Game:

Border Down (2003)

Duration: 0:37

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The NAOMI is the successor to the Sega Model 3. Sega first demonstrated NAOMI publicly at the 1998 Amusement Machine Show (an annual trade show hosted in Tokyo by the Japan Amusement Machinery Manufacturers Association). After the show, Sega released the first NAOMI title to the Japanese market: The House of the Dead 2.

A development of the Dreamcast home game console, the NAOMI and Dreamcast share the same hardware components, but the NAOMI has twice as much system memory & video memory, and four times as much sound memory. Multiple NAOMI boards can be 'stacked' together to support multiple-monitor output.

The NAOMI arcade-board features 168 MB of solid-state ROMs or GD-ROMs using a custom DIMM board and GD-ROM drive. In operation, the Naomi GD-ROM is read only once at system powerup, downloading the disc's contents to the DIMM-Board RAM. Once the download is complete, the game executes out of RAM, thereby reducing mechanical wear on the GD-ROM drive.

NAOMI uses some of the same electronic components as Sega's Dreamcast home game console: Hitachi SH-4 CPU, PowerVR Series 2 GPU (PVR2DC), and Yamaha AICA Super Intelligent Sound Processor based sound system. However, NAOMI has twice as much system memory, twice as much video memory, and four times as much sound memory.

Multiple NAOMI boards can be clustered to improve graphics performance and to support multiple-monitor output. A special game cabinet for the NAOMI, NAOMI Universal Cabinet, houses up to sixteen boards for this purpose. Multiple-board variants are referred to as NAOMI Multiboard hardware, which debuted in 1999.

Sega's NAOMI Satellite Terminal Hardware infrastructure enabled developers to make games with multiple control terminals, so several people could sit and play a game that has one large screen. The Satellite Terminal Hardware links up to 10 NAOMI boards. Multi-terminal systems like this made use of Memory Card Reader and Dispenser (MCRD) technology. Derby Owners Club (2000) and World Club Champion Football (2002) are two applications of these technologies.

Some NAOMI titles read game data from a GD-ROM optical disc, which is also the Dreamcast's software medium. Game data can also be stored in a 168-megabyte bank of solid-state ROM. GD-ROM support requires a specialized DIMM board in addition to the GD-ROM drive. When the NAOMI powers-on, it copies data from the comparatively slow GD-ROM to the faster DIMM memory. Thereafter, the game executes entirely in RAM.

Unlike Sega's previous arcade platforms (and most other arcade platforms in the industry), NAOMI is widely licensed for use by other game publishers. Among the licensees were Nintendo (which only licensed one game, Rhythm Tengoku: HD Remixed Edition), Bandai Namco Games, Capcom, Sammy Corporation, and Tecmo. Some of the games developed by licensees were Mazan, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (Capcom 2000), Rhythm Tengoku (Nintendo 2007), Dead or Alive 2 (Tecmo 1999) and Guilty Gear XX (Sammy 2002). Sammy developed a derivative platform, the Atomiswave, which has interchangeable game cartridges.

The last NAOMI titles were released in 2008: Sega's Melty Blood: Actress Again and Subtle Style's Akatsuki Blitzkampf Ausf. Achse.