FM Towns

The FM Towns is a range of 32-bit home computers made by Fujitsu and released in Japan in February 1989. It was built around an Intel 80386 processor and was one of the first computers to come with a CD-ROM drive as standard.

It ran Towns OS, a graphical system built on MS-DOS, and later versions of Windows. Its hardware included sprites, several graphics layers, a Yamaha FM sound chip and PCM audio, which made it a strong machine for games and multimedia.

The CD-ROM drive gave the FM Towns versions of games like Zak McKracken, Loom and Monkey Island enhanced graphics or CD audio, and it received well-regarded ports such as After Burner III and Splatterhouse.

Fujitsu also released the FM Towns Marty in 1993, a games console based on the same hardware, which is pictured here. The computer line was renamed FM Towns II and continued until 1997, when Fujitsu moved to standard Windows PCs.

Tsugaru is the most accurate dedicated FM Towns emulator today. It is open source and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.