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[Muchi Muchi Pink]

Relive the early years of Capcom's arcade history with this lengthy interview from 1989!

The new CP System arcade boards are very important to Capcom in two regards. First, they have much more memory than our previous hardware. Game developers will have free reign to explore new, exciting design ideas and take advantage of the latest technological developments. The CP System has upped the level of our developers already.

The second big thing is copy protection. Illegal bootlegs have been a huge problem for us overseas; I believe the CP System is the only pcb hardware today that cannot be copied.

http://shmuplations.com/cps1/

The site has lots of interesting interviews about shmups and other developers.

 

[Tizoc]

Woah thought the CPS1 started in 1991, thanks for the link, reading it now.

 

[kitsuneyo]

The second big thing is copy protection. Illegal bootlegs have been a huge problem for us overseas; I believe the CP System is the only pcb hardware today that cannot be copied.

SF2 was heavily bootlegged, wasn't it?

 

[sibarraz]

"the cps1 will not be copied"

heheheh

 

[sixteen-bit]

shmuplations is a great resource

 

[Tizoc]

SF2 was heavily bootlegged, wasn't it?

Like DRM today, everything can be hacked

 

[Piccoro]

Oh wow, I didn't know this website. It has a lot of cool stuff, thanks for sharing!

And lol at "CPS 1 can't be copied"...

 

[Tain]

Awesome. My first PCB (that I got a month or so ago) is a CPS1! With jacked up colors

It wasn't until I read up on repair that I learned that CPS1 games actually did have copy protection via that little C board. After seeing how easy it was to convert my Raimais board to a Japanese version I can see why Capcom thought they were hot shit, lol.

 

[rikichi]

I LOVE YOU AKIMAN!

 

[Tizoc]

Woah so this is some of Nishimura's first artwork for Capcom games

This was for their 194X series I take it?

EDIT: Wonder why Akiman felt 'hurt' when he sees this artwork? It's amazing IMO

 

[Tain]

Also shmuplations is a hella underrated resource.

Woah so this is some of Nishimura's first artwork for Capcom games

This was for their 194X series I take it?

Varth, actually.

 

[Piers]

Like DRM today, everything can be hacked

Didn't that ultimately lead to something extreme like CPS3 self-destructing if piracy was attempted?

 

[ryutaro's mama]

EDIT: Wonder why Akiman felt 'hurt' when he sees this artwork? It's amazing IMO

Because artists are extremely self-critical.

 

[Muchi Muchi Pink]

Oh wow, I didn't know this website. It has a lot of cool stuff, thanks for sharing!

And lol at "CPS 1 can't be copied"...

Well too be fair, with CPS-III they really made it hard[...] for a while .

Edit:

Didn't that ultimately lead to something extreme like CPS3 self-destructing if piracy was attempted?

Yeah.

 

[Dreamwriter]

Didn't that ultimately lead to something extreme like CPS3 self-destructing if piracy was attempted?

CPS3 has the game ROMS encrypted, and keeps the decryption key in RAM - if the board ever fully loses power it stops working. It uses a battery to keep the RAM working whenever the arcade machine is unplugged, unfortunately that means buying a used arcade board you don't know how good the battery is. The battery can be replaced, but it's a pain (and you gotta do it fast).

 

[Tizoc]

Dhalsim looks like he's just...there. Like everyone had a good pose to present themselves with and there was no room for Dhalsim and Akiman just left it at tha XP

 

[Northeastmonk]

Three Wonders was a game I played a lot many years ago. Magic Sword, Knights of the Round, and etc are all great memories for me.

KotR's theme of friendship is really neat to know. I can't tell you how many times I rented that game.

I got to play Magic Sword on an arcade board at a bus station somewhere and it was such a unique experience. The multiple characters that could join the fight and the bosses were something special.

Lots of great information in this article.

I didn't find that picture being bad at all. The Three Wonders photo needs some adjusting with the names. To me they could have left the names out of the photo.

 

[entremet]

CPS3 has the game ROMS encrypted, and keeps the decryption key in RAM - if the board ever fully loses power it stops working. It uses a battery to keep the RAM working whenever the arcade machine is unplugged, unfortunately that means buying a used arcade board you don't know how good the battery is. The battery can be replaced, but it's a pain (and you gotta do it fast).

Sucks for collectors and arcade operators.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Just the other day they had a great interview with Ayano Koshiro(head Designer/Planner of the SoR trilogy and Yuzo's sister) about the development of SoR2

 

[Tizoc]

Just the other day they had a great interview with Ayano Koshiro(head Designer/Planner of the SoR trilogy and Yuzo's sister) about the development of SoR2

Just got done with the CPS1 article, thanks for linking this. A thread for it should eb made for your like if one hasn't already.

 

[YaGaMi]

Dhalsim looks like he's just...there. Like everyone had a good pose to present themselves with and there was no room for Dhalsim and Akiman just left it at tha XP

I remember this image on our SNES Pal Console box when we bought it on release.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

This is a really cool article.
Thanks for posting!

I've always been enamored with older games, and the process that goes into developing them.

Really like how at one point they talk about Tenchi wo Kurau 2, and Okamoto mentions that he'd like to do the Battle of Red Cliffs for a possible sequel.
Sure enough, that battle is stage 7 of the actual released Tenchi wo Kurau 2 (Warriors of Fate).

 

[jbueno]

Should have hired Seibu Kaihatsu's engineers, didn't Raiden II only got recently accurately emulated?

 

[DrFunk]

woah! Reading now

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Oh man, this Ayano Koshiro interview.

—Ah, you were the one responsible for Adam’s disappearance?

Koshiro: Yes, that was me. (laughs) I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but of course I asked Sega for permission first.

—But you were the one who suggested it?

Koshiro: Hmm… I’m not sure. It might not have been me. It probably was more of a simultaneous thing, like, “we don’t really need Adam, do we?” “Nope!”

Poor Adam.

Also SoR2 was completed in half a year! That's nuts!

 

[blackoak]

Glad you guys are enjoying this! I had a lot of fun translating it, especially the illustration commentary. I love doing those. I actually have a few more full interviews (and plenty of illustration commentary) to include from Akiman, Bengus, Sensei, and Kinu Nishimura... just need to get everything sorted and added to the monthly voting list.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Love Adam, but for playstyle variety, it was probably for the best they introduce Skate and Max instead.

Half a year with 10+ developers to make SoR2? Meanwhile, Mighty No.9 lookin' ugly as sin and got delayed half a year.

 

[Pure_Phazon]

Glad you guys are enjoying this! I had a lot of fun translating it, especially the illustration commentary. I love doing those. I actually have a few more full interviews (and plenty of illustration commentary) to include from Akiman, Bengus, Sensei, and Kinu Nishimura... just need to get everything sorted and added to the monthly voting list.

Awesome work! I'm always interested in hearing from the Capcom illustrators.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Love Adam, but for playstyle variety, it was probably for the best they introduce Skate and Max instead.

Half a year with 10+ developers to make SoR2? Meanwhile, Mighty No.9 lookin' ugly as sin and got delayed half a year.

True enough. The interview mentioned that it would have been more work to give Adam a different fighting style, so they created new characters instead.

It's crazy how much SoR2 did so much with so little. Ancient had 1 or 2 programmers, Ayano with planning and design, Yuzo doing music/sound + other stuff, a handful of other artists/designers (mostly outsourced), and they deliver one of the most memorable beatemups of all time.

Heh..Never noticed that Nakai Satoshi did the background art. His work in Gynoug/Wings of Wor was really crazy.

 

[shaneskim]

Dhalsim looks like he's just...there. Like everyone had a good pose to present themselves with and there was no room for Dhalsim and Akiman just left it at tha XP

In the twenty odd years since I saw this for the first time I honestly hadn't noticed Dhalsim until you mentioned it.

 

[tuffy]

Should have hired Seibu Kaihatsu's engineers, didn't Raiden II only got recently accurately emulated?

Sort of. Turns out the MAME guys had correctly figured out how Raiden II's protection scheme works a long time ago, but a simple typo in the code kept it from working until recently.

CPS-2 and CPS-3 did take awhile to finally sort out correctly, though.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Holy crap.
This website is loaded with fascinating content.

 

[AmyS]

Woah thought the CPS1 started in 1991, thanks for the link, reading it now.

Yeah CPS-1 started with Forgotten Worlds in 1988.


This Electrocoin FW flier for the UK (I guess they distributed the arcade machine there) has a lot of nice pics, though the info at the side is kinda... well, CPS-1 certainly does not have 3x 68000 processors!

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

Their translation of Yoshio Kiya was really illuminating, too.

Holy crap.
This website is loaded with fascinating content.

Great articles and interviews, too!

 

[@MUWANdo]

Holy crap.
This website is loaded with fascinating content.

blackoak probably won't pimp his patreon in this thread so I'll do it for him: he has a patreon that funds all these translations, and donating lets you vote on what he translates or directly select articles for translation. He consistently publishes new translations and has a huge backlog of material, so if you're interested in these old games you should definitely throw him some change:

https://www.patreon.com/shmuplations?ty=h

Should have hired Seibu Kaihatsu's engineers, didn't Raiden II only got recently accurately emulated?

Raiden II took forever to emulate because Seibu went nuts and built a ton of extremely unnecessary custom hardware for that board; it was total overkill and I wonder if they ever made their money back.

What's ironic is that the original Raiden was only made because Seibu had gambled big on a high-spec board for Dynamite Duke and it flopped, so management ordered devs to make something simple that ran on cheap hardware and could be made with a tight deadline, the result being Raiden.

 

[BluePigGanon]

Love that era of Capcom.

 

[Lord Error]

"the cps1 will not be copied"

heheheh

CPS-3 took forever to get cracked though, and by the time it did, I don't think they were sweating over any potentially lost sales.

 

[Muchi Muchi Pink]

CPS-3 took forever to get cracked though, and by the time it did, I don't think they were sweating over any potentially lost sales.

Well they didn't make many games on CPS-3 either. I guess the extreme security was one of the reasons, coinops didn't order so many. I mean CPS-3 was done in a time, when 3D took over so... Yeah poor CPS-3. It's really its own sad story, I'd like to hear about more.

 

[blackoak]

blackoak probably won't pimp his patreon in this thread so I'll do it for him: he has a patreon that funds all these translations, and donating lets you vote on what he translates or directly select articles for translation. He consistently publishes new translations and has a huge backlog of material, so if you're interested in these old games you should definitely throw him some change:

https://www.patreon.com/shmuplations?ty=h.

Thanks MUWANdo. Yeah, modesty usually compels me to avoid patreon-begging. I really wouldn't be able to do this without the small financial support it provides though. Just for some context, putting that CPS-1 interview together took about 15 hours of solid work, all said and done. I suspect the reason no concerted effort has ever been made to translate the massive backlog of interview material is due to just how time-consuming translation is...

The list of interviews is about to double or triple, btw. Last month I spent 3 weeks at the National Diet Library combing through mostly complete sets of jp magazines from 1980-2000, and the results are pretty spectacular. Still organizing it all... a beast of a task itself.

 

[Muchi Muchi Pink]

Thanks MUWANdo. Yeah, modesty usually compels me to avoid patreon-begging. I really wouldn't be able to do this without the small financial support it provides though. Just for some context, putting that CPS-1 interview together took about 15 hours of solid work, all said and done. I suspect the reason no concerted effort has ever been made to translate the massive backlog of interview material is due to just how time-consuming translation is...

The list of interviews is about to double or triple, btw. Last month I spent 3 weeks at the National Diet Library combing through mostly complete sets of jp magazines from 1980-2000, and the results are pretty spectacular. Still organizing it all... a beast of a task itself.

Thanks for doing this. I didn't know you're on gaf, even though I thought it might be a possibility. Anyway, I think you needed more exposure for doing this great work.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

From a promotional VHS tape sent to amusement machine operators in the late 1980's (1988-1989).
It describes the Capcom CPS system, operator benefits to adopting the CPS titles and games such as Forgotten Worlds, Strider, Ghouls 'N Ghosts, Dynasty Wars, Willow and names U.N. Squadron as a future title.

 

[poodaddy]

Damn..... Capcom tried to get amusement center owners to lobby congressmen for a dollar coin just to maximize their profits.

Man, their playbook hasn't changed much through the years.

 

[nkarafo]

Three Wonders was a game I played a lot many years ago.

Midnight Wanderers was my favorite CPS1 game.

It's a damn shame it was only ever released in a compilation. That made it unlikely to stand out by itself and make it's own impact.

Same goes for Chariot. That could also stand out as a standalone game. Because both games had great visuals and art, unlike anything else that was available in arcades.

The puzzle game in the compilation was completely out of place and only further reduced the impact for these games.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Hadn't seen this thread until now, so thanks for the necrobump - this is cool stuff.

 

[Northeastmonk]

Midnight Wanderers was my favorite CPS1 game.

It's a damn shame it was only ever released in a compilation. That made it unlikely to stand out by itself and make it's own impact.

Same goes for Chariot. That could also stand out as a standalone game. Because both games had great visuals and art, unlike anything else that was available in arcades.

The puzzle game in the compilation was completely out of place and only further reduced the impact for these games.

Being in a collection made it harder to pick which game you wanted in the arcades. I agree about the puzzle game. I never played it.

 

[Futaleufu]

They were not exagerating about the romsize in early CPS1 games.

From what I've read, developing Forgotten Worlds along the CPS1 system costed several million dollars. AAA was always a thing but in arcades back then.