Youtube vid of Galaxy Force II on FM Towns Marty

[parallaxscroll]

Here we have the world's very first 32-bit videogame console (Japan, 1991) running the first decent home rendition of Sega's Galaxy Force II.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vi66wEM2J54

Better check it out now because who knows it could be removed from youtube at any time. I saw another vid of the FM Towns version a year or two ago but it was taken down.


Galaxy Force II originally ran on the immensely powerful 'Y-Board' which used 3x 68000 CPUs and the most powerful version of Sega's Super-Scaler technology at the time. It was probably the most powerful Sega arcade hardware of the 1980s.

The FM Towns Marty GFII, although much reduced from the arcade, was alot better than the bland Mega-Drive/Genesis translation. Neither version used hardware scaling & rotation. The FM-Towns did a good job through software.

Galaxy Force II was then ported sloppily to the Saturn in 1998. It looked like the arcade in terms of detail but ran at half the framerate. This was really sad because the Saturn is far more powerful than the Y-Board arcade PCB. At this point, GFII was 10 years old.

Only last year on PlayStation2 did the first truly arcade-quality version come home, on Sega Ages 2500 vol 30.

[CRV]

Galaxy Force II was then ported sloppily to the Saturn in 1998. It looked like the arcade in terms of detail but ran at half the framerate. This was really sad because the Saturn is far more powerful than the Y-Board arcade PCB. At this point, GFII was 10 years old.

Would you believe the Saturn port was by Appaloosa Interactive (formerly Novotrade)?

[Graham Mitchell]

Would you believe the Saturn port was by Appaloosa Interactive (formerly Novotrade)?

Ecco the Dolphin is generally good stuff. I don't know why everything else they touch tends to turn to shit.

[Snapple]

Looks cool. Roger! Roger! Roger! Roger!

Most of the titles for the Marty were hentai titles, weren't they?

[Xexyz]

Ugh, I can't stand that jazzy remix of the first stages BGM. Totally ruined it.

[smork]

Looks cool. Roger! Roger! Roger! Roger!

Most of the titles for the Marty were hentai titles, weren't they?

I've got 4 Marty titles so far -- Splatterhouse, Puyo Puyo, Secre Volume 5 (one of those virtual cameraman thingys) and Rance IV, a Hentai RPG. That must mean 50% of the library is sex-oriented! Or something.

[Rob2600]

Here we have the world's very first 32-bit videogame console (Japan, 1991) running the first decent home rendition of Sega's Galaxy Force II.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vi66wEM2J54

Better check it out now because who knows it could be removed from youtube at any time. I saw another vid of the FM Towns version a year or two ago but it was taken down.

Cool video. Thanks for sharing. I noticed a few other FM Towns Marty videos on YouTube as well (Super Street Fighter II, Splatterhouse, etc.). I don't really know anything about that computer or the Sharp X68000, but it's good to see what they were capable of...way more advanced than the 386 IBM-compatible Tandy I had in the early 1990s.

[roushimsx]

Cool video. Thanks for sharing. I noticed a few other FM Towns Marty videos on YouTube as well (Super Street Fighter II, Splatterhouse, etc.). I don't really know anything about that computer or the Sharp X68000, but it's good to see what they were capable of...way more advanced than the 386 IBM-compatible Tandy I had in the early 1990s.

Yea, but a FM Towns WAS a 386, just with standard sound and video hardware (as opposed to PCs which could have all sorts of varied knick knacks in there). It still ran a stripped down version of DOS and a specialized GUI (based on DOS). Its main benefit was from being a more standardized platform, not from any major technical marvels.

For reference, the Tandy that you owned in the early 90s was already being rendered obsolete by the 486SX (or SLC if you got hosed with a Cyrix chip ) and soon after the DX (with integrated FPU! TAKE THAT, DOOM!) and games like Strike Commander, X Wing, Doom, and Indycar Racing were showing just what could be done on PCs. Don't forget the thriving PC demo scene at the time, though to really get the most out of that you had to have had a Gravis Ultrasound. Still, is there anything as technically impressive as Second Reality available on the FM Towns?

It did get some nice ports, though. Those Lucasarts releases were pretty good (especially since Zak McKracken on FM Towns was the only release to get a redbook audio soundtrack) and Ultima 6 was fully voiced (back when actual voice acting quality was less important than the inclusion of it in the first place). Generally though, it's a pretty overrated piece of hardware, especially when people try to sell the Marty as the first 32 bit console (woo! 386 powah!) when it was little more than a stripped down PC. Kind of a precursor to the Xbox but without the awesome developer support that was really able to exploit it (Bungie, Sumo Digital, Team Ninja, Starbreeze, etc).

But hey, you gotta love the x68k page at NFG Games.

[Rob2600]

Yea, but a FM Towns WAS a 386, just with standard sound and video hardware (as opposed to PCs which could have all sorts of varied knick knacks in there). It still ran a stripped down version of DOS and a specialized GUI (based on DOS). Its main benefit was from being a more standardized platform, not from any major technical marvels.

For reference, the Tandy that you owned in the early 90s was already being rendered obsolete by the 486SX (or SLC if you got hosed with a Cyrix chip ) and soon after the DX (with integrated FPU! TAKE THAT, DOOM!) and games like Strike Commander, X Wing, Doom, and Indycar Racing were showing just what could be done on PCs.

If my parents had upgraded our Tandy's RAM to 4 MB, I would've been able to play Doom. They didn't, so I continued playing Wolfenstein 3D instead.

The CPU in my family's Tandy was a 16-bit AMD 386SX running at 25 MHz (no math coprocessor). It had VGA graphics (256 KB of video RAM), which were quite good. We never upgraded it to SVGA, but we eventually added an internal 2x CD-ROM drive and an 8-bit Sound Blaster audio card. It was a decent setup, but you're right, 486 computers were becoming standard at that point.

Anyway, It seems like more was done with the FM Towns Marty and the Sharp X68000 with 2 MB of RAM (right?), than was done on my 386SX Tandy with 2 MB of RAM. I suppose it was because of the 32-bit architecture and, as you wrote, the fact that the hardware was standardized, like a game console.

EDIT: Then again, many games on the SNES look amazing and it had 16-bit architecture and 128 KB of RAM, so what was the excuse of DOS game developers back then?