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FM Towns emulators

2,045 bytes added, 02:50, 6 July 2020
Added new sectors.
;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.
 
==Overview==
===Game Versions===
The computer's sprite handling was well in excess of that offered by the 16-bit consoles of the time, allowing some very accurate ports of early nineties Japanese arcade games. Combined with the big box packaging, this led to many of these ports becoming expensive collectors items.
Being one of the earlier instances of a fully integrated CD-ROM computer with x86 underpinnings, it also saw a lot of PC ports, some of which were enhanced in interesting ways, such as a fully voiced version of ''Ultima VI''.
 
A fun fact about the FM Towns was that several American games, originally for DOS (PC), had unique and arguably superior FM Towns ports, especially a few early 2D point and click adventures from LucasArts.
Notable examples include ''LOOM'' (CD music, 256 colors, uncut dialogue), ''Wing Commander'' (fully reprogrammed as a 32-bit protected mode game that actually runs at a consistent speed) and ''Ultima VI'' (with Ultima VII-style keywords and a highly questionable voice track). The FM Towns verson of LucasArts' ''Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders'' is the only one with 256 colors.<ref name="YC News">{{cite web|url=https://news.ycombinator.com/ |title=“Tsugaru” – FM Towns Emulator Project (in.coocan.jp) |publisher=Y Combinator |accessdate=2020-07-04|date=2020 May 23}}</ref>
 
==Issues==
A true and proper open-source FM-Towns emulator has been severely lacking all the way up to 2020. Though, a few modern emulators such as MAME and Tsugaru strive towards 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.
 
==External Links==
* [https://illusioncity.net/fujitsu-fm-towns-emulators-lists/ Old emulators + lists guide at illusioncity.net]
 
==References==
{{Reflist}}
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