The Namco System 11 is an arcade system board released by Namco in 1994. The actual hardware is based on Sony's PlayStation home console, and thus many games were ported to that console. The major difference between the two is that the System 11 used surface-mounted ROM chips to store the game data, whereas the PlayStation used CD-ROM. This meant that all System 11 games were unique to the particular system board, and could not be swapped out with another game.
Contents
System 11 was succeeded by the System 12 design.
Development
Although the System 11 was technically inferior to Sega's Model 2 arcade board, its lower price made it an attractive prospect for smaller arcades. According to the June 1995 issue of Edge:
Namco took a significant risk in basing its Tekken coin-op on raw PlayStation hardware, considering that it would be competing directly with Sega's Model 2-powered Virtua Fighter 2 ... For once, a home system can boast an identical conversion of a cutting-edge coin-op ... Namco's research section managing director, Shegeichi Nakamura ... explains: "When Sony came along we decided to go for a low-cost system—in short, we've left the big arcade stores to Sega and VF2 and Tekken has been sold to smaller arcade centres" ... Namco has a further four titles planned for System 11, all of which are likely to make the jump to the PlayStation.
System 11 specifications
PSX BASED