NAOMI
Dreamcast's arcade sibling
Sega's NAOMI arcade board shared Dreamcast architecture, enabling arcade-perfect home ports and efficient cross-platform development.
NAOMI (New Arcade Operation Machine Idea) was Sega’s arcade platform sharing architecture with the Dreamcast. This relationship meant arcade games could be ported to Dreamcast with minimal effort, delivering arcade-perfect home versions. The system powered numerous fighting games, racing games, and other arcade hits through the early 2000s.
Fast facts
- Manufacturer: Sega.
- Relationship: architecture shared with Dreamcast.
- CPU: Hitachi SH-4 at 200MHz.
- GPU: PowerVR2, and scalable — Sega’s engineers could specify two, four or sixteen boards running in parallel, each owning a fraction of the display.
- Memory: more than Dreamcast (32MB+).
- Media: cartridge or GD-ROM.
What “more powerful” meant
The tile-based way PVR2 divides the screen is what let Sega scale the board rather than replace it. Edge, reporting on the 1998 announcement:
Because of the way PVR2 deals with the screen in terms of tiles, it is possible for Naomi to be a totally scaleable system. Sega’s engineers can specify either two, four or sixteen PVR2 boards to run in parallel, with minimal bandwidth problems. Each of the cards handles its half, quarter or sixteenth of the display, providing incredible performance at low cost.
A sixteen-board machine was put at 15–20 million polygons a second. Treat the board counts with some caution: Edge attributes them to an unnamed source under the heading of its own “further investigation”, not to a Sega specification.
Why it mattered
NAOMI’s arcade-home connection:
- Port efficiency: same code base for both.
- Arcade perfect: home versions matched arcades.
- Development savings: create once, deploy twice.
- Quality assurance: arcade testing validated games.
Notable games
NAOMI arcade hits:
- Dead or Alive 2: fighting game showcase.
- Virtua Tennis: tennis perfection.
- Crazy Taxi: arcade driving.
- Marvel vs. Capcom 2: fighting crossover.