31.Oct.2002
Oliver Hummel (ANF)
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The World's First 32-bit Game Console?
This is not exactly burningly current news, but it is meaningful in an historical
context. On my foraging for exotic game consoles I bumped into a very
interesting Fujitsu product, the FM Towns Marty.
Fujitsu sold a lot of FM Towns PCs in the late 80s. At some point back then,
they decided to develop a game console, and the FM Towns Marty came
from that. The Marty was equipped with a 386 at 16 MHz, later there was a
486 version. It also had 2 megs of RAM. For storage there was a CD-ROM drive and
a 3.5 inch floppy drive. For the graphics there were special custom chips which
made 256 colors from a HiColor palette possible.
But the most interesting thing is: Marty was introduced in 1991! So the CD-32 loses
its title as the first 32-bit console in the world to the Fujitsu Marty. By the way Marty may
also be the second console to come with a CD-ROM drive (after the PC-Engine).
Because of the close compatibility to the FM Towns PCs there were also a lot of
games available, but there were also specialized Marty games, including versions of the
Lucas Arts classics Zak McKraken and
Monkey Island, and I would guess that these were the best versions of these games, what with 256 colors
and not the grisly MIDI music found in the PC version.
Pictures of the FM Towns Marty may be viewed here
and here.
Because Marty was not officially sold outside Japan it's difficult to come by information on it. So I suppose the CD-32
could also claim to be the world's first 32-bit game console. (ps) (Translation: dm)
[News message: 31. Oct. 2002, 13:09] [Comments: 3 - 04. Nov. 2002, 14:09]
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