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Arcade system boards produced by Sega
Sega is a video gamedeveloper, publisher, and hardware development company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, with multiple offices around the world. The company's involvement in the arcade game industry began as a Japan-based distributor of coin-operated machines, including pinball games and jukeboxes. Sega imported second-hand machines that required frequent maintenance. This necessitated the construction of replacement guns, flippers, and other parts for the machines. According to former Sega director Akira Nagai, this is what led to the company into developing their own games.
Sega released Pong-Tron, its first video-based game, in 1973. The company prospered from the arcade game boom of the late 1970s, with revenues climbing to over US$100 million by 1979. Nagai has stated that Hang-On and Out Run helped to pull the arcade game market out of the 1983 downturn and created new genres of video games.
In terms of arcades, Sega is the world's most prolific arcade game producer, having developed more than 500 games, 70 franchises, and 20 arcade system boards since 1981. It has been recognized by Guinness World Records for this achievement. The following list comprises the various arcade system boards developed and used by Sega in their arcade games.
Arcade system boards
Arcade board
Notes
Notable games and release years
Dual
Capable of both black-and-white and color display
Capable of packaging two games in the same arcade cabinet
Introduced arcade conversion kits where games could be changed in 15 minutes via a card cage housed in game cabinet with six PC boards; kits were sold as Convert-a-Game paks or ConvertaPaks
Uses ROM boards, with optional GD-ROM compatible CD-ROM drive. If a drive is used, it will be used at bootup to copy data to a DIMM RAM board instead.
Naomi multiboard can use 3 or 4 boards at the same time depending on the game
NAOMI is a backronym for New Arcade Operation Machine Idea. The name NAOMI was reportedly selected by Sega R&D head Hisashi Suzuki in honor of the British model Naomi Campbell.
Based on GameCube architecture. Supported GameCube memory cards.
The idea for Triforce came from Namco and Sega. They saw potential in the GameCube architecture for a cost-effective and port-friendly arcade machine. Nintendo agreed to cooperate in building the Triforce board, but had little interest in developing arcade games of their own.
Sega has developed and released additional arcade games that use technology other than their dedicated arcade system boards. The first arcade game manufactured by Sega was Periscope, an electromechanical game. This was followed by Missile in 1969. Subsequent video-based games such as Pong-Tron (1973), Fonz (1976), and Monaco GP (1979) used discrete logic boards without a CPU microprocessor.Frogger (1981) used a system powered by two Z80 CPU microprocessors. Some titles, such as Zaxxon (1982) were developed externally from Sega, a practice that was not uncommon at the time.
^ abOhbuchi, Yutaka (September 17, 1998). "How Naomi Got Its Groove On". GameSpot. Archived from the original on December 24, 2017. Retrieved December 9, 2014.
^"NEC and VideoLogic Power Up". Edge. January 1999. p. 11.
^Sega Naomi service manual. SEGA ENTERPRISES, LTD. MANUAL NO. 420-6455-01, p. 7
^Sega Naomi GD-ROM system service manual. SEGA ENTERPRISES, INC. USA. MANUAL NO. 420-6620-02, p. 12, 16, 22 Naomi in this configuration has no ROM board to run a game from
^Sega Strike Fighter DX (9/1 ver) DGM-0095 schematic. Sega enterprises ltd. (Mentions Naomi slave, Naomi master and game boards)
^Sega Strike Fighter DX type Owner's manual, SEGA ENTERPRISES, INC. USA. MANUAL NO. 420-6589-01 mentions Naomi boards, Naomi multi master and Naomi multi slave, and a game BD on p. 128, and a photo with a 3 board design (each with two white edge connectors on the same side, not including a ROM board on top, nor a midplane) on p. 89.
^Airline Pilots DX Type Owner's manual. SEGA ENTERPRISES, LTD. MANUAL NO. 420-6471-01 uses the same 3 board design on p. 72. Mentions a Naomi board on p.10.
^Sega F355 challenge Owner's manual. SEGA ENTERPRISES, INC. USA. MANUAL NO. 4201-6507-01 shows 4 boards on p. 72, each with two white edge connectors and "Naomi board" on p. 10 and "NAOMI MULTI MASTER" and "NAOMI MULTI SLAVE" on p.137. "F355 Challenge". The Arcade Flyer Archive.
mentions 4 Naomi systems.
^"三国志大戦 – 株式会社セガ". セガ・アーケードゲームヒストリー|株式会社セガ (in Japanese). Retrieved 28 December 2023.
^Namco UK. (n.d.). Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 2 Operators Manual. Namco UK. Retrieved March 15, 2024, from https://www.progettosnaps.net/manuals/pdf/wangmid2j.pdf.
Page 105 clearly shows the Chihiro system, as well as referring to it as "Chihiro Game PC Board Assy"