Marty 1 = Marty 2

If only it was that easy...

 

Making a Marty out of spare parts wouldnt be easier than making a NeoGeo out of a Genesis...

With the awful work Nec did selling the TG16 in the west, I think that the Marty wouldnt have had a better run than say the Amiga (although commodore had an abysmal strategy)

 

Yes but NEC / Hudson had fucked up the PC Engine by letting some marketing people tell them what they should do to sell the machine in the US. The PC Engine - Cute, white / grey machine plays games. TurboGrafx 16 - Ugly large piece of plastic that even used different connections to make it look even uglier.

The FM towns marketed well could have done slightly better, then again the FM Towns only sold 145,000 units in the 5 years it was made as a proprietry machine. (Source wiki japan on the FM Towns). So anything would have done better. The Marty sold about 45,000 units...

 

Actually, at first the Amiga was quite successful. It's just, Commodore made a bunch of stupid mistakes, that and having to deal with several lawsuits that were filed against them didn't help either. Also, for some reason or another, people don't realize that Commodore was an American company.

Though, I do have to agree with you on the fact that Commodore had a horrible marketing strategy, and I also have to agree with you that the FM Towns probably would have done nothing in the West.

 

I think the Marty would've been seen as expensive, similar to the 3DO or Neo Geo. And, it didn't have the Neo Geo's software library behind it, or the 3D power of the 3DO. Japanese seem a lot more tolerant of expensive systems, compared to Americans.

 

Indeed, I heard they would use ads only during a new launch, then nothing until the next launch, which pretty much killed any momentum the Amiga could have at the time.

The problem I see with the Marty is that it was almost a IBM compatible (is an X86) but had too many propietary parts to take advantage of that.

 

And, like the CD32, it would've been perceived as a game machine rather than a computer.

 

Thats different, I see the CD32 like a preview of things to come (at the time) in the console world.

At the time most console companies were trying to push their systems as multifunction devices, like some others did before the 83 crash.

During the first days of the 32bit prices were sometimes 200% up from the last gen (like the Saturn or the 3DO) so companies were trying to make people see their consoles were worth the price becos they had more uses than just gaming, which BTW was still considered a variation of toys at the time, and its not easy to sell a $400 toy.