Sega Hikaru

The Sega Hikaru is a successor of the Sega NAOMI and Sega Model 3 arcade systems that was developed in 1998 and debuted in 1999. The Hikaru was used for a handful of deluxe dedicated-cabinet games, beginning with 1999's Brave Fire Fighters, in which the flame and water effects were largely a showpiece for the hardware. It was significantly more powerful and expensive than the NAOMI. The Hikaru featured a custom Sega GPU with advanced graphical capabilities, additional CPU and sound processors, various custom processors, increased memory, and faster bandwidth. It was the first game platform capable of effective hardware Phong shading, the most intensive form of shading at the time, and was capable of the most complex lighting and particle effects of its time. It was the most powerful game system of its time (Planet Harriers, for example, was regarded as having the best video game graphics at the time), but it was very expensive and difficult to program. Since it was comparatively expensive to produce, Sega soon abandoned the Hikaru in favor of continued NAOMI development. It was succeeded by the more affordable NAOMI 2.