Yes! I’m so glad you did this one. :) I remember first seeing one of these in a magazine called Ace here in the UK and thought it looked and sounded like a very sophisticated and futuristic piece of kit (which I suppose it was compared to what was out at the time). I always wondered what this would be like to play on, especially next to the Sharp X6800 so this was good to see. Thanks once again for the excellent and thoroughly researched content mate! 😊
Glad you liked it! The FMT and Marty were definitely interesting for when they came out, even if they were really never meant for 'everyone.' While it could do some things better than the other hardware of the time, I would have expected a little more for the cost. Still fun to take a look at these days!
OMG I was so excited to see this video pop up! I was obsessed w this machine back in the day. I would love to see you cover the Konami and Capcom translations, or other major arcade makers of the time conversion's to this machine. Thanks for another awesome video!
YES!!!!!!! Thank you sir!! I'm glad when there's info about something that isn't necessarily an NES, Genesis or SNES. I bought an FM Towns II,the PC format one years back and the only Sega port I have on it is Afterburner. I LOVE Raiden Densetsu (Raiden Trad) and Genocide Square a ton.
I know most sources these days refer to it as a port but I personally feel that it's more based of the concept of that game than a complete port. Especially when you look at the Sega CD version with its behind the plane chase view. It's definitely more like Strike Fighter than G-Loc though, so fair point that I could have covered that.
The FM Towns/Marty and Sharp X68000 were the only computers truly capable of delivering near-arcade perfect ports, and they're from the late 80s! The Amiga was mindblowing by 1985 standards, but quite a bit older and it featured less powerful hardware. It was also subject to many lazy Atari ST ports that made the slower 68000 choke
I don't really agree that the FMT and X68k were the only computers capable of delivering near arcade quality ports. Despite its bad reputation there ARE some excellent arcade ports on the Amiga from the late 80s and early 90s. It had the capability, it was just a problem with both developers and publishers. That's especially clear if you look at some of the excellent homebrew arcade ports to the Amiga in the last few years. It didn't have the total horsepower of the FMT or X68k, but just to emphasize, it was released in 1985. I just wish it had caught the attention if Japanese developers during its life time, it would have been interesting to see what they would have done with it.
The Sharp and FM towns cost 5 times the price of an Amiga and ST that's why. I agree they had much better 2D sprite hardware than western x86 PCs though. But by 1994 that was becoming outdated with Pentiums 3D ability. There were also many near arcade perfect 2D ports. Like Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 and others.
Something I didn't hear acknowledged in the video is that the Red Book arrangements for some of these FM Towns ports were excellent (Afterburner, Galaxy Force 2).
I can't remember if I'd brought it up or not and I can't watch the video or pull up my script right now, but I definitely agree they did a great job with the After Burner music in particular! If I didn't say anything about it, I should have.
Being that I was born in the late '80s I missed a lot of this era of Gaming, but never considered that PCS of the time may have been more powerful than the consoles and capable of running more arcade perfect ports
Yeah. It's also interesting that a lot of games on 'more powerful' hardware at the time were shocking inferior to the console versions until near the end of the 16-bit era. Not all, but definitely the majority.
It's a shame that western PC graphics cards did not have 2D sprite acceleration built as standard like the FM Towns and Sharp x68. Western x86 PC companies did not focus on gaming like Japan until the mid 90s. (Although the Amiga and Atari ST did. Even they lacked arcade sprite hardware to cut costs). Many people in the west had 386 and 486 PCs that were powerful enough to have run arcade perfect ports with a 2D sprite GPU. Instead we got many poor 2D ports until 1994. Although some were very good like Mortal Kombat
Yeah, western IBM-compatible PCs were pretty much junk for games until the mid 90s. The Amiga had some weird hardware sprites but often used software sprites and bobs... it's capabilities for both graphics are sound were vastly superior to PCs in the mid 80s up until the early 90s. It's a shame commodore was such a mess back then, the Amiga was way ahead of its time and should have been way bigger than it was. But yeah, once decent video cards and sound cards became standard, PCs brute forced their way into gaming competence.
@@InglebardGaming Sure. However in Europe, especially the UK, France and others, the Amiga was HUGE and the Atari St was also big among gamers. Only the Megadrive and Master System came close in sales. The SNES just behind them. The NES came too late. Also the Atari ST led Europe moving to Midi and computer sequencers.
Yes that Mortal Kombat port was by far the best port at the time. My cousin had it on his NEC PC but it ran just fine on my 486. I had Street Figher II and it wasn’t very good at all. There were some really fun PC games like Baldurs Gate but the real fun came when giant mech games Mechwarior 3, Heavy Gear II, and Starsiege came out. It made me buy a flight stick and a gaming mouse, keyboard, and a voice activation headset. PC gaming became an obsession.
@@AngryCalvin Yes exactly, because Mortal Kombat was an American game. So most of the Source Code and Graphics were given to port it. Japanese companies in the early 1990s refused to give Western companies their codes, hence the crap like SF2 we saw on the Amiga, Atari ST and PC. I heard horror stories that the programmers had to trace over the arcade Monitor with paper to copy the graphics.
I picked up a mk2 Marty from Japan a few years back. Never looked 32bit to me and I only played Galaxy Force and Afterburner 2 from the Sega games released. You could see the sprites looked decent, shame it never had any more polished Sega ports that moved smoothly and backed up those impressive hardware specs. View Point looked good on it and was a decent conversion. Thought it was funny the system generated "Marty's Law" in Japan : "If you don't keep offering something to sell, you can't increase sales". Wished NEC had taken note with the Super Grafx!
@UserZettO Yes, its a shame it won't run all the FM Towns games, I'll never get to experience SF2 on the system. Couldn't get Monkey Island 2 to work either
Die Hard GameFan Magazine often talked about both the FM Towns Japanese Computers and the FM Towns Marty in their import scene section, then again they were related to running a nearly nationwide franchise and I happened to stumble in shock into one of their stores out in teh sticks in Nashua New Hampshire where they had everything, including the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn freshly released from Japan around December 1994. iirc EGM "may" have mentioned the FM Towns and FM Towns Marty back in the early 90s when they did feature some good coverage from the land of the Rising Sun until their coverage went limp around maybe 1997 because they had tons of ads and tons of PS1 games to do coverage for and I personally would refuse to buy their magazine around then because of how screwed up their coverage was.
Well EGM did mention it a few times, I included a screenshot of a page from EGM at the end of this video in the section about R-Type and the Mandela effect 😁 But yeah, once GameFan came along, it was my favorite magazine for a long time, it had way more coverage of import stuff in that era and their review scores were usually more inline with how I felt about games.
Yesterday I saw Super Street Fighter 2 on FM Towns. It had big sprites, good animation and sound, but no parallax scrolling, low resolution and no game speed select. Even the 16bit ports had those things. There wasn't any reason back then to buy it for its high price.
X68000 SSF2 is light-years ahead of the FM Towns one. Very close to the CPS-II visually (I'd dare say perfect), just with slightly less BGM quality. Sega Saturn's SSF2 is similarly good.
I just discovered the FM Towns had a version of 4D Boxing, if you've never played that game it was fun as hell. Best boxing game of the 90's. The only modern game that is even close to it is Punch A Bunch, which is what got me looking at videos of 4D Boxing
Fantastic video as usual...i thought the FM TOWNS sega ports were generally more accurate...32 bit wtf....SS sure was more powerful than the FM TOWNS Marty, for example...damn, AFTER BURNER 32X also blows the FM TOWNS port out of the water..lol
Yeah, it goes to show you that there was a lot more to hardware than the 'bit wars' that everyone talked about. How powerful hardware was depended on the cpu, the graphics hardware, and various other support chips. Technically, the Intellivision had a 16-bit CPU, for example... as did the TI99/4A.
I wouldn't say that. The Amiga had way more affordable models relatively soon after launch, particularly when the 500 came out. The Amiga sold close to 5 million worldwide, so about ten times what the FMT managed. It had a way bigger library, too. Of course, it was older tech having originally launched in 1985 (the Amiga), but it was so advanced when it came out it managed to hang on quite a while. I don't know what I'd say was equivalent to the FMT in the west market-wise. Maybe something more like the Acorn Archimedes in the UK.
I would actually blame the poor performance and limitations of the ports on the fact that they chose a 386SX for the base model. The Super FX did wonders for the SNES by powering up floating point math. The 386SX didn't have a math co-processor, and all that cool arcade hardware needed floating point calculations. For $3000, you'd think they could have sprung for a math co-processor in a home computer gaming console going for pseudo 3D effects. Though it appears the FM Towns can be upgraded with a math co-processor, the game ports would unfortunately have to be gimped by supporting the base model more than likely...
It was a weird choice. X86 systems tended to be far behind contemporary competitors until the latter portion of the 90s. In some ways it's hard to really understand how they became the standard (outside of marketing). But that's a can of worms to open at a later date 😁
@@InglebardGaming it's not so hard why pc's became the standard: big range of capabilities, upgradability and prices, being used in work enviroments and of course...doom.
I heard about this one in game magazines like die hard gamefan and the like, always been curious about the FM TOWNS line, seemed like it did pretty okay on most ports! I know it had stuff like Super SF2 so it was neat to see what else came out for it.
I'll show more on it in the future. I'll eventually get around to SSF2, also. Just be prepared... it's got a lot of the same issues as the 3DO version, lol. I did already do a video on that one if you're interested!
@@InglebardGaming oh yeah I'm definitely planning on visiting the backlog of episodes! some of those Japanese PCs really intrigued me (like I played the X68 via emulation I love the port of Castlevania for it!)
The ABII arcade has a centering analog stick. It can't be done with digital controls. If Towns has an analog stick it may actually play. AB III looks to be a port of Strike Fighter, the pre cursor to GLOC. The Sega CD AB III speeds up the Towns version and adds more graphics but still really sucks compared to AB II and GLOC
Strike Fighter came out after G-LOC. G-LOC was 1990 and Strike Fighter was 1991. After Burner III is kind of a mix of elements from both, but it's still different from Striker Fighter. I'm 100% with you that it still sucks on Sega CD though, lol. The music is nice in that version but that's about it.
I remember the Marty, it was exciting news at the time of its release, as it was a 32-bit console. I didn't know about SEGA ports on the FM Towns, that was interesting to look at although there's nothing great. Thanks for this video. How's your shoulder?
Yeah, there's nothing that really stands out all that much. GF 2 is easily the best of the bunch. The shoulder is coming along, thanks for asking. It's nowhere close to 100% but I can move it around more and put some weight on it again. Still hurts, and it probably will for at least another 6 months.
Would love to see x68000 one of these vids... if you've done one please link. FM towns same price as x68000? X68000 more powerful by a good margin though isn't it?
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP Because the X68000 had better Sprite Hardware. Although the FM Towns PC was available with far more powerful x86 CPUs, the Sprite hardware wasn't as good. This was cruicial, as even 486 PCs struggled with arcade games as they lacked any kind of Sprite hardware so 2D games looked inferior often until the Pentium
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP The FM Towns Marty was a 386 SX running at 16mhz. But the sprite GPU was crucial. We all saw how crap 2D games ran on a raw 386 PC with no GPU.
I'm no Mister expert, but judging by the newer systems showing up on there like the Saturn and PlayStation, I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible. I haven't researched it because chances are I'll never own a Mister and just check up on news on it every so often.
@@InglebardGaming nope fm towns came out in 1992 same year as sega cd you know sega is going to release it first on there own system. And your wrong it's its own arcade game the arcade version came out September 11 1991. Learn to do research. Lol g loc is it's own game too. Only port of g loc was game gear. The arcade version is called strike fighter only released in Japan took me 2 min to look that up. Man you must have done poorly in school.
Well, you're wrong about almost everything here and I don't know why the attitude, but whatever. G-Loc was ported to multiple systems including the Genesis and several home computers, I showed the Amiga version in another video. AB III is so scaled back and different it's tough to even regard it as a port of Strike Fighter. The FM Towns version did come out first and it was ported to Sega CD afterwards, which is why the Sega CD port also has added features. Now I do concede in came out in 1992 so that was a minor mistake on my part and I own that one. It still was released earlier in the year than the Sega CD version and was used as the basis for that port. And there's no need to take my word on any of this: www.hardcoregaming101.net/after-burner-iii/amp/ Wikipedia, which you clearly used, is easy to get to, but it's not always a reliable source of information.
@@InglebardGaming to put this to rest the first copyrighted date on fm towns was 1991 the release date of the arcade the arcade version of strike fighter came out September 11 1991 g loc arcade came out in 1990 same as the genesis and game gear first copyrighted date. Strike fighter was Japan only. 1991 look at the copyright date on fm Town marty one says 1991 the other 1992 the 1992 is the release date for the home version from what I read strike fighter was a sequel to g loc. And no I did not use Wikipedia there hundreds of sites that say this.
Afterburner 3 for the FM Towns looks about the same as it does on the Sega CD...which was meh. I'm thinking the game is just bad while G-LOC was amazing.
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP Instead of the timer from G-LOC, Strike Fighter gives you the usual 3 lives. The stage setup is more like After Burner II, and it has enemy base scenes like AB2 except some of the ground targets will fire back. Neither console version of Strike Fighter (Sega CD is the other) is very good.
@@JudgmentStorm yes correct. Other than that they are the same game. But agreed the conversions are naff - why didn't they use the sprite scaling of the mega cd?
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP A definite missed opportunity there. As it is, MCD's conversion looks like a 4 Mbit cartridge game thrown on CD just for the music and sound quality. It is disappointing compared to the MD carts of G-LOC and After Burner II.
Nope. The closest thing on Sega CD is Soul Star from Core Design. As Sega home hardware goes, Galaxy Force or GF II came out as individual releases on the SMS, the Genesis and the Saturn.
I have the tower computer with Galaxy force 2 and After Burner 3. The first is a very good port in my opinion despite a graphic hardware inferior, remember that it is a game when you play on original system, it is not fullscreen in order to keep an average framerate. The very good point of this port is the music and the general feel. The After Burner 3 is a disgrace and being that bad is a mistake. For the others, I just plan to buy Turbo Outrun I like. The question for the FM towns should have been, why they dis not port games from the system 16 (and similar such like CPS1, Namco system 2 and so on) ?
Yeah, agree on both of those games as you can tell from the video! As for why there weren't system 16 ports - I really don't know. Sega didn't develop any of the FMT games themselves, someone would have had to license them. Publishers probably felt there wasn't much of a market for that stuff, since it was often done well on cheaper platforms with bigger user bases, I guess.
@inglebard I dont understand why they ported games from such powerful hardwares (Sega system X and Y) because they knew it wouldnt run like on the original hardwares. Porting CPS, System 16, 18, Namco, would have been great. The reason why I wanted the FM towns is Pulirula and Tatsujin oh!, But they are very expensive. I plan to get the ODE system for my Marty.
I'm guessing it was mainly because those were games that weren't very arcade accurate on the console hardware of the time and they thought more impressive/accurate ports of them would make the computer more attractive. Which, Galaxy Force II is pretty impressive, but the others were still far enough away from the arcade games that I think that it was a tough sell on those points.
Nah, I like the original and the better ports like the Genesis version. It's just something to play for a few minutes and have fun with, kind of like an amusement park ride - which is true of a lot of AM2 games.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 89 | คู่เอก "ยอดไอคิว vs คิริลล์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z3vYkHJ_5Ig/mqdefault.jpg)
Yes! I’m so glad you did this one. :)
I remember first seeing one of these in a magazine called Ace here in the UK and thought it looked and sounded like a very sophisticated and futuristic piece of kit (which I suppose it was compared to what was out at the time). I always wondered what this would be like to play on, especially next to the Sharp X6800 so this was good to see.
Thanks once again for the excellent and thoroughly researched content mate! 😊
Glad you liked it! The FMT and Marty were definitely interesting for when they came out, even if they were really never meant for 'everyone.' While it could do some things better than the other hardware of the time, I would have expected a little more for the cost. Still fun to take a look at these days!
OMG I was so excited to see this video pop up! I was obsessed w this machine back in the day. I would love to see you cover the Konami and Capcom translations, or other major arcade makers of the time conversion's to this machine. Thanks for another awesome video!
Thanks, glad you liked it! I'll definitely cover more on both the FM Towns and the X68000 in the not too distant future.
YES!!!!!!! Thank you sir!! I'm glad when there's info about something that isn't necessarily an NES, Genesis or SNES. I bought an FM Towns II,the PC format one years back and the only Sega port I have on it is Afterburner. I LOVE Raiden Densetsu (Raiden Trad) and Genocide Square a ton.
NP! And what, no Tatsujin II? 😁
@@InglebardGaming LOL! Who's buying? 😆
Not me! 😑
@@InglebardGaming (in the voice of Red from Friday) It's like it's both ours. I just keep it at my house.
Such a good channel.
Thanks, appreciate it!
After Burner III is actually Striker Fighter. It did get an arcade version. it's a rare updated version of G-LOC
I know most sources these days refer to it as a port but I personally feel that it's more based of the concept of that game than a complete port. Especially when you look at the Sega CD version with its behind the plane chase view. It's definitely more like Strike Fighter than G-Loc though, so fair point that I could have covered that.
@@InglebardGaming now i find this comment....bah!
The FM Towns/Marty and Sharp X68000 were the only computers truly capable of delivering near-arcade perfect ports, and they're from the late 80s! The Amiga was mindblowing by 1985 standards, but quite a bit older and it featured less powerful hardware. It was also subject to many lazy Atari ST ports that made the slower 68000 choke
I don't really agree that the FMT and X68k were the only computers capable of delivering near arcade quality ports. Despite its bad reputation there ARE some excellent arcade ports on the Amiga from the late 80s and early 90s. It had the capability, it was just a problem with both developers and publishers. That's especially clear if you look at some of the excellent homebrew arcade ports to the Amiga in the last few years.
It didn't have the total horsepower of the FMT or X68k, but just to emphasize, it was released in 1985. I just wish it had caught the attention if Japanese developers during its life time, it would have been interesting to see what they would have done with it.
@@InglebardGaming Yeah, just imagine an in-house Amiga 1200 port of Street Fighter 2 made by Capcom!
The Sharp and FM towns cost 5 times the price of an Amiga and ST that's why. I agree they had much better 2D sprite hardware than western x86 PCs though. But by 1994 that was becoming outdated with Pentiums 3D ability. There were also many near arcade perfect 2D ports. Like Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 and others.
Ah, this is the retro gaming channel I was thinking about the other day! Enjoying the content, subscribed!
Welcome aboard! There's plenty of more stuff on old games to come!
That Turbo OutRun arranged soundtrack goes hard
Something I didn't hear acknowledged in the video is that the Red Book arrangements for some of these FM Towns ports were excellent (Afterburner, Galaxy Force 2).
I can't remember if I'd brought it up or not and I can't watch the video or pull up my script right now, but I definitely agree they did a great job with the After Burner music in particular! If I didn't say anything about it, I should have.
Being that I was born in the late '80s I missed a lot of this era of Gaming, but never considered that PCS of the time may have been more powerful than the consoles and capable of running more arcade perfect ports
Yeah. It's also interesting that a lot of games on 'more powerful' hardware at the time were shocking inferior to the console versions until near the end of the 16-bit era. Not all, but definitely the majority.
It's a shame that western PC graphics cards did not have 2D sprite acceleration built as standard like the FM Towns and Sharp x68. Western x86 PC companies did not focus on gaming like Japan until the mid 90s. (Although the Amiga and Atari ST did. Even they lacked arcade sprite hardware to cut costs). Many people in the west had 386 and 486 PCs that were powerful enough to have run arcade perfect ports with a 2D sprite GPU. Instead we got many poor 2D ports until 1994. Although some were very good like Mortal Kombat
Yeah, western IBM-compatible PCs were pretty much junk for games until the mid 90s. The Amiga had some weird hardware sprites but often used software sprites and bobs... it's capabilities for both graphics are sound were vastly superior to PCs in the mid 80s up until the early 90s. It's a shame commodore was such a mess back then, the Amiga was way ahead of its time and should have been way bigger than it was. But yeah, once decent video cards and sound cards became standard, PCs brute forced their way into gaming competence.
@@InglebardGaming Sure. However in Europe, especially the UK, France and others, the Amiga was HUGE and the Atari St was also big among gamers. Only the Megadrive and Master System came close in sales. The SNES just behind them. The NES came too late. Also the Atari ST led Europe moving to Midi and computer sequencers.
@@InglebardGaming Commodore also had a lot of success in Europe with the C64
Yes that Mortal Kombat port was by far the best port at the time. My cousin had it on his NEC PC but it ran just fine on my 486.
I had Street Figher II and it wasn’t very good at all. There were some really fun PC games like Baldurs Gate but the real fun came when giant mech games Mechwarior 3, Heavy Gear II, and Starsiege came out. It made me buy a flight stick and a gaming mouse, keyboard, and a voice activation headset. PC gaming became an obsession.
@@AngryCalvin Yes exactly, because Mortal Kombat was an American game. So most of the Source Code and Graphics were given to port it. Japanese companies in the early 1990s refused to give Western companies their codes, hence the crap like SF2 we saw on the Amiga, Atari ST and PC. I heard horror stories that the programmers had to trace over the arcade Monitor with paper to copy the graphics.
I picked up a mk2 Marty from Japan a few years back. Never looked 32bit to me and I only played Galaxy Force and Afterburner 2 from the Sega games released. You could see the sprites looked decent, shame it never had any more polished Sega ports that moved smoothly and backed up those impressive hardware specs. View Point looked good on it and was a decent conversion. Thought it was funny the system generated "Marty's Law" in Japan : "If you don't keep offering something to sell, you can't increase sales". Wished NEC had taken note with the Super Grafx!
@UserZettO Yes, its a shame it won't run all the FM Towns games, I'll never get to experience SF2 on the system. Couldn't get Monkey Island 2 to work either
Galaxy force 2 isn't perfect but the soundtrack is amazing!
Die Hard GameFan Magazine often talked about both the FM Towns Japanese Computers and the FM Towns Marty in their import scene section, then again they were related to running a nearly nationwide franchise and I happened to stumble in shock into one of their stores out in teh sticks in Nashua New Hampshire where they had everything, including the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn freshly released from Japan around December 1994.
iirc EGM "may" have mentioned the FM Towns and FM Towns Marty back in the early 90s when they did feature some good coverage from the land of the Rising Sun until their coverage went limp around maybe 1997 because they had tons of ads and tons of PS1 games to do coverage for and I personally would refuse to buy their magazine around then because of how screwed up their coverage was.
Well EGM did mention it a few times, I included a screenshot of a page from EGM at the end of this video in the section about R-Type and the Mandela effect 😁
But yeah, once GameFan came along, it was my favorite magazine for a long time, it had way more coverage of import stuff in that era and their review scores were usually more inline with how I felt about games.
Yesterday I saw Super Street Fighter 2 on FM Towns. It had big sprites, good animation and sound, but no parallax scrolling, low resolution and no game speed select. Even the 16bit ports had those things. There wasn't any reason back then to buy it for its high price.
X68000 SSF2 is light-years ahead of the FM Towns one. Very close to the CPS-II visually (I'd dare say perfect), just with slightly less BGM quality. Sega Saturn's SSF2 is similarly good.
I just discovered the FM Towns had a version of 4D Boxing, if you've never played that game it was fun as hell. Best boxing game of the 90's. The only modern game that is even close to it is Punch A Bunch, which is what got me looking at videos of 4D Boxing
I think, if I remember right, I tried and hated that game on the Amiga 😁 The only boxing game I've ever really enjoyed has been Punch Out.
Fantastic video as usual...i thought the FM TOWNS sega ports were generally more accurate...32 bit wtf....SS sure was more powerful than the FM TOWNS Marty, for example...damn, AFTER BURNER 32X also blows the FM TOWNS port out of the water..lol
Yeah, it goes to show you that there was a lot more to hardware than the 'bit wars' that everyone talked about. How powerful hardware was depended on the cpu, the graphics hardware, and various other support chips. Technically, the Intellivision had a 16-bit CPU, for example... as did the TI99/4A.
So, it's safe to say that the FM Towns was the Amiga of Japan, then?
I wouldn't say that. The Amiga had way more affordable models relatively soon after launch, particularly when the 500 came out. The Amiga sold close to 5 million worldwide, so about ten times what the FMT managed. It had a way bigger library, too. Of course, it was older tech having originally launched in 1985 (the Amiga), but it was so advanced when it came out it managed to hang on quite a while.
I don't know what I'd say was equivalent to the FMT in the west market-wise. Maybe something more like the Acorn Archimedes in the UK.
I would actually blame the poor performance and limitations of the ports on the fact that they chose a 386SX for the base model. The Super FX did wonders for the SNES by powering up floating point math. The 386SX didn't have a math co-processor, and all that cool arcade hardware needed floating point calculations. For $3000, you'd think they could have sprung for a math co-processor in a home computer gaming console going for pseudo 3D effects. Though it appears the FM Towns can be upgraded with a math co-processor, the game ports would unfortunately have to be gimped by supporting the base model more than likely...
It was a weird choice. X86 systems tended to be far behind contemporary competitors until the latter portion of the 90s. In some ways it's hard to really understand how they became the standard (outside of marketing). But that's a can of worms to open at a later date 😁
even if they did include a 387, it wouldn't have been powerfull enough to keep up at those 60fps, not even close. it wouldn;t have made a difference.
@@InglebardGaming it's not so hard why pc's became the standard: big range of capabilities, upgradability and prices, being used in work enviroments and of course...doom.
I heard about this one in game magazines like die hard gamefan and the like, always been curious about the FM TOWNS line, seemed like it did pretty okay on most ports! I know it had stuff like Super SF2 so it was neat to see what else came out for it.
I'll show more on it in the future. I'll eventually get around to SSF2, also. Just be prepared... it's got a lot of the same issues as the 3DO version, lol. I did already do a video on that one if you're interested!
@@InglebardGaming oh yeah I'm definitely planning on visiting the backlog of episodes! some of those Japanese PCs really intrigued me (like I played the X68 via emulation I love the port of Castlevania for it!)
The ABII arcade has a centering analog stick. It can't be done with digital controls. If Towns has an analog stick it may actually play.
AB III looks to be a port of Strike Fighter, the pre cursor to GLOC.
The Sega CD AB III speeds up the Towns version and adds more graphics but still really sucks compared to AB II and GLOC
Strike Fighter came out after G-LOC. G-LOC was 1990 and Strike Fighter was 1991. After Burner III is kind of a mix of elements from both, but it's still different from Striker Fighter. I'm 100% with you that it still sucks on Sega CD though, lol. The music is nice in that version but that's about it.
@@InglebardGaming gotchya thx
I remember that issue of EGM! At least I think I do…was that the same one that covered the Konix Multisystem?
Yeah, one of the times they reported on the Konix Multisystem, anyway - Issue #4.
I remember the Marty, it was exciting news at the time of its release, as it was a 32-bit console.
I didn't know about SEGA ports on the FM Towns, that was interesting to look at although there's nothing great. Thanks for this video.
How's your shoulder?
Yeah, there's nothing that really stands out all that much. GF 2 is easily the best of the bunch.
The shoulder is coming along, thanks for asking. It's nowhere close to 100% but I can move it around more and put some weight on it again. Still hurts, and it probably will for at least another 6 months.
@@InglebardGaming Cool 👍Take it easy. As for me it's the left leg, ha ha. Just a few weeks hopefully.
Good luck with it!
All good ports, except G-Loc/Afterburner 3, and Turbo Outrun!
Would love to see x68000 one of these vids... if you've done one please link.
FM towns same price as x68000? X68000 more powerful by a good margin though isn't it?
I did the x68000 first 😁 th-cam.com/video/I7XAmymEWW8/w-d-xo.html
The FMT is theoretically significantly more powerful, especially the CPU.
@@InglebardGaming hmmm wonder why it seemed the other way round?!
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP Because the X68000 had better Sprite Hardware. Although the FM Towns PC was available with far more powerful x86 CPUs, the Sprite hardware wasn't as good. This was cruicial, as even 486 PCs struggled with arcade games as they lacked any kind of Sprite hardware so 2D games looked inferior often until the Pentium
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP The FM Towns Marty was a 386 SX running at 16mhz. But the sprite GPU was crucial. We all saw how crap 2D games ran on a raw 386 PC with no GPU.
@@alexojideagu many thanks for explaining. Appreciated
Is it possible to make a Mr core for this system?
I'm no Mister expert, but judging by the newer systems showing up on there like the Saturn and PlayStation, I'd be surprised if it wasn't possible. I haven't researched it because chances are I'll never own a Mister and just check up on news on it every so often.
You know that after burner 3 is a port of the Sega cd.
Nope, other way around. The FM Towns version came out in 1991 and the Sega CD version came out in 1992 in Japan and 1993 everywhere else.
@@InglebardGaming nope fm towns came out in 1992 same year as sega cd you know sega is going to release it first on there own system. And your wrong it's its own arcade game the arcade version came out September 11 1991. Learn to do research. Lol g loc is it's own game too. Only port of g loc was game gear. The arcade version is called strike fighter only released in Japan took me 2 min to look that up. Man you must have done poorly in school.
Well, you're wrong about almost everything here and I don't know why the attitude, but whatever. G-Loc was ported to multiple systems including the Genesis and several home computers, I showed the Amiga version in another video. AB III is so scaled back and different it's tough to even regard it as a port of Strike Fighter. The FM Towns version did come out first and it was ported to Sega CD afterwards, which is why the Sega CD port also has added features. Now I do concede in came out in 1992 so that was a minor mistake on my part and I own that one. It still was released earlier in the year than the Sega CD version and was used as the basis for that port. And there's no need to take my word on any of this: www.hardcoregaming101.net/after-burner-iii/amp/
Wikipedia, which you clearly used, is easy to get to, but it's not always a reliable source of information.
@@InglebardGaming to put this to rest the first copyrighted date on fm towns was 1991 the release date of the arcade the arcade version of strike fighter came out September 11 1991 g loc arcade came out in 1990 same as the genesis and game gear first copyrighted date. Strike fighter was Japan only. 1991 look at the copyright date on fm Town marty one says 1991 the other 1992 the 1992 is the release date for the home version from what I read strike fighter was a sequel to g loc. And no I did not use Wikipedia there hundreds of sites that say this.
NIce Monado sword ^^
I look forward to seeing more new Monados on July 29th! 😁
@@InglebardGaming Same here ! To bad the special edition is late. They wrote that they are going to release it in September i think.
Good ole 386
Afterburner 3 for the FM Towns looks about the same as it does on the Sega CD...which was meh. I'm thinking the game is just bad while G-LOC was amazing.
Actually FMT Afterburner 3 looks worse than the Sega CD version. On Sega CD they added stuff on the ground that isn't there on FMT.
Afterburner 3 is a coin op conversion of strike fighter. A modified version of G loc basically with different rules.
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP Instead of the timer from G-LOC, Strike Fighter gives you the usual 3 lives. The stage setup is more like After Burner II, and it has enemy base scenes like AB2 except some of the ground targets will fire back. Neither console version of Strike Fighter (Sega CD is the other) is very good.
@@JudgmentStorm yes correct. Other than that they are the same game. But agreed the conversions are naff - why didn't they use the sprite scaling of the mega cd?
@@orderofmagnitude-TPATP A definite missed opportunity there. As it is, MCD's conversion looks like a 4 Mbit cartridge game thrown on CD just for the music and sound quality. It is disappointing compared to the MD carts of G-LOC and After Burner II.
Isn't galaxy force 2 on the SEGA CD?
Nope. The closest thing on Sega CD is Soul Star from Core Design.
As Sega home hardware goes, Galaxy Force or GF II came out as individual releases on the SMS, the Genesis and the Saturn.
I have the tower computer with Galaxy force 2 and After Burner 3.
The first is a very good port in my opinion despite a graphic hardware inferior, remember that it is a game when you play on original system, it is not fullscreen in order to keep an average framerate. The very good point of this port is the music and the general feel.
The After Burner 3 is a disgrace and being that bad is a mistake.
For the others, I just plan to buy Turbo Outrun I like.
The question for the FM towns should have been, why they dis not port games from the system 16 (and similar such like CPS1, Namco system 2 and so on) ?
Yeah, agree on both of those games as you can tell from the video! As for why there weren't system 16 ports - I really don't know. Sega didn't develop any of the FMT games themselves, someone would have had to license them. Publishers probably felt there wasn't much of a market for that stuff, since it was often done well on cheaper platforms with bigger user bases, I guess.
@inglebard I dont understand why they ported games from such powerful hardwares (Sega system X and Y) because they knew it wouldnt run like on the original hardwares.
Porting CPS, System 16, 18, Namco, would have been great.
The reason why I wanted the FM towns is Pulirula and Tatsujin oh!, But they are very expensive.
I plan to get the ODE system for my Marty.
I'm guessing it was mainly because those were games that weren't very arcade accurate on the console hardware of the time and they thought more impressive/accurate ports of them would make the computer more attractive. Which, Galaxy Force II is pretty impressive, but the others were still far enough away from the arcade games that I think that it was a tough sell on those points.
EGM lied to me!!!
More than once, lol!
Honestly Afterburner sucks unless your on the actual rotating machine to rattle your brain.
Nah, I like the original and the better ports like the Genesis version. It's just something to play for a few minutes and have fun with, kind of like an amusement park ride - which is true of a lot of AM2 games.
mmm Shadow of the Beast on FM Towns is best conversion.