Capcom CPS-2

By 1993 Capcom had a piracy problem: bootleggers were copying CPS-1 games almost as fast as it could ship them. The CPS-2 was the answer, a hardened successor that split into a colorful A-board and B-board pairing and wrapped its game data in heavy encryption. A battery kept the decryption keys alive, and when that battery died the board went silent, a quirk that spawned the folklore of suicide boards and, later, the community art of reviving them.

The added muscle over CPS-1 meant more colors on screen, bigger sprite counts, and richer animation, and Capcom used every bit of it. This was the platform of the crossover era: X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, and the Marvel vs. Capcom series turned licensed superheroes into hyperkinetic tag-team spectacles. The Street Fighter line continued through Super Street Fighter II Turbo and the Street Fighter Alpha trilogy, while the Vampire/Darkstalkers games showed off some of the most expressive sprite animation ever drawn. Beyond fighters, Alien vs. Predator and the Dungeons and Dragons beat-em-ups gave the board a second identity as a haven for gorgeous side-scrolling brawlers.

As hardware, CPS-2 was the peak refinement of Capcom's 2D philosophy: it never chased polygons, and it never needed to, because in a world rushing toward blocky early 3D, its lush hand-drawn worlds aged with remarkable grace. Many players still consider its late fighters the most beautiful 2D games ever made.

Commercially the board sustained Capcom's arcade reign deep into the 3D era, with a library that stayed relevant for over a decade; its last officially released title arrived in 2004. Its legacy lives on in the fighting-game community, where CPS-2 classics remain tournament staples, and in the preservation scene that cracked its encryption to ensure those games would survive their dying batteries.