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FM Towns emulators

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The '''FM Towns''' system is was a Japanese variant line of PC, built personal computers designed and manufactured by Fujitsu from between February 1989 to and the summer of 1997. It started 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 a their own proprietary variant of [[Intel CPUs|the IBM PC variant platform]], intended for multimedia applications and PC video games, but later it gradually became more compatible interoperable with regular PCsover time. In 1993The "FM" part of the name is short for "Fujitsu Micro, the FM Towns Marty " which was in line with their earlier products. The e in "Townes" was released, dropped to help users avoid confusion over a game console compatible with existing FM Towns gamespossible mispronunciation of Townes as "tow-nes".
The "FM" part Town's sprite handling was well in excess of even 16-bit consoles of the name means "Fujitsu Micro" like their earlier productstime, while which allowed game developers to port early 90s arcade titles much more accurately to the "FM Towns" part is derived 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 code name the system was assigned while in developmentstart, "Townes". This refers to Charles Townesit also had a lot of ports of existing PC games, one with differing amounts of the winners content expansions to take advantage of the 1964 Nobel Prize in PhysicsFM Towns' own hardware. Several American DOS games had unique and arguably superior FM Towns ports, following especially a custom of Fujitsu at few early 2D point-and-click adventures from LucasArts. Some notable examples include ''<abbr title="Which was given CD music, the time ability to code name PC products after Nobel Prize winnersuse the FM Towns' 256-color mode, and uncut dialogue. The e in "Townes>LOOM</abbr>'', ''<abbr title=" Which was dropped when reprogrammed under 32-bit protected mode and would actually run at a consistent speed.">Wing Commander'', and ''<abbr title="Which had Ultima VII-style keywords and a low-budget English dialogue track that didn't exist in the original release.">Ultima VI</abbr>''. The FM Towns version of LucasArts' ''Zak McKracken and the system went into production to make it clearer that Alien Mindbenders'' is the term was to be pronounced like only version of the word game with 256 colors.<ref name="townsYC News" rather than >{{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> In 1993 Fujitsu released the potential "tow-nes"FM Towns Marty, a game console which was compatible with existing FM Towns games.
==Emulators==
: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> ==IssuesEmulation 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.
==External LinksNotes==* [https://illusioncity.net/fujitsu-fm-towns-emulators-lists<references group=N / Old emulators + lists guide at illusioncity.net]>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
 
==External links==
* [https://illusioncity.net/fujitsu-fm-towns-emulators-lists/ Old emulators + lists guide at illusioncity.net]
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