In the golden age of arcades, the roar of the crowd and the click of joysticks were backed by the hum of proprietary hardware. For decades, companies like Sega, Namco, and Capcom built custom arcade boards that were technological marvels—but they were also expensive and difficult to maintain. Then, in the mid-2000s, Taito did something radical. They abandoned custom hardware in favor of a PC-based architecture. The result was the Taito Type X series, a family of arcade motherboards that would define the late arcade era and, years later, spark a passionate emulation community around the Taito Type X ROM set.
Taito Type X is a PC-based arcade hardware platform (x86 architecture, Windows XP Embedded or similar) used by Taito and other arcade manufacturers for running arcade games. ROM sets for Type X generally refer to the game files, assets, and executable data needed to run or emulate Type X titles.