FM Towns Marty

The FM Towns Marty holds a genuine historical distinction that its obscurity belies: released by Fujitsu in Japan in early 1993, it is generally considered the world's first 32-bit home console, arriving months before the 3DO and years before the PlayStation and Saturn made 32-bit the industry standard.

It was, in essence, a console adaptation of Fujitsu's FM Towns line of home computers, a family of Japanese PCs built around a CD-ROM drive and known for strong multimedia capabilities. The Marty distilled that platform into a living-room games machine, retaining compatibility with much of the FM Towns software catalog while packaging it in a friendlier, appliance-like form. It came with a built-in CD-ROM drive and a floppy disk slot, straddling the line between computer and console.

As a technical proposition it was ahead of its time, offering CD-based games with rich audio and detailed 2D visuals when most homes were still playing 16-bit cartridges. Its library drew from the existing FM Towns computer catalog, giving it a reasonable selection of ports and original titles aimed at the Japanese market.

But the Marty faced steep obstacles. It was expensive, its computer-derived hardware was already being outpaced by dedicated console designs, and it never left Japan, confining it to a single market where it competed against entrenched rivals. Fujitsu was fundamentally a computer company without the marketing muscle or software relationships of Sega, Sony, or Nintendo, and the Marty struggled to find a mainstream audience. It sold modestly before being quietly discontinued within a couple of years.

Its legacy is chiefly one of historical primacy. The FM Towns Marty proved that a 32-bit, CD-based console was viable before the giants of the industry committed to the format, effectively previewing the fifth generation to come. Little known outside Japan and rarely remembered even there, it remains a genuine milestone, the quiet first step into an era that others would go on to dominate.