Redump is preserving FM Towns videogames - Can you help?

[diego-rbb-93]

Hi everyone!

My name is Diego and over the last years I've been an active dumper volunteer with several gaming  preservation groups like Redump.org, No-Intro or TOSEC (Dreamcast specifically). During this period, a place  was born bringing members from all these places (as well as other preservationist iniciatives) under one united community, called VideoGame Preservation Collective.

Thanks to this united force, we've been able over the last years to fully document and compile thousands of titles from several platforms leading to it's edge in terms of fullset completation. Biggest contributions came from Redump.org members, whose main objetive is disc media preservation. From demos/samples/taikenbans to retail games/special editions or  software applications/multimedia, my partners have made big efforts to make sure no data was lost, and the mission continues today, with a new target for 2020, FM Towns.

In the last years, rescuing japanese stuff have become one of our main obsessions and this has lead my partners to compile thousands of japanese titles and releases from different platforms such as Panasonic 3DO, Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation 1, PC Engine CD, Nintendo GameCube/Wii/WiiU, Microsoft Xbox...
As well as other niche platforms like Bandai Playdia, Sega MegaCD, Neo Geo CD or Philips CD-i.

Some of these platforms are really close to it's completation while other will still need lot of support to stand up (yes, I talk about Bandai Playdia :p). Still, thanks to all the people that have worked so hard over these years, I can assure more data has been dumped, documented and saved than the amount of data that could get lost in time. Thanks so much for each single effort you have done all this time.

Starting january 2019, we were finally able to get closer to another main goal as the PC-FX set from Japan got nearly finished (at least all retail games have been dumped), and the PC Engine CD sets from USA and Japan are really close to be completed.

For this reason, my partners have put their eyes on FM Towns. FM Towns has become in the last years in one of the most expensive platforms to buy games. Seems that being a niche platform has made this platform to be really valuable among sellers.

One of the biggest problems with FM Towns is not only it's price, but the state of preservation: Neither projects like TOSEC or TruRip have made any real progress trying to backup these games. We don't have to start from the scratch, but still, there's lot of stuff missing! Redump.org seeks to provide qualified dumps for the CD-Rom media videogames from this platform, while the floppies are being handle by our community VGPC, as we are pushing to convince people to dump with Kyroflux.

[size=150]This is what has been dumped so far from CD-Roms on Redump: [/size]

http://redump.org/discs/system/fmt/

(Mind that dumpers are not forced to share their dumps so, we have a list of dumps added to the database that we actually lack the proper game dump, we call them MIAs (Missing in Action))

http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=Fujitsu_FM-Towns_MIA


This is the list of games needed (you have other lists inside for missing applications/multimedia/educational discs that accept too):

http://wiki.redump.org/index.php?title=Fujitsu_FM_Towns_Missing_Games

And that's the reason we are calling the few existing FM Towns communities around, to ask if any of you could help us in this task.

In the last years, we saw how Neo Kobe finally made free their stuff on Archive.org, and as much as we apreciated it, we saw some complains about the dumps. Lot of them comes from unknowns source and others seem to not work. Maybe is a floppy problem or maybe is the disc dump, but this time, we are trying to provide the community with verified data for both of them.

If you own any of these games: For dumping, especial hardware is required, a series of compatible Plextor CD-Rom writers that we can provide you if needed. Dumping is extremly simple thanks to our open source tool, DICUI, that will automatize the process and is really simple to use.

If you don't own any of them: Any donation or information about where could we find help will help us a lot.

Right now, believe me when I say we were lucky. Not only amazing help is coming from my country (Spain) in form of some really expensive game dumps. After posting in different communities like Reddit Emulation or FM Towns Club in Facebook, we have seen different collectors and volunteers around the world seeking to help us, including legendary Higan developer and SNES preservationist, Byuu, who has told us about his interest on checking FM Towns emulation and giving some help from Japan as he is now living there.

Meanwhile, some of my partners in VGPC, like Wiggy2k, have been spending a LOT of money to keep catching stuff from Japan. So, as you can see, this time we are going serious.

Thanks for your atention, and please, whatever you need to ask, go ahead, thank you!

PD. In case you are interested in joining us, this is our Discord community (mind that we don't allow rom sharing or talking about it there for safety reasons):

https://discord.gg/AHTfxQV