Rolling Thunder 2 was developed for Namco's arcade system board known as "SYSTEM2." The sound chip was the C140, which featured 24 PCM channels and 8 FM channels (powered by the YM-2151). Synthesizers were primarily used to create the source material for the PCM chip to play back sounds, rather than composing music by directly playing the synth via MIDI as in typical music production. In terms of the sounds used, the YM-2151 on the board is comparable to a DX-21 as a musical instrument. Other equipment included the U-20, R-8, and M1. For sampling, the TX-16W was utilized. Due to limited memory, the sample rates varied by sound and were likely around 8–22 kHz.