Emulation General Wiki - User contributions [en]

FM Towns emulators

2026-08-29T18:02:32Z

172.68.70.203: Add NetBSD to Tsugaru emulator platforms

{{Infobox console
|title = FM Towns
|logo = FMTOWNS 2F.jpg
|developer = [[Fujitsu]]
|type=[[:Category:Computers|Home computer]], [[:Category:Home video game consoles|Home video game console]]
|release=1989 (FM Towns) 1993 (FM Towns Marty) 1994 (FM Towns Marty 2)
|discontinued=1997 (FM Towns) 1995 (FM Towns Marty)
|predecessor = [[Fujitsu FM-7 emulators|FM-7]]
|emulated = {{✓}}
}}
{{for|emulators that run on Towns OS|Emulators on FM Towns}}
The '''FM Towns''' was a Japanese line of personal computers designed and manufactured by Fujitsu between February 1989 and the summer of 1997. Fujitsu designed it under the codename '''Townes'''<ref group=N>After Charles Townes, the winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics; it was common for Fujitsu to use Nobel Prize winners as product codenames during development.</ref> as their own proprietary variant of [[PC Emulator Comparisons|the IBM PC platform]] using [[POS_(Pong_Consoles)_CPUs_and_Other_Chips#x86_CPUs|x86 CPUs]], intended for multimedia applications and video games, but it gradually became interoperable with regular PCs over time. The "FM" part of the name is short for "Fujitsu Micro," which was in line with their earlier products. The e in "Townes" was dropped to help users avoid confusion over a possible mispronunciation of Townes as "tow-nes".

The FM Towns' sprite handling was well in excess of even 16-bit consoles of the time, which allowed game developers to port early 90s arcade titles much more accurately to the FM Towns than on other systems. Combined with big box packaging, and the ports were eventually highly sought after by collectors later on. With CD-ROM support from the start, it also had a lot of ports of existing PC games, with differing amounts of content expansions to take advantage of the FM Towns' own hardware. Several American DOS games had unique and arguably superior FM Towns ports, especially a few early 2D point-and-click adventures from LucasArts. Some notable examples include {{hovertext|''LOOM''|Which was given CD music, the ability to use the FM Towns' 256-color mode, and uncut dialogue.}}, {{hovertext|''Wing Commander''|Which was reprogrammed under 32-bit protected mode and would actually run at a consistent speed.}}, and {{hovertext|''Ultima VI''|Which had Ultima VII-style keywords and a low-budget English dialogue track that didn't exist in the original release.}}. The FM Towns version of LucasArts' ''Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders'' is the only version of the game with 256 colors<ref name="YC News">{{cite web|url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23269460 |title=“Tsugaru” – FM Towns Emulator Project (in.coocan.jp) |publisher=Y Combinator |accessdate=2020-07-04|date=2020 May 23}}</ref>.

In 1993, Fujitsu released the [[wikipedia:FM Towns Marty|FM Towns Marty]], a game console which was compatible with existing FM Towns games.

In 1994, Fujitsu released the FM Towns Car Marty, which is FM Towns Marty in a smaller form factor, designed to be mounted on automobiles as navigation system.

==Emulators==
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;width:100%"
! scope="col"|Name
! scope="col"|Platform(s)
! scope="col"|Latest version
! scope="col"|[[RetroAchievements]]
! scope="col"|<abbr title="FM Towns">FMT</abbr>
! scope="col"|<abbr title="FM Towns Marty">Marty</abbr>
! scope="col"|[[Licensing|License]]
! scope="col"|Active
! scope="col"|Compatibility
! scope="col"|[[Recommended Emulators|Recommended]]
|-
! colspan="9"|PC / x86
|-
|Tsugaru (津軽)
|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux|macOS|NetBSD}}
|[https://github.com/captainys/TOWNSEMU/releases {{TsugaruVer}}]
|{{✗}}
|{{✓}}
|{{✓}}
|{{Green}} {{License|BSD3}} ({{License|Permissive}})
|{{✓}}
|{{Emulator compatibility|link=https://wiki3.jp/fmtowns/page/10|197|200}}
|{{✓}}
|-
|[[DREAMM]]
|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux|macOS}}
|[https://aarongiles.com/dreamm {{DREAMMVer}}]
|{{✗}}
|{{✓}}
|{{✗}}
|{{Red}} {{License|Proprietary}}
|{{✓}}
||
|{{~}}
|-
|UNZ
|align=left|{{Icon|Windows}}
|[http://townsemu.world.coocan.jp/download.html V0.5 L30]
|{{✗}}
|{{✓}}
|{{✓}}
|{{Red}} {{License|Proprietary}}
|{{✗}}
|{{Emulator compatibility|link=https://wiki3.jp/fmtowns/page/10|167|174}}
|{{~}}
|-
|Xe
|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux}}
|[http://web.archive.org/web/20140212232811/http://www.xe-emulator.com/index.php?m=download 2.16.2]
|{{✗}}
|{{✗}}
|{{✓}}
|{{Red}} {{License|Proprietary}}
|{{✗}}
|{{?}}
|{{~}}
|-
|[[MAME]]
|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux|macOS|FreeBSD}}
|<abbr title="Latest development version">git artifacts</abbr><ref group=E>[https://nightly.link/mamedev/mame/workflows/ci-windows/master CI-Windows] [https://nightly.link/mamedev/mame/workflows/ci-linux/master CI-Linux] [https://nightly.link/mamedev/mame/workflows/ci-macos/master CI-Macos]</ref>[http://www.mamedev.org/release.html {{MAMEVer}}] [https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/ libretro core]
|{{✗}}
|{{~}}
|{{~}}
|{{Green}} {{License|GPLv2}} {{License|BSD3}}
|{{✓}}
|{{?}}
|{{✗}}[https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/fujitsu/fmtowns.cpp#L2874 *]
|-
|FM Towns/Bochs
|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux}}
|[http://web.archive.org/web/20070119144846/http://fmbochs.emuvibes.com 1.2.1]
|{{✗}}
|{{~}}
|{{✗}}
|{{Green}} {{License|GPLv2}} ({{License|Copyleft}})
|{{✗}}
|{{?}}
|{{✗}}
|-
|-
|[[Geartowns]]
|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux|macOSx32|macOSARM|FreeBSD|NetBSD|LinuxARM|WoA}}
|[https://github.com/drhelius/Geartowns/releases {{GeartownsVer}}]
|{{?}}
|{{Ya}}
|{{?}}
|{{Green}} {{License|GPLv3}} ({{License|Copyleft}})
|{{Ya}}
|{{?}}
|{{Na}}
|}
<references group=E/>
===Comparisons===
;UNZ
:The FM Towns/Marty emulator with very high compatibility, last updated in 2010. Despite the website and documentation being in Japanese, the emulator is available in English. It cannot run ISOs directly, instead choosing to read game data from an optical drive that's attached to the host system (thankfully, ISOs can easily be mounted as virtual optical drives on most modern OSes, even Windows 10). Floppy disk images, however, can be loaded directly into the emulator itself. The emulator requires a number of ROM files, which can be found [http://emuz0n3.tripod.com/townsbios.zip here]. The only noteworthy thing UNZ isn’t yet capable to run is Windows 95.

;Tsugaru
:A new FM Towns emulation project, started in January 2020. Within a year of development, over 95% of software achieved [http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/FM/towns/Tsugaru/e.html compatibility] - check release logs under Revisions far down the main GitHub page. 80386 CPU type is fine; but (WIP) 80486 emulation needs a strong late 2010's PC CPU. Various audio chips/generators still WIP. Early release builds started popping up in [https://github.com/captainys/TOWNSEMU/releases late August 2020].

;Xe
:An old multi-system emulator for Linux (x86 and PowerPC) with decent FM Towns Marty support. Windows port requires [https://sourceforge.net/projects/gladewin32/files/gtk%2B-win32-runtime/ GTK+ Runtime]. It requires a very odd BIOS file to work, obtained by concatenating the two MAME-ready ROMs into a single file named ‘marty.rom’, then placed into a subfolder titled ‘bios’. On Windows, this can be achieved using the command <code>copy /B mrom.m36 + mrom.m37 marty.rom</code>.

;[[DREAMM]]
:Primarily an emulator for DOS/Windows games, DREAMM also emulates a small number of LucasArts games running on FM Towns. It has its own implementation of the FM Towns OS, so no files are required aside from the game itself. The supported games are: Zak McKracken, Loom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Monkey Island 1&2

;[[MAME]]
:Preliminary driver but it’s not a skeleton anymore, although still far from being up to snuff. See this [https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/Driver:FMTowns official guide] (Source: [https://wiki.mamedev.org/index.php/System-Specific_Setup_and_Information System-Specific Setup and Information] under MAMEDev Wiki) on installing TownsOS on MAME. [http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mess.php?software_list_name=fmtowns_cd&compatibility= MAME {{MAMEVer}} software list compatibility].

;FM Towns/Bochs
:A patch of [[Bochs]] that makes it somewhat compatible with FM Towns, deemed to be the first working emulator for the system. Just like regular Bochs, its configuration file needs a lot of tweaking to work (rough documentation [https://illusioncity.net/Towns/bochs%20config.txt here]). It has been long abandoned, compatibility is very spotty and emulation is remarkably slow, so don’t hold your breath.

==Emulation issues==
A true and proper open-source FM Towns emulator has been severely lacking all the way up to 2020. Though, by late 2010's, a few modern emulators such as MAME and Tsugaru strove toward this goal.

Sometimes around May 2018, Jon Campbell, the lead author of [[DOSBox#DOSBox-X|DOSBox-X]] has [https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/729#issuecomment-391049978 stubbed] the emulator such that other aspiring coders can build an FM-Towns core into their own fork. There have been discussions, but so far, nobody has taken up on that offer yet.

==Notes==
<references group=N />

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [https://illusioncity.net/fujitsu-fm-towns-emulators-lists/ Old emulators + lists guide at illusioncity.net]

[[Category:FM Towns| ]]
[[Category:CD-ROM-based]]
[[Category:Discontinued video game consoles]]
[[Category:Fourth-generation video game consoles]]
[[Category:Home video game consoles]]

Talk:List of console games that support pressure-sensitive buttons

2026-08-26T20:27:59Z

172.68.70.203: /* Proposed Deletion */ new section

== Proposed Deletion ==

I am not an active member of this wiki, but this page was immediately useful to me for the purpose of emulation.

This page should not be deleted for the purported reason of "having nothing to do with emulation", when many modern controllers do not support the same amount of analog control, especially regarding which of my games will require a specific controller or setup to properly control. Games such as Armored Core 4, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, etc, all have key controls tied to the analog buttons.

BGB

2026-08-05T02:33:03Z

172.68.70.203: Corrected the error stating that BGB supports loading roms from .7z archives. It only supports .zip and ,gz archives.

{{Infobox emulator
|title = BGB
|logo = BGB.png
|logowidth = 128
|version = {{Version|BGB}}
|active = Yes
|platform = [[Emulators on Windows|Windows]]
|target = [[Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulators|Game Boy/Color]]
|developer = beware
|accuracy = Highly-Accurate
|website = [http://bgb.bircd.org/ BGB]
|support = [https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1GKtGirdpJbY7BgKttJ4LCGzyUVzBJoL4W Bitcoin]
|license = {{License|Proprietary}}
}}

BGB is a freeware, closed-source [[Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulators|Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator]] developed by beware. It is one of the recommended and first Game Boy/Color emulators, owing to its excellent Game Boy and Game Boy Color accuracy, along with its great link support. It also has a wealth of options for color palettes and even enabling Super Game Boy colors and borders, though it doesn't emulate all of its functions. It comes with a built-in debugger that resembles [[No$|No$GMB]]'s debugger, with slightly more features.

There is currently no official support for macOS, Linux, or BSD. Therefore, it is recommended to use [[Wine]] if there is a need to run BGB on a non-Windows system.
==Downloads==
{| cellpadding="4"
|-
|align=center|{{Icon|Win-big}}
|'''[http://bgb.bircd.org/#downloads Latest release]'''
|}

==Features==
*Emulates the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and the Super Game Boy
*Accurate emulation of the hardware, based on research with a lot of test ROMs, useful for debugging or ROM development. Here are some highlights:
**High-accurate timing for the LCD behavior/state changes
**Realistic initial RAM values - random but with specific bit patterns, and simulated values left by bootroms (for example 'nibbler (pd)' depends on this)
**Accurate emulation of the LCD register writes during scanline (prehistoric man, demotronic demo)
**Emulation of inaccessible VRAM and OAM, as similar to real hardware
**High-accurate emulation of sprites, which causes mode 3 to take longer periods to render
**Correct memory access timing (memory accesses happening at the last second to the last clock of an opcode)
**Accurate emulation for the differences between a DMG and a GBC, including timing differences, and differences in hardware behavior, initial state, etc
**Optionally emulates how an actual DMG would run a GBC ROM, and how an actual GBC would run a DMG ROM

*Powerful debugger:
**Disassembler with selectable syntaxes from [[No$|No$GMB]], rgbds, and wla
**Assembler - modify code and the ability to save it as a modified ROM
**Symbols - .sym file support
**'Inline' editing in code, data, and stack viewer
**Breakpoints
**Break on access
**Conditional breakpoints
**'on jump' access breakpoints for breaking before a jump into a range is taken
**Source code breakpoints - ld, b, and b
**Debug messages - ld, d, and d
**Singlestepping/tracing/animating/step out/step over
**VRAM viewer - background map, tiles, OAM, and palette
**IO registers viewer
**Real-time display of data during emulation and freezing of RAM values
**Break on exceptions - accessing inaccessible VRAM, read uninitialized RAM, echo RAM access, access locked external RAM, disable LCD outside vblank
**Ability to modify all registers and state at any given time
**Joypad window - allows simulating button presses at any given time while debugging

*SGB multiplayer - up to 4 gamepads
*Graphics output - GDI or DirectDraw or Direct3D or OpenGL or null output
*Graphics doubler - HQ2X or Scale2x or scanlines filter or blocky
*Sound output - waveout or DirectSound or null or disk writer. Supports writing the 4 channels to separate .wav files
*.avi recording with installed codec of choice that is synchronized with a recorded .wav file, and then can be combined into a single video afterward
*Runs almost every ROM in existence perfectly, and the compatibility is comparable with the best GB/C emulators
*Accurate and high-quality sound emulation, bandlimited synthesis
*Accurate video emulation including 'high color' graphics, correct sprite, and background priorities, 10 sprites per line limit, and mid-scanline register changes
*Joystick and gamepad support - any key can be mapped to any joystick or gamepad button
*Some user interface keys are configurable and can be mapped to a joystick/gamepad button(s)
*MBC3 Real-time clock emulation - the real-time clock data is saved or loaded in the .sav file, also compatible with [[VisualBoy Advance|VisualBoyAdvance]]
*Auto delay/frameskip - emulation runs at real Game Boy/Color speeds at 60 FPS
*GameGenie and GameShark cheat support - load or save cheats (auto and manual), a 'cheat searcher', and the ability to create cheat codes
*Save/load state with quick ([[ZSNES]] style, and mappable) keys
*Forward and backward compatibility of .sav files and save states, this is to ensure that your saved progress is not lost. BGB can also load all save files from previous versions
*Load ROMs from .gz and .zip archives
*Support for an optional border bitmap image, with fake or real fullscreen modes
*Game link cable support through TCP/IP

==External links==
* [http://bgb.bircd.org BGB Website]
* [http://bgb.bircd.org/history.html BGB Changelogs]

{{Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulators}}

[[Category:Emulators]]
[[Category:Console emulators]]
[[Category:Handheld console emulators]]
[[Category:Add-on console emulators]]
[[Category:Super Game Boy emulators]]
[[Category:Windows emulation software‏‎]]
[[Category:Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulators]]
[[Category:Closed-source emulators]]
[[Category:Active emulation software]]

Talk:Apple III

2026-06-20T19:02:13Z

172.68.70.203: /* Mass Edit */ new section

== Mass Edit ==

Hi all,
Much apologies for the random huge change of the Apple /// article (originally at [[Apple III line]]), but I was introduced to this website yesterday after seeing a link on the grand old Discord thingimajigger. I searched around, and to my amazement, the Apple /// had an article. Of course, I'm no expert whatsoever - I only maintain one - but I found the language of the article to be unprofessional at best and somewhat vague on "the flaw" that killed the Apple ///. I checked my sources (as seen with apple3.org and Wikipedia, both are INCREDIBLE sources somehow) and modified the page to what I'd reckon would work well to read (following best practices as best as I could)
I apologize profusely if this isn't standard behavior here, I'm not a professional at Wikipedia editing, much less this wiki. I truly don't intend to create an account nor continue editing here, but I hope this won't get me executed and that this at least provides a better article than the old one.
I just wanted to provide my reasoning as to why I made the edit - first time this IP has edited here, probably suspicious as hell, so I wanted to clear it up before there's a huge undo of the article or something.