Sega · 1992 · 1992 – 1994
CPU: NEC V60 + custom polygon "CG Board"
Sega's first 3D polygon arcade board ran only four games — but two of them, Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, set the direction of 3D arcade gaming for the rest of the decade.
Sega began thinking about a polygon arcade platform around 1988, started hiring for it in 1989 and built the hardware in-house during 1990 and 1991. The result, Model 1, paired the NEC V60 processor already used in Sega's System 32 board with a custom graphics board capable of about 180,000 polygons per second, or 6,500 polygons per frame at 60 frames per second. It drew flat-shaded polygons only; there was no texture mapping. Virtua Racing launched the board in 1992. Its clean, untextured cars and tracks ran at a smooth frame rate and offered several switchable camera views, and it made an immediate case for real-time 3D in the arcade. Virtua Fighter followed in 1993 and was the more consequential game: the first 3D one-on-one fighter, built by Yu Suzuki's AM2, it turned a genre of hand-drawn sprites into one of polygon characters animated with motion and weight. Star Wars Arcade (1993) and Wing War (1994) completed the library. Model 1 was expensive to develop for and to build, and only those four titles were released on it. Its importance lies in what came next. Sega partnered with GE Aerospace — whose simulation work had included texture-mapped graphics — on Model 2, which added texture mapping and sold more than 130,000 units by 1996. Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA and Sega Rally Championship were all built on the foundation Model 1 had laid.