Where to get it

1994 · Puzzle

Pnickies

Pnickies is a Tetris-style puzzle game, where the objective is to match coloured balls of the same colour, causing them to disappear. Balls which are the same colour link together on contact to form large shapes, and must be carefully stacked to allow access to other colours.

Released: 1 July 1994
Platforms: Arcade
Genres: Puzzle
Developers: —
Publishers: Capcom
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Side view
Engine: Capcom Play System (CPS-1)
Languages: Japanese

About

The CP System (CPシステム, CP shisutemu), also known as Capcom Play System or CPS for short (and retroactively as CPS-1), is an arcade system board developed by Capcom that ran game software stored on removable daughterboards. More than two dozen arcade titles were released for CPS-1, before Capcom shifted game development over to its successor, the CP System II. Technical support for the CPS-1 ended on March 31, 2015.

The CP System is best known for its many brawlers (beat 'em up) genre titles such as the Top 5 which are Captain Commando, Dynasty Wars, Final Fight, Knights of the Round, and The King of Dragons. Then later on for the CP System Dash successor including Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, The Punisher, and the sequel to Dynasty Wars titled Warriors of Fate.

Keywords

blocks
falling blocks

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

The development of the CP System hardware began in 1986 when Capcom president Kenzo Tsujimoto came up with the concept inspired by the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), known domestically as the Family Computer (Famicom). He saw the rise of home video games as competition for the arcades, and stated that "the only way we can make money is to give people twice what they can get at home". After a number of arcade game boards designed to run only one game, Capcom also embarked upon a project to produce a system board that could be used to run multiple games, in order to reduce hardware costs and make the system more appealing to arcade operators.

Capcom developed the hardware for about two-and-a-half years, during which time they developed two custom microchips known as the "CPS Super Chips", which were equivalent to the power of ten normal arcade boards at the time. The two chips cost around £5,500,000 or $9,800,000 (equivalent to $27,000,000 in 2025) to develop, and also served as the graphics hardware of the system.