Introduced in 1984, the System 1 platform was used for the following games: The hardware used a large circuit board with a Motorola 68010 main CPU running at 7.159 MHz, a MOS Technology 6502 sound CPU running at 1.789 MHz, a system ROM, text and graphics display hardware, and control interfaces.
Two large edge-card connectors allowed a "cartridge board" to be plugged in; the cartridge board supplied the main program ROMs, sound program ROMs, graphics ROMs, graphics shift registers, a "SLAPSTIC" copy protection chip, a Yamaha YM2151 FM sound generator, a POKEY and (for some games) TI TMS5220 LPC speech synthesis chip.
Converting one System 1 game into another generally required replacing the cartridge board, attraction marquee, control panel, and in some cases installing additional controls (e.g., foot pedal for Road Blasters).
System 1 and the Japanese JAMMA wiring standard were attempts to move to a modular solution, though there were many smaller companies that sold conversion kits for competitors' hardware.
The main CPU was a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) T-11 microprocessor running at 10 MHz.