Sega G80

From Sega Retro

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Sega G80
Manufacturer: Sega
Release Date RRP Code

The Sega G80 is an arcade system produced by Sega in 1981. It can be considered a successor to the Sega VIC Dual system, and was Sega's arcade platform of choice before the release of the Sega System 1.

The G80 was designed to be a more versatile system than those seen in arcade cabinets of the past. Rather than rely on bespoke cabinet designs for each game, Sega opted for a more cost-effective "Convert-a-Game" system (as it was marketed in the US), in which games housed on CPU boards could be easily swapped by arcade operators. The G80 system consisted of a card cage with a 6 slot backplane that could be populated in different game configurations from a selection of 10+ different pluggable boards, allowing it to be configured it as either a raster system if a raster video board was inserted, or a vector system that could display color vector graphics.

The G80 gets its name from its Z80 CPU which was coupled with a custom security chip to prevent operators from abusing the swappable system. The security chip would obfuscate the "ld (address),a" instruction (opcode 32h) differently based on the security chip installed — an early form of copy protection. The mangling algorithms are rather complicated, and differ from security chip to security chip.[1]

The Sega G80 platform provided a basis for many reasonably successful vector-based games from the company, some of which, such as Space Fury, Tac/Scan, and, perhaps most famously, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator, saw home console/computer ports.

Technical Specifications

List of Games

Raster

Vector

References

See Also


Sega arcade boards
Originating in arcades









Console-based hardware








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PC-based hardware








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