The FM TownsMarty is a fifth-generationhome video game console released in 1993 by Fujitsu, exclusively for the Japanese market. It's often claimed to be the first 32-bit CD-based home video game system, although it has 16-bit data bus, just like earlier released Commodore CDTV and Sega CD, which both have 68000 processor that is similarly internally 32-bit, but with 16-bit data bus. The console came complete with a built in CD-ROM drive and disk drive. It was based on the earlier FM Towns computer system Fujitsu had released in 1989. The Marty was backward-compatible with older FM Towns games. In 1994 a new version of the console called the FM Towns Marty 2 was released. It featured a darker gray shell and a new lower price and MVP-10. The only difference between the MVP-1 and MVP-10 is the drive mechanisms. There has been speculation that the MVP-10 was introduced since the MVP-1 broke easily. An optional IC Card for the FM Towns Car Marty allowed it to use VICS, and was subsequently sold with a video monitor.
Reception
Despite having excellent hardware from a gameplay perspective, both the FM Towns and the FM Towns Marty were very poor sellers in Japan. They were expensive and the custom hardware meant expandability wasn't as easy as with DOS/V systems. NEC's PC98 series computers were also dominant in Japan when the FM Towns Marty was released, making it difficult to break out before the DOS/V invasion took control of the market. This was despite such revolutionary features as bootable CD-ROMs and a color GUIOS on the FM Towns PC, something that predated Microsoft's Windows 95b bootable CD by seven years. Software today is rare and expensive due to the low production runs. Despite backwards compatibility with most older FM Towns PC games, compatibility issues plagued the Marty as newer titles were released with the FM Towns in mind, further limiting its potential as a true "console version" of the Fujitsu FM Towns PC. The Marty did have its own library of "Marty" specific games, but they were not enough to strengthen its niche position between video game console systems and personal computers. When Fujitsu lowered the price and released the Marty 2 sales started to increase, but the corporate attitude was that it was a lost cause, and so the system was dropped. This led to the creation of the Japanese "Marty's Law": if you don't keep offering something to sell, you can't increase sales.
