the CPS-3 arcade boards for future generations.
Please look at the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPS-3) for a bit more info.