DECO Cassette System

The DECO Cassette System was an arcade platform introduced by Data East in October 1980 and was the first standardised arcade system that let operators change games. It was developed in 1979 and released in Japan in 1980 and in North America in 1981. An operator bought a base cabinet while the games came on standard microcassette tapes. The operator inserted a cassette and a key module, a form of copy protection, and on power up the program was copied into the cabinet's RAM, which took about two to three minutes. The machine had three processors: a DECO 222, a modified MOS 6502 at 750 kilohertz with built-in encryption for the cassettes; an unmodified 6502 at 500 kilohertz for sound; and an Intel 8041 at 6 megahertz that controlled the cassette subsystem.