MEGA DRIVE: ARCADE HITS
SYSTEM SYMBIDSIS
HOW THE MEGA DRIVE GAVE BACK TO THE ARCADE SCENE
◼︎ While the influence of the arcade scene on the Mega Drive is well known, fewer people are aware that Sega based three arcade boards on its successful 16-bit console. The first of the bunch to arrive was the System C, which powered games like
Columns
and its sequel. This board omits the Z80 CPU and runs the Motorola 68000 CPU slightly faster than the home hardware at 8.95MHz, allowing it to handle the sound duties too. It also uses an external colour encoder for far greater colour depth than the Mega Drive. The System C2 is a minor revision that adds some audio sample playback hardware, and hosted games such as
Thunder Force AC, Puyo Puyoand the Print Club photo booths.