Best way to play FM Towns / PC98 games on console/handheld?

[gbaplayer]

Hi,

is there any good way to play FM Towns and PC98/88 games without owning the actual hardware?
I own a lot of games (mostyl RPGs and Eroge RPGs) for both systems but i don´t have the option to actualy play them.
Perfect would be a console or handheld to play them on.

Thanks
gbaplayer

[Bloodreign]

Asking for ROMS (in this case, ISO's) is a no no on these forums. They are a little hard to find, but Google can be some help.

[Austin]

I am curious about this topic as well and so I did a quick search. A thread on Reddit shows there's a good FM Towns emulator available: https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comm ... h=f8022743

From another quick Google search, it looks like PC-88/98 emulators exist as well. I have no experience with them so I am curious what others have to say about them. I wouldn't mind trying out some of that library but I'll likely never own the actual hardware.

[FinalBaton]

Check these very comprehensive videos on PC-98 emulators and how to configure them, by Michirin9801 :
Should you get into PC-98 emulation? 【Video guide】
PC-98 emulation part 2 - Configuring the emulators

I've watched those vids myself and they are very thorough and concise easy to follow. You can go straight to part 2, but I thought I would include part 1 as well.

[WelshMegalodon]

Why in the world would you use a console for games expecting keyboard input? And RPGs at that.

I'm not terribly familiar with the systems myself, having only dabbled in their libraries, but UNZ is the only Towns emulator I know of that's in a usable state, and QUASI88 works for PC-88 software. Playing PC-98 games requires two or three separate emulators (Neko Project II fmgen, Anex86, and something else) since the library is vast and none of them are as compatible as one would like.

On a related note, the MAME team's actually put a fair amount of work into PC-98 and Towns emulation and claims that drivers for the systems are decent, but I was honestly a bit disappointed.

The PC98 has never been marked working although it does run most stuff well. Whether to do so or not is a developer judgement call and we just haven't chosen to yet.

PC98 is mostly complete, the pc9801rs or the pc9821 drivers are your best bet with the "-cbus0 pc9801_86" option for pcm sound. PC88 needs attention but runs many things.