Fujitsu FM-TOWNS

The Fujitsu FM-TOWNS is a series of computers developed by Fujitsu between 1989 and 1997. It was exclusively released in Japan.

FM stands for “Fujistu Micro”, while the “Towns” was derived from the system's codename “Townes” (referring to Charles Townes, one of the winners of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics) used during development. The “e” was dropped to emphasis its pronounciation like “towns” rather than “tow-nes”.

The system was known for being technologically superior to its competitors at the time, the NEC PC-98 and even some 4th generation videogame consoles, however it struggled to gain the same foothold as the PC-98 did. The ports of arcade games released for the FM-7 were usually the definitive version to have at the time, outside of playing the game on the original arcade hardware itself, making them highly sought after.

In 1993, the FM Towns Marty was released, which is a game console compatible with the existing FM Towns games.

Eventually, DOS/V support would be added to the computer system, allowing for the booting of other operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows. Over time, Fujitsu would shift its development focus from software coded specifically for the FM Towns and instead making more universally compatible DOS code.

Emulation of this system is still somewhat experimental and only recommended to advanced users, those who might already be familiar with assigned drive letters manually and working the FM Town's Japanese interface.

This system scrapes metadata for the “fmtowns” group and loads the fmtowns set from the currently selected theme, if available.