Fujitsu FM Towns Marty

FM Towns Marty is a home console released only in Japan in 1993 by Fujitsu. Even if the console released only in Japan, a lot of the games released for the console can be played in English. This was the first attempt of Fujitsu to enter the console gaming market. What made eventually FM Towns Marty quite unique at the time was the ability to play CD-ROMs along with the fact that FM Towns Marty is considered the first 32-bit console.

FM Towns Marty was based on the FM Towns personal computers that Fujitsu was already manufacturing. It has backwards compatibility with the games of FM Towns personal computer. However, some of the games that manufactured for FM Towns after the launch of FM Towns Marty wasn't compatible with the console version. Some games released also only for FM Towns Marty. In addition, the console has compatibility with the keyboard and mouse of the personal computer and can also play audio CDs. FM Towns Marty peculiarly had also a jack for a microphone in order to be used as a karaoke machine.

The technical specs of FM Towns Marty were ahead of it's time. However, the custom hardware that was used made it extremely difficult to changes. The price of the console was also way high (¥98,000 - then ~US$710), especially when the console was targeting children as potential users. Ironically and despite that, lot of Hentai games were released for FM Towns Marty. In addition, NEC's PC98 personal computers were dominating the PC market and Playstation and Sega Saturn was soon going to be launched in the console market. All these facts led to discontinuation of the console in 1995. However, a lot of games were still produced until 1999 from third party developers.

In 1994 Fujitsu released FM Towns Marty 2, with a different design and a lower price, in an attempt to increase the sales. The system, however, was identical to FM Towns Marty. After lowering the price (¥66,000 or US$670) the sales have been increased but not in a point that would avoid discontinuation.

Lastly, the controller of FM Towns Marty is simple. It has a four directions button and only two action buttons, along with a select and a run button.