The FM Towns relied on Intel CPUs, but the rest of the hardware was designed more or less like any other Japanese system of the era with specialized graphics and sound hardware. I believe it also was capable of booting off of CDs and running the software directly without having to install anything to an internal hard drive.
The specifications of the graphics and sound hardware were bleeding edge for sprite-based hardware of the time and included some really incredible graphics modes that far exceeded normal VGA plus had some really arcade level sprite hardware which the IBM-PC graphics hardware never offered.
The audio hardware was likewise well in excess of contemporary PC soundcards. It also mirrored arcade level hardware in capability.
In some ways, the FM Towns was as much a general purpose Personal Arcade as it was a Computer.