CP System III

The CP System III (CPシステムIII, CP shisutemu 3), also known as Capcom Play System 3 or CPS-3 for short, is an arcade system board that was the successor to Capcom's CP System and CP System II arcade hardware. It was first used in 1996 with the arcade game Red Earth. It would be the last proprietary system board Capcom would produce before moving on to the Dreamcast-based Naomi platform. The arcade system saw new releases up until mid 1999. Technical support for the CPS-3 ended on February 28, 2019. Like its forerunners, games can be exchanged without altering the core hardware. The CP System III uses CDs instead of separate daughterboards to store the games on, which are then loaded onto the system's CD drive to be stored into memory to allow for it to be played. Like its predecessor, games are encrypted, and must be decrypted via game-specific security cartridges, which will decrypt the contents stored within the system memory in run time.