Arcade system board

An arcade system board is a standardized printed circuit board or group of printed circuit boards that are used as the basis for multiple arcade games with very similar hardware requirements.

Early arcade system boards incorporated the game directly into the system board, which saved on manufacturing costs (due to the common components) but required arcade game owners to buy an entire system board for each new game.

Later arcade system boards, including SNK's Neo-Geo, Capcom's CPS-2, and Sega's NAOMI, separated the system board from the game itself, akin to a home video game console and cartridge. This method benefitted both manufacturers and arcade game owners; the owners only had to buy the system board once, and could switch out the games at a fraction of the price and with less effort, and the manufacturers could produce fewer of the costly system boards and more of the less-costly games. The ease and value of switching out games also led to brand loyalty, as owners of system board X would be much more likely to buy the latest X game for $1000 than to fork over $5000 for system board Y to run the latest Y game, or incorporated system board and game Z.