The Efu Emu Taunzu. Adored by the Japanese, a complete mystery to the west. What can you tell me about it?
How should I know?
It feels like a Japanese take on the western "Multimedia PC" standard, where CD-ROM was supposed to bring out the future of computer experience.
>>11512482I concur. Multimedia PC era was a blessed and comfy era though.I also want to say the FM Towns is aesthetically perfect, what a great looking machine.
>>11512497The Japanese had a great eye for industrial design
>>11512504Yup, another favorite. That set up there is as ultimate as you can get.The handle on top really is the cherry on top of a perfect sundae.PC aesthetics turning into boxes with glass panels is the dark timeline.
>>11512460As with all the japanese of the 80s and 90s it's a MS-DOS IBM-PC compatible system with a preset spec. Nothing unique about them.
It failed in the Japanese market like everything that wasn't PC98. Sure they sold for a while and had "modest" success, but we're talking 2-3% of the Jap home computer user base here. Same with X68000 - as cool as it was, it failed in the market and was a niche thing for super-otaku who spent all their arcade money on a home arcade machine so they could play arcade games at home with the money they would have spent in an arcade.I've been on a Jap emulation kick and I can say with confidence that FM-Towns and X68000 were both superior in every way to the PC98, except in terms of software. PC98 dominated there. A good 80% of games for all three were eroge. But this leaves THOUSANDS of 'normal' games on the PC98, and merely a couple hundred tops for the X68000 and FM-Towns. MSX was the PC-98's only competitor in terms of sales volume and number of games.>>11512510This is just false.
>>11512460>volume buttons right next to the power button
>>11512460Here you go, knock yourself out.http://fmtowns.fanweb.jp/db/sdb.html
>>11512460I like the frontal cd drive
>>11512589>But this leaves THOUSANDS of 'normal' games on the PC98what the fuck are you smoking lmao? normal games?the only konami game on the whole system is a digital comic.if you want castlevania, you have to play rusty which is second rate
FM TOWNS MARTY was the one that made it over to the import scene by sneaking in as console. Gamefan magazine even had the Marty on the cover of their mag listed with stuff like SNES etc...the kind of brutally expensive stuff listed in the back that some rich kid otaku owned next to their NEO GEO. And of course the fucked up Engrish on every Marty...
>>11512859>the only konami game on the whole system is a digital comicFirst, there are TWO Konami games on the PC-98, and second, I wasn't restricting myself to just talking about Konami games. That's a YOU thing.PC-98 has way more non-porn games than any other Japanese system. It's just a fact.
>>11512460Everything is gay now, why can't I have a computer like this?
>>11512504>Soundcanvas
>Efu emu taunzuWhy do you bother posting in cringe ass romanji? Just say FM-Towns, you're not Japanese and this isn't Futaba Channel
>>11513658baka~
The pc-98 had games, the sharp had arcade conversions and the fm towns had multimedia focus.One of these is useful if you want your pc to sell as a gaming machine.
>>11512927You will have a standard box with a glass panel and you will like it. You will make it rotate every color of the rainbow because you are with it.You need to advertise your graphics card for twitch streamers.
>>11512927Get the Silverstone® FLP01 and you can have your own retro PC case.
>>11514625Wasn't there some Jap company that made a PC98 looking case as a joke and is now making it for real after a ton of requests?
>>11514632Yes, I just posted it.
>>11514643SilverStone is Japanese?I thought they were Taiwan shit.
>>11514646Could be a close partnership, still, that particular case is quite pricey
>>11512589>This is just false.It isn't. If your system is IBM compatible it has nothing unique about it double so if it runs MS-DOS.
>>11514738>system is IBM compatibleThey weren't. Many machines were made that aren't IBM compatible yet could run MS-DOS. Such as the PC-98.
>>11514754Those versions of MS-DOS were custom to that hardware anon, it wasn't the generic one you'd find in a US shop.
>>11514792It was just hard-coded with a different language and had some custom drivers.
>>11514798It wasn't PC compatible though. It was PC-'like' if you want. But you couldn't run the bulk of unmodified MS-DOS software on a PC-98.You're getting quite close to calling an Apple ][ a C64 if you think some architectural commonalities make things the same.
>>11512460>>11512504I miss when stuff looked cool.
>>11514738You are dealing with a different memory map, different port addresses, different BIOS, different data bus (It used C-bus instead of ISA), different partition table for HDDs, different drive lettering schemes (A: is always whatever boots, not just floppy), then you also have the different floppy formats but that's not PC-98 exclusive. You might get text only software to run assuming it was written for a compatible CPU, but if you want to do anything more it won't work.I think you might be confusing it with either the desperate chimera that was the PC-9821 or the PC98-NX which is just a wintel PC based on a similarly named spec from 1998.
>>11512460>dual floppy drives>front loading cd-rom>volume controls, kb, mouse and joypad inputs all in frontholy based
>>11514754Also if it matters, true IBM compatibles are called "DOS/V" in Japan after a Japan-specific version of MS-DOS designed to overcome Japanese language input. Japanese OEMs like Toshiba and Fujitsu (on FMV series computers, though FM Towns - the OP's subject - did gain some DOS/V support later on) and western OEMs (Dell, Compaq, etc) sell true IBM compatibles for the Japanese market, marketed as such.
>>11514823>C-busWhere i can read about it? all search engines give me some smart home faggotry.
>>11514897Try Japanese wikipedia, gives you the pin layout. The ISA article should have its pin layout on wikipedia (on the English article) too in case you want to compare.https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%E3%83%90%E3%82%B9
>>11514939Thanks.
>>11514625Silverstone horizontal PC cases are classy, been continuously using them since 2008.
>>11512907>It's just a fact.can't really use the quantity over quality argument when theres hardly any "well-playing" gameseven the falcom stuff is all herky jerky scrolling
>>11515645>can't really use the quantity over quality argument when theres hardly any "well-playing" gamesAnd yet, that's what the Japanese bought, leaving us with this legacy of mostly shit coomer games made to spec for 1982-era computers.If Japanese had bought into X68000 more heavily things might have been different, but it turns out the primary customer for X68000 systems was Sharp itself, they dog-fooded about 300-400k of those puppies.
>>11512504Cool setup, but a flightstick is about the last thing I'd want to play a 2D shmup with.
>>11512510>IBM-PC compatibleLolno. It uses an x86 CPU, but it's not PC compatible. It's a different architecture, like the PC98.
>>11514625Wow thanks for posting this I'm actually going to buy it
>>11514820literally every piece of tech looks absolutely boring today. There is no pride and will in expressing your super cool tech anymore. It's either minimalist hell or RGB-puke
>>11512460Lots of ports from other systems had unique CD quality soundtracks that made them well worth checking out.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp1sEcrLdbIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h55BjlgqSA4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BIvLLdRwvghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfF1hx9Uxhw
>>11514692>still, that particular case is quite pricey>$130>priceyBetter not start collecting FM TOWNS MARTY, if that's your idea of pricey you will never be a BIG TYMER.
>>11517135Could have sworn it was far more like 400+
>>11514820>White people can't danceAPOLOGIZE
