“Tsugaru” – FM Towns Emulator Project | Hacker News Reader

“Tsugaru” – FM Towns Emulator Project

ysflight.in.coocan.jp

79 pointsapp4soft16 comments

A fun fact about the FM Towns - several American games, originally for DOS, had unique and arguably superior FM Towns ports.

Big ones off the top of my head include LOOM (CD music, 256 colours, 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).

Zak McKracken: The FM Towns version is the only one with 256 colours.

When the FM Towns came out, I always dreamt of having one (not the Marty, but the tower one). Only around 2 years ago I managed to pick one up and it did not disappoint. Very top notch when it came out, but only in the Japan.

They had picture in, I think TGM [0] (quick check; seems I have all of these in paper still) we could drool over, but not buy or play with it.

[0] https://retrocdn.net/Category:The_Games_Machine_(UK)_scans

It’s fascinating, ever since I first saw the FM Towns II (which was recent; I was not old enough during that era of computing,) I’ve had a nagging desire to try to purchase one. Sadly, shipping something like this to the U.S. from Japan is quite expensive, so maybe I will just be grateful someone is working on emulation software. :)

Whoa, I used to love this magazine when I was a kid. It was just fascinating, full of stuff that seemed so alien that I was never even sure if it was real.

Huge nostalgia trip coming up for me. Thanks for posting this.

Out of the loop: what exactly is "FM Towns"?

The answer is one search away: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_Towns

Kinda-sorta like a mashup of a DOS PC and a Japanese game console of the SNES / Genesis era.

It's cute and retro-cool but also very Japanese, and thus almost entirely unknown in the west.

What made it interesting to gamers was that its 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.

Which instantly reminds me of another weird mash up, the Amstrad Mega PC¹. A literal Japanese game console stuffed in to a DOS PC.

I've never seen one in real life, but I find the idea intriguing. Another chunk of Friday afternoon has gone now ;)

Edit: Add also the Sega TeraDrive² which I hadn't seen before.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_Mega_PC 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_TeraDrive

Its nice to see the FM Towns getting some love .

Yeah, Soji Yamaka is not only just one of limited number of persons who try keep FM Towns alive, but also is active FM artist on demoscene.[0]

[0] http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/FM/e.html

That is an amazing site you linked there -- got caught up reading how this person managed to get a working game dump from an old tape with a non-100% working tape reader with all kinds of interesting hackery. Pretty darn impressive!

I was lucky enough to meet him at last years Demosplash 2019 Demoscene party that was held at CMU. He is a brilliant and very nice guy. The work that he is doing on FM Towns reminds me of the amazing things hackers accomplished back in the day. Hope to see him again at a future Demosplash.

Really love the industrial design and UI design of this era of Japanese PCs like the Towns and the X68000. Often try to imagine what computing today would be if these had become the dominant platforms.

I remember being in my early teens, ca. 1991, seeing photos of FM Towns and X68000 cases, and those systems' graphics capabilities, and thinking "holy moly THIS is surely gonna be the future!" :D

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