[Warlock]

CPS-3 is an arcade system board that was first used by Capcom in 1996 with the arcade game Red Earth. It was the second successor to the CP System arcade hardware, following the CP System II. It would be the last proprietary system board Capcom would produce before moving to the more common Taito Type X system boards used in Japan.

The CP System III is the latest arcade system board designed by Capcom. It features a security mechanism; games are supplied on a CD, which contains the encrypted game contents, and a security cartridge containing the game BIOS and the SH-2 CPU[1] with integrated decryption logic, with the per-game key stored in battery-backed SRAM. When the CP System III board is first powered on, the contents of the CD are flashed onto a bank of SIMMs on the motherboard, where it is executed. The program code is then decrypted at run time via the security cartridge. The security cartridge is sensitive to any sort of tampering, which will result in the decryption key being erased and the cartridge being rendered useless.

Games became unplayable when the battery inside the security cartridge died, which had to be replaced at cost to the owner. Furthermore, the CP System III was only capable of 2D graphics at a time when most games were being developed with 3D hardware in mind.

In June 2007, the encryption method was reverse-engineered by Andreas Naive, making emulation possible. The encryption turned out to be a fairly straightforward combination of rotates and XORs.

Specifications

Main CPU: Hitachi HD6417099 (SH-2) at 25 MHz
Storage:
SCSI CD-ROM drive
RAM (variable amount)
Flash ROM: 8 x 16 MiB
Sound chip: 16-channel 8-bit sample player, stereo
Maximum number of colors: 32768 (15 bit colour, 555 RGB)
Palette size: 131072 pens
Colors per tile (backgrounds / sprites): 64 (6 bits per pixel) or 256 (8 bits per pixel), selectable
Colors per tile (text overlay): 16 (4 bits per pixel)
Maximum number of objects: 1024, with hardware scaling
Scroll faces: 4 regular + 1 text overlay 'score screen' layer
Scroll features: Horizontal & vertical scrolling, linescroll, linezoom
Framebuffer zooming
Color blending effects
Hardware RLE decompression of 6 bpp and 8 bpp graphics through DMA
Resolution, pixels: 384ÃÆ'â€â€�224 (standard mode) / 496ÃÆ'â€â€�224 (widescreen mode)
Known games on this hardware: 6

Download
http://bitshare.com/.../CPS-3.rar.html

CPS3 Emulator and the following games are included in the download - JoJo's Venture, JoJo's Venture Alternate, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Street Fighter III: New Generation, Street Fighter III 2nd Impact: Giant Attack, Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Fight For The Future, Street Fighter III 3rd Strike: Fight For The Future Alternate & Warzard - Red Earth.

With MegaUpload being down, possibly permanently, I'm currently in the process of re-uploading all of my files to another server. This is going to take some time, so please be patient. Thanks.

[NARU.EXE]

Naru enjoyed all these games in one form or another, mostly on Dreamcast,
except for Red Earth which Naru got to play through emulation.
Loved that game!

[Warlock]

Same here. Even played a few of those in the arcade.

[NARU.EXE]

Same here. Even played a few of those in the arcade.

Lucky!
The last Street Fighter, Naru got to play in an arcade was the first Alpha.
Then all the area arcades went away.
Man, Naru misses the arcades of the 80's.

[Warlock]

We only have one arcade left in my area and there isn't much there anymore!

[NARU.EXE]

Yeah, they're like dinosaurs,
the cool stuff disappears forever.

[Warlock]

With MegaUpload being down, possibly permanently, I'm currently in the process of re-uploading all of my files to another server. This is going to take some time, so please be patient. Thanks.

[Warlock]

Updated with a new link!