FM Towns - History

History

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 acquire usable software quickly, the new computer was to be based on Fujitsu's "FMR50" system architecture. The FMR50 system, released at 1986, was another x86/DOS-based computer similar to NEC's popular PC-9801. The FMR50 computers were sold to moderate success in Japanese offices, particularly in Japanese government offices. There were hundreds of software packages available for the FMR, including Lotus 1-2-3, Wordstar, Multiplan, and dBASE III. With this basis of compatibility, the more multimedia-friendly FM Towns was born.

NEC's PC-9801 computers were widespread and dominated in the 1980s, at one point reaching 70% of the 16/32 bit computer market. However, they had poor graphics (640×400 at 16 of 4096 colors) and sounds (4-operator/3 voice monaural FM sounds). Just as Commodore saw an opening for the Amiga in some global markets against the IBM PC, a computer with improved graphics and sounds was considered to overcome the PC-9801 in the home-use field in Japan.

With many multimedia innovations for its time, the FM Towns was that system, though for a number of reasons it never broke far beyond the boundaries of its niche market status.

Eventually the "Towns" lost much of its uniqueness by adding a DOS/V (PC Clone + DOS with native Japanese language support) compatibility mode switch, until Fujitsu finally discontinued making FM Towns specific hardware and software and moved to focus on the IBM PC clones that many Japanese manufacturers who previously were not players in the PC market were building by the mid to late 1990s. To this day, Fujitsu is known for its laptop PCs globally, and FM Towns (and Marty) users have been relegated to a small community of aficionados.