The Model 2 is an arcade system board originally debuted by Sega in 1993 as a successor to the Sega Model 1 board. It is an extension of the Model 1 hardware, most notably introducing the concept of texture-mapped polygons, allowing for more realistic 3D graphics for its time.

The Model 2 board was an important milestone for the arcade industry, and helped launch several key arcade franchises of the 1990s, including Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, Sega Rally Championship, Dead or Alive, Virtua Striker, Cyber Troopers Virtual-On and The House of the Dead.

Hardware

The Model 2 was designed as the direct successor to the Model 1, and like its predecessor was released as a set of printed circuit boards to arcade operators, or packaged in bespoke cabinets created by Sega.

The most noticeable improvement of the Model 2 over the Model 1 is texture mapping, which enables polygons to be painted with bitmap images, as opposed to the limited monotone flat shading that the previous board supported. The Model 2 also introduced the use of texture filtering and texture anti-aliasing, as well as trilinear filtering. It was the most powerful game system in its time, equivalent to the power of a PC graphics card in 1998, five years after the Model 2's release.

There are in fact four versions of the system: the original Model 2, and the Model 2A-CRX, Model 2B-CRX and Model 2C-CRX variants. The Model 2 and 2A-CRX use a custom DSP with internal code for the geometrizer, while 2B-CRX and 2C-CRX use well documented DSPs and upload the geometrizer code at startup to the DSP.

According to Yu Suzuki, the Sega Model 2B-CRX arcade system board developed for Fighting Vipers "has a slightly faster processing speed" and "a higher response to displaying more polygons".