Why Did The FM Towns Marty Fail !? - Gaming History Documentary 

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So far you’re the only person to acknowledge the 3do was designed to go against the SEGA genesis and Super Nintendo. The funny thing is everyone I know that has had one says it would never beat the PlayStation and I would tell them I don’t think it was supposed too.

The FM Town's Marty sounds like a console that Doc Brown would invent for his friend Marty to play video games on

The two button controller is why I wrote off the TurboGrafx 16. And this was in 1989. Never ceases to amaze me how the SNES established the six button controller as the standard in 1991, yet consoles were still being released after that with less buttons.

OMG! An oversized VHS-like box unnecessarily housing a CD jewel case? I think I love the FM Towns Marty.

Why the fuck do all the Japanese desktop computers look so fucking beautiful? FM Towns, Sharp x68000, loads of MSX based machines. It seems that in the West they tried their best to appeal to the office market which then became the 'family computer' market (remember those days? Everyone sharing one computer? Damn I miss that) One day I will get a FM Towns machine. I would be even happy with a broken one and then just put a raspberry pi in it or something.

In Back to the Future 2, Marty McFly's boss in 2015 is called Mr. Fujitsu... Is the simulation glitching again? Or was someone at Fujitsu being a smartass?

I love the obscure consoles you cover!

Great video, but why are we leaving off the last syllable of Fujitsu? There are many words that are not pronounced in the West as they are in Japan, and this really only confuses things.. Fujitsu itself pronounces the "soo" in Western marketing material. The name is a combination of three Kanji, and the last Kanji is pronounced "soo".

A Vectrex is definitely a necessity for gracious living! It could be an ideal brand for a new quasi-retro console (like Atari VCS, Intellivision Amico, or Coleco Chameleon). First off, even though not many people owned a Vectrex, a lot of us drooled over it. It offered a visual experience unlike anything else, and yet today this retro vector graphics style is en vogue (look at the Atari Recharged games, for example). Furthermore, Vectrex titles are relatively obscure and unusual, so they're more suitable for modern updates. The only somewhat popular vector graphics arcade title ported to the Vectrex was Star Castle. As a bonus, the Vectrex actually had a controller matching modern sensibilities - analog stick on the left(!), arcade style controller you placed flat on a table rather than holding in your hand.

The Marty sounds like a parody console in a comedy sketch. "Exclusive to the Marty- Splendid Marion Sisters!"

Need a collab: Top Hat, Lady Decade, Larry Bundy Jr, and Slopes to go after the Amico. 🤣👍

I have been waiting for the Marty to be covered ! Thank you

Wow, now that's an obscure system. I don't know where you find these! The games actually look decent. That splattahouse version looks VERY close to arcade.

Fantastic video! Absolutely loved it! I myself only knew so much about the FM Marty, so it was cool hearing what you had to say about it, and information regarding the console. This isn't a console a lot of people talk about let alone talk about in a video, so I'm glad you made this video!!!!

It really had everything going for it, but with that insanely high price they definitely should have known it would fail miserably. It's just common sense. The amount of wealthy people in Japan (and anywhere else) is going to be very low compared with those who are not wealthy, and of those who are wealthy, far less then half are probably going to be buying your console. You obviously can't survive on such a tiny consumer base. I bet this is a helluva collectors item though, especially thanks to so many of those games having an English language option!

I've never heard anyone pronounce FUJITSU like that before. Always heard "foo-jit-su".

PlayStation came after anyways so 3DO was the one to beat, not the other way round. Absolutely adored mine mainly for Road Rash and SSF2T, but also had Space Hulk, Samurai Showdown and NFS

The FM Towns to this day still offers the most playable version of Shadow of the Beast ie. the hit detection actually works :P

Once again thanks for tackling the obscure though I know about the console by now. Said on the previous video but so glad you along with THGM seem to make content that is simply made based on interest rather than being motivated by an algorithm.

I'm going to guess it's because, throughout my entire childhood, the only way I ever knew the Marty even existed was because of the magazine Diehard Gamefan.

The only best game was Splatterhouse A great port of the arcade game since all music in all the levels play unlike the original arcade one

Another great video lady decade 👍

I've only heard about The Towns FM Marty through the Triple Jump RU-vid Channel in the past 6 months

Lady Decade is a necessity for gracious living!

Nice video made the pain in my sore throat go away

awesome video! :D

This review gave me a warm fuzzy. My initials were mentioned so many times. My initials are a necessity for gracious living.

The whole while I was kinda waiting for an explanation on the name. I guess the world may never know

I learned alot, thank you for the video .

Love the video. Only thing that drove me crazy was the "Fujits" and leaving off the "u"

Kudos on correctly pronouncing the near-silent Japanese 'U'. My friend Ryunosuke would really appreciate it :)

Good morning afternoon or evening lady Decade ❤️ love the channel too

I remember seeing this and games for it for sale in the back of Diehard Gamefan magazine. Not only was the hardware expensive, but I remember the games being pretty pricey too. Even moreso than the other import games like those for S.Famicom, Mega Drive and PC Engine.

No wonder the console is so unknown to the public, keep it up your ladyship! 👍🏻

I really miss my... IntelliVision! 🎶. Love that song.

Why do you keep dropping the U in FujitSU? You keep saying FUJITS. It says on the box FUJITSU. I did a search to see if I was saying it wrong, but everything I found was FU-JIT-SOO

They do make games for little kids for the Switch. My nephew when he was about three was gifted a Paw Patrol one and loved it. I don't know what your three year old likes,but I'm sure if it is popular there's a game based on it.

"The fapping, coomer kind." I LOLed.

Of all the things Vectrex. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, indeed.

I spent this entire video squinting at my screen and mumbling "why is she saying it like that"

Lol, loved the exaggerated reading in this video.

The FM towns Marty was a head of its time. The content would have sold well internationally these days...

consolizing is my new favorite verb

I love the CGR nod there

If only the Sega CD was a stand alone unit and had same level of hardware as this it would have been an awesome system.

Time lord was a hard one, but beat it the hardest nes game that I've never beaten is bayu billy

I Love Lady Decade! Lord Decade is a lucky man

I actually have one sitting in my collection, I have it hooked up all ready to play and I have a box as well along with 5 games, I don't really play it often anymore, but when I first got it a year ago, I really did enjoy all great perfect ports splatter house, Saturday night slam masters... Raiden ....out runners!.. Puyo puyo is a good one❤❤

CD packege inside VHS package is ridiculous

Lady Decade can you do a video on the Japanese Sharp X68000

Nice cans!

A 386 is definitely 32 bit, regardless of other limitations

Thank you for your perfect pronunciation of karaoke :D

I would have liked to have tried this console out had I known about it.

All that really was, was a glorified 16 bit system with a very fast processor and more ram than most consoles at the time. It was not a 32-bit system at all as the specs stated. I am not talking about the box specs, but the actual system specs that unless you understand programming, you would not know what the specs and numbers mean. Think of it like the 32x mating with the Sega CD and all you have is a 16 bit offspring with fast processing, nothing more.

You're favorite game feels like Monty Python.

Lmao at the Tommy Tallarico jab.

McFly! McFly! Anybody home? Think McFly!

I just want an emulator for the Marty so I can play a particular version of Prince of Persia.

Classic Game Room

Very informative

This is how u should say it foo ·jit·soo. Dont know what u even are saying. But as always good video and very very informative.

Zeebo, console from Brazil!

Hentai is a necessity for gracious living

i love the way you speak ❤

Do you forget to adjust the format of your 4:3 images so they're not stretched out to 16:9??? Obviously you know how to do it because some are correct, and some are horribly stretched out of shape.

The look of the system looks very much like the ps3 slim

Knowing about Anatomy.

Bruv in da YooKay we call it FOOJITSOO, not Fujits.

I'm two minutes in and I don't think I can do it.

"1375$ thats unheard of in todays time" umm ps5 on ebay??

Top Hat Ass Kicking Man is lucky to have a wife that shares his love of video games. Do you two buy these rare beasts, or do people let you borrow them for the video? Cheers

Thinking the name had something to do with it.lol

This looks like a Amiga CD32

It's hard to use a complicated controller one handed

probably because it was called the FM towns marty

I feel like the downfall of a majority of the consoles from the 16-bit days come from developers jumping the gun and forgetting people aren't made of money

Should have called it the Carty.

Who is Fujits Did you miss the U on purpose?

Think this is your most boujee video 😎👌👍👍

Mike Hagar looks like the Hillside Strangler, Kenneth Bianchi! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

What’s the biggest question I have is why “Marty”??

Slammasters music! Haggar in the house?

If you’re trying to get younger kids into non-tablet games- I’d suggest the original Sonic 1 and 2. My kids took to Sonic faster than any other console games (as a Mario fan it pains me to admit) because there are fewer pits and you don’t die as long as you have rings. On top of that the controls are dead simple!

Are we just going to pretend she completely ignored the letter “U” in Fujitsu?

Did wonder how much of this footage is of my machine that I lent you years ago :P I only bought the one game as an example as I'm not paying £200 plus each time for a game I can't even understand!

I've always found the FM Towns Marty to be an interesting footnote in console history. Compared to 16 bit games consoles the Marty is vastly superior spec wise and includes some future looking things like bootable CDs and so on. Gotta give it credit for that. But a large reason why the 16 bit consoles were less powerful was to keep the price of the console low. Compared to a "real" PC the Marty is well behind the curve in many ways. The AMD 386SX chip in the Marty was released in 1991, but that's based on the Intel 386SX which was released in 1988 and the original Intel 386DX was released in 1985 so the heart of the console was based on tech that was fairly old at launch. Sure it was less expensive than a "real" PC but that's because the PC world had moved on to 486 CPUs operating at 2x-5x the 16 mhz clock speed of the Marty and was gearing up for the Intel Pentium in 1993. The CD-ROM was the most contemporary part of the console and probably accounted for 1/3 of the total price of it by itself. Pricing was well above a games console but below that of a real PC and I feel like so many concessions were made to get it to that price point that it didn't excel in either area. I think that along with fierce competition at the time led to the Marty's demise.

Never thought of a vectrex as a "babysitter" for a 3 year old. Neat.

I never ever heard about this marty hardware gaming system until you mentioned to history in this video

One of the holy grails in my collection. Absolutely wonderful console

I like the packaging. May be a box in inside a box but CD Dual Cases do break easy. So having a bigger one to house it is nice. It's a bit much but I like it. Protective and just a cool design. Also makes for better bigger art then the smaller of the CD case even if comparable to bigger cardboard or steelbook or others today. Surprised by some big titles. Also it's a video game is the best way to describe Turbo Outrun. Sure map tech wasn't the case I think much back then (not that I know but guessing) besides paper maps and also hardware limitations or visual variety is key with games. Other we would have Desert Bus but a bit better and that would be boring clearly if literal then creatively designed. Games are better cutting out things to make it fit the world then recreating one to one. Always have. What it was seen as is something I guess but otherwise being too ahead is too much for customers either price or just them getting sick and tired of using the same thing over and over to upgrade to the next one. Some businesses want to be first, have an idea first or whatever but customers have to be willing to care even besides good quality games and too early for them to care/get interested at the right time to move on (or like phones BS reasoning like social and a camera). Controls are one thing menus are another. If has two buttons and menus or similar to a mouse left and right mouse button are what most of your games have not surprised. Menus do allow for things I'd we don't have buttons though. A weapon wheel versus many keyboard keys to bind each one for example. I'd point n clicks or visual novels sure (which many He tai games are visual novels some have RPG elements I guess maybe back then. No clue but some do nowadays but either way it's not bad to have few buttons I'd many games weren't going to use them even if more buttons allows for a fair amount then people seeing constant menus (or not wanting a screen on controller to lower the menus in some way like dual screens). But not surprised it was a Hentai Otaku's console than anything else when it fails. Japan has to open it up to other audiences when it fails it seems. Of a format fails have the adult industry bring it somewhat back up for disk formats or consoles. They may be weird but I get why even if some are better than others for games in today can't say for back then having no clue of many of them/not digging in to really care.

Its crazy how most of the CD consoles from that era shared similar form factors (PC engine DUO, Amiga CD 32, FM Towns Marty, Sega Xeye, etc)

I love this thing! I’m oddly a bit of an FM Towns fangirl even though I don’t actually own one 😅 I made a texture for my VRChat avatar’s shirt with the Marty mascot even. Great video as always Lady Decade!!

Lady decade is my favorite. Plenty of other channels cover these topics, but she's my favorite to listen to.

Im kinda curious now, what console was the most successful as a karaoke machine.

You're probably one of those people that pronounces it Folks-Va-gen and Porsh-uh. The country of Chee-lay, or Chil-ee? Pis-tash-i-o, or Pis-tak-yo? Better be consistent

I find it really funny that the company that worked in schools allowed henti on there systems that’s so funny lol 😂

And I thought that I had an obscure Japan only console (NEC PC-FX) lol.

What a fantastic as always dear lady video it's totally awesome to hear all the history totally brilliant 🤩🤩🤩👍👍🎮🕹️