The FM Towns (commonly spelled FM-Towns, FM TOWNS, or FM-TOWNS) system is a Japanese PC variant, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs. In 1993, the FM Towns Marty was released, a gaming console compatible with the FM Towns games.
The name "FM Towns" is derived from the codename the syste...
more
The FM Towns (commonly spelled FM-Towns, FM TOWNS, or FM-TOWNS) system is a Japanese PC variant, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs. In 1993, the FM Towns Marty was released, a gaming console compatible with the FM Towns games.
The name "FM Towns" is derived from the codename the system was assigned while in development, "Townes"; this was chosen as an homage to Charles Hard Townes, one of the winners of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics, following a custom of Fujitsu at the time to codename PC products after Nobel prize winners.
Fujitsu, which had the best-selling 8-bit home computer FM-7, and the Fujitsu Micro 16s PC in early 1980s in Japan, decided to release a new home computer after the FM-7 was overcome by NEC's PC-8801 computer. From this experience, Fujitsu learned that software sales drove hardware sales. In order to...
less
