The WAR: SF Engine History



Street Fighter Engine History Capcom has created three engines processing the majority of Street Fighter games in the arcade. Below is a look at the various engines and which games were built on them: Street Fighter 68000-based Hardware Street Fighter II - The World Warrior, Street Fighter II - Champion Edition, Street Fighter II - Hyper Fighting, Street Fighter II Turbo - Hyper Fighting CPS Hardware: Main CPU : 68000 @ 10MHz / Sound CPU : Z80 @ 4 MHz / Sound Chips : YM2151 @ 3.579580 MHz, MSM6295 @ 7.576 KHz / Res : 384 x 224 Super Street Fighter 2 : The New Challengers, Super Street Fighter 2 : The Tournament Battle, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Super Street Fighter 2 X, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter Zero, Street Fighter Zero 2, Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha, Street Fighter Zero 3 CPS-II Hardware: Main CPU : 68000 @ 11.8 MHz / Sound CPU : Z80 @ 8 MHz / Sound Chips : Q Sound @ 4 MHz / Color Palette : 32 bit / Total On Screen Colors: 4096 / Colors per tile : 16 (4 bits per pixel) / Object Number : 900 (16 x 16 pixels) / Scroll Faces : 3 / Resolution : 384 x 224 / Maximum Rom Capacity : 322 Megabits Street Fighter III New Generation, Street Fighter III 2nd Impact Giant Attack, Street Fighter III 3rd Strike Fight for the Future CPS-III Hardware: Main CPU : Hitachi SH2 (possibly 2) / Storage : SCSI CD Rom, RAM and Flash ROM. / RAM : SIMMs on the left will physically hold 16M of data each (each has 8x 16M Flash ROMs, there's 4 SIMMs plugged in on this board). The SIMMs on the right will physically hold 8M each (there's 4 Flash ROMs on each board and there are 2 SIMMs plugged in) / OSC : 60MHz. 42.9545MHz, XTAL 3.6864MHz Capcom vs SNK : Millenium Fight 2000, Marvel vs Capcom 2, On the GD-ROM NAOMI: Capcom vs SNK : Millenium Fight 2000 Pro, Capcom vs SNK 2 : Millionaire Fighting 2001, Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper The Sega NAOMI Hardware: Main Ram : 32 megs / CPU : SH-4 64-bit RISC CPU (200 MHz 360 MIPS / 1.4 GFLOPS) / Graphic Engine : PowerVR (PVR2DC) / Sound Engine : ARM7 Yamaha AICA 45 MHZ (with internal 32-bit RISC CPU, 64 channel ADPCM) / Main Memory : 32 MByte / Graphic Memory : 16 MByte / Sound Memory : 8 MByte / Media : ROM Board / GD-Rom / Simultaneous Number of Colors : Approx. 16,770,000 (24bits) / Polygons : 2.5 Million polys/sec / Rendering Speed : 500 M pixel/sec / Additional Features : Bump Mapping, Fog, Alpha-Bending (transparency), Mip Mapping (polygon-texture auto switch), Tri-Linear Filtering, Anti-Aliasing, Environment Mapping, and Specular Effect. Guilty Gear X Version 1.5, Guilty Gear Isuka, Rumble Fish, The King Of Fighters 2004, The King Of Fighters Neowave Sammy Atomiswave Hardware: CPU : Hitachi SH-4 64-bit RISC CPU (200 MHz 360 MIPS / 1.4 GFLOPS) / Graphic Engine : PowerVR 2 (PVR2DC) / Sound Engine : ARM7 Yamaha AICA 45 MHZ (with internal 32-bit RISC CPU, 64 channel ADPCM) / Main Ram : 32 megs / Main Memory : 16 MByte / Graphic Memory : 16 MByte / Sound Memory : 8 MByte / Media : ROM Board / Simultaneous Number of Colors : Approx. 16,770,000 (24bits) / Polygons : 2.5 Million polys/sec / Rendering Speed : 500 M pixel/sec / Additional Features : Bump Mapping, Fog, Alpha-Bending (transparency), Mip Mapping (polygon-texture auto switch), Tri-Linear Filtering, Anti-Aliasing, Environment Mapping, and Specular Effect./ Network : It is possible to connect the systems on the network using both 56K modem or broadband connection using the AW-Net. Sega's Naomi architecture (a more powerful version of the Sega Dreamcast engine) was used by Capcom for a number of games. Rather than create new fighting games from scratch Capcom instead chose to import sprites from previous games and cross them over. In latter games Capcom crossed those sprites over with SNK ones. Most of the advanced features of the Naomi architecture was invested in creating some of the most beautiful backgrounds in fighting game history. In fact, the biggest advances in recent years by Capcom have been superb level visuals. An almost identical version of the Sega Dreamcast (less powerful than the Naomi engine) was developed for the arcade by Sammy, known as the Atomiswave. The engine has been harnessed to great success by Sammy and DIMPS in the games Guilty Gear and Rumble Fish as well as SNK in the most recent King of Fighters games. This is proof that a good development team and a great idea (and not necessarily hardware) can translate into fighting titles as good as Capcom's work. If the War is to be designed for console players with future hardware in mind then worrying about Naomi, Atomiswave or CPS architecture is a moot point, as preliminary specs for the Xbox 2 and Playstation 3 have much greater architecture which would translate into the War being a feasible game for consoles and not the arcade.