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The Namco System 22 is the successor to the Namco System 21 arcade system board. It debuted in 1992 with Sim Drive in Japan, followed by a worldwide debut in 1993 with Ridge Racer.
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The System 22 was designed by Namco with assistance from graphics & simulation company Evans & Sutherland. Graphical features include texture mapping, Gouraud shading, transparency effects, and depth cueing, thanks to the Evans & Sutherland 'TR3' chip/chipset, which stands for: Texture Mapping, Real-Time, Real-Visual, Rendering System. The main CPU provides a scene description to the TR3 graphics processing unit and a bank of DSP chips which perform 3D calculations.
A variant of the system, called the Super System 22, was released in 1995. The hardware was largely similar to the System 22, but with a slightly higher polygon rate and more special effects possible.
Both Super System 22 and System 22 can render significantly better graphics, more polygons with sharper texture-mapping, running in higher resolution and at a higher framerate compared to the graphics capabilities of the original Sony PlayStation, the Sega Saturn and the Nintendo 64 video game systems, but much less than what the Sega Dreamcast can produce.
According to Namco America the twin seat Ridge Racer arcade unit sold to distribution for $11,995.00 in 1993.