>Was the purpose of this revision to play-test it at several arcades? What exactly was >this early version used for?
There may have been a few versions made in order to correct program bugs in the arcade games such as coin credit issues or game has several instances of locking up.
Hard to say unless one has Capcom tech release paperwork similar to what Atari or Midway had been mailing to arcade operators and vendors back in the 1970s or 1980s with release announcements for bug fix version upgrades for games such as Asteroids or Midway Mortal Kombat. No idea if Capcom did anything similar to that of what Atari and Midway did back in the days.