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Multisystem Overview
The Slipstream Controller - revolutionary controls
It's a bit bold claiming that the Multisystem had revolutionary controls - as after all we had seen steering wheel racing controllers, flight yokes and bike handlebars already in the arcades and even to some extent in the home. The revolution was in the combination of the three, and it's the elegance of the system that allowed it to morph between the setups that was the brilliance of the design. Add to this some quite refined and tasteful styling (this was the 80's after all, think what it could have looked like!) and you've got the basis of a great product in its own right.
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If it were to be sold as a games controller only, the Slipstream controller as it was codenamed would have been a little tricky to adapt to be suitable for all the games machines of the time. Unfortunately in the world of computing and gaming there are too many standards, and Konix would have had to have either made some quite clever electronics to adapt the system to interface properly with each possible games machine, or they would have had to make a separate Slipstream controller specifically for each games machine - either way both difficult pills to swallow. This was already seen in the case of their successful joysticks for the various home computers such as the Speedking and Navigator.
The line art images presented on the website are from one of two patents files for the Slipstream controller - I have hunted quite hard and can only find patents for the Slipstream - not the Multisystem as a whole. It'd be great to see some patents for the light gun and the infamous power chair too - but alas I can't find them, maybe someone else with better patent hunting skills can help? There are several subtly different revisions of the design knocking around, some of them seem to have existed before the decision to put the Flare one electronics into the case were made.
The Electronics - designed with flare
The electronics behind the impressive technical demos were created by
Flare Technology. They were the basis of a computer system which was intended
to be as powerful as the Commodore Amiga 500, but cheaper to make. They
called their system Flare one and it was in some ways derived from the Loki
project although it was more an evolution of the ideas the guys originally
had for Loki than any actual further development of the Loki intellectual
property.
Flare had designed this system independently of The Konix Slipstream, and
were keen to sell it to manufacturers. They did actually sell it to Bell
Fruit, a British manufacturer of pub quiz machines and one armed bandits.
It's quite interesting to see the technology in action - and in effect,
owning one of these arcade machines is as close as you'll get to owning a
real Multisystem. They can still be purchased on eBay these days - but it's a
bit of a mission tracking one down.
The Flare one prototype system was further developed for Konix and as such the chipset which comprised of 4 custom processors were integrated into one chip and the processor was changed to beef it up a bit. If you'd like to know more about this, then please read Simon N Goodwins in-depth Multisystem write up, and download the actual Multisystem technical reference manual.
The custom chipset of the Konix Multisystem was a contributing factor to
its strength, just as the ULA, the Sid and Vic chip, The Super FX chip, the
Copper and Blitter chip and all the custom silicon that made other machines
do what they could above and beyond the use of off the shelf parts, the Flare
one's strengths lay in the 4 custom chips which later became the single
merged ASIC that the Slipstream employed.
The Peripherals
1) The Power Chair
The peripherals are almost worth an entire website themselves - due to the
ambitious nature of the level of interaction Wyn was trying to offer and the
novel ways he was trying to accommodate that interactivity in mostly
affordable and easy to manufacture components. It's purely down to a lack of
personal accounts and any real supporting documents or evidence such as blue
prints and specifications that I can't elaborate on them anymore here.
Hopefully once more people read the site, accounts may come rolling in.
It's safe to say that the power chair was probably the one thing about the
Multisystem that made your jaw drop to the ground. It was also possibly the
straw that broke the camels back. It really was probably a step too far in
hindsight.
If the notion that you could add a relatively cheap powered moving chair to
your home games system came along maybe after a year of the Multisystem being
released, then who knows where we'd be now.
It certainly wasn't an impossible dream - the darn thing existed and
functioned as was intended - there is photographic evidence in the pictures
just below this paragraph. But it was a case of gilding the lily - I think it
pushed the Multisystem from being a credible project to something too awesome
to handle.
Here we see a number of people using the power chair, there are also two
versions of the chair on show, one more open than the other, but both seem
equally fun.
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In the pictures we can see Jeff Minter, Wyn Holloway and Ed Semrad. If you are one of the other 3 please drop me a line, I'd love to hear your impressions about the machine. Also, any members of the games industry, press or public who attended any of the shows where the power chair was present, and if you managed to ride the power chair please get in touch.
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The Konix attempt at capturing the thrills of an arcade machine hydraulic chair may never have come to market, but it wasn't the only attempt. Yes, it did it a different way, the idea was to offer similar experience for a much cheaper cost. There have been other chairs that offer something similar but not many manufacturers have attempted to power them - here a few others that have tried.
Wyn mentions in his interview that his patent attorney managed to get the production of a powered home chair designed by SEGA stopped - I'm not sure how much of recollection is fogged by the passage of time, but it is true that we don't really see many viable attempts at powered chairs - but that could just be because of the cost and the problem of lack of support in existing games.
2) Light gun on stun. A recoiling light gun
The light gun was quite an impressive design, being able to be adapted
into a rifle or to be a hand held pistol, It had a 50's B movie styling and
was an obvious blue. This made it less likely to be used in a successful bank
job, but more likely to be shown on America's dumbest criminals if it was
used in this way.
The recoil action would have preceded the Nintendo 64's rumble feature and as
such makes it more obvious that this kind of feedback is both useful and
necessary - almost every controller (apart from the PS3's…) has a
rumble facility built in these days.
3) Skiing + exercise bikes
Now we're into real pie in the sky territory. Peripherals like this may sound great for a few seconds but they are a clear indication that the designer doesn't fully understand the market (sorry Wyn!). These narrowly focused game specific peripherals are like concrete Wellingtons/Galoshes. A game will sink without trace quicker than you can say Al Capone if it's been designed to run solely with a piece of apparatus such as a pair of electro mechanical ski's. It's not so much that the idea of interactivity isn't a good one. Of course the Slipstream controller and light gun are good examples of peripherals that have some sort of life span. But even then, you can draw a parallel with the SNES super scope. A handful of games were developed for this shoulder mounted drainpipe. And the usual problem for game designers occurred with supporting the peripherals of not knowing how many people had them - or even worse, knowing exactly how many people had them and it not being sufficient to be economically viable to produce the game.
Then there's another aspect. Is it really fun playing a game based on
cycling or skiing? I personally think not. I want escapism in games, the
ability to engross myself in a fantasy land where I can do things impossible
or impractical in real life.
It's not actually that hard to get on a bicycle and race a few friends. It is
impossible to go into space and blast aliens with a ray gun (currently).
4) Foot pedals
Essential for driving games really, a plastic lump with a couple of pedals actuating potentiometers. Not a lot to say really - other than Puma pumps weren't essentiall!
5) Number pad
Ahh, the number pad, where would we be today without the number pad in
gaming. Oh - hold on a minute - we don't use them these days. That's right;
they were pretty useless weren't they.
From the Atari 2600 and a few other outings in-between (including the Konix's
natural successor the Atari Jaguar) the notion that one or two buttons on the
joypad/stick device wasn't enough was addressed by early designers by
offering a button pad with usually no less than 9 buttons - sometimes
more.
We are in a position now where we have usually around 10 + ways of
influencing the game through a button press or a d-pad action or an analogue
stick waggle. The evolution of pad design has recognised that this isn't
essential as better in game menus and data input systems have removed the
need for these devices.
6) Navigator joystick
Bundled in with the Multisystem was to be a nice colour coded version of
the Navigator joystick. Probably chosen for its look more than function -
after all, the Speedking was by far the more popular Konix Joystick. This
would have allowed players to play all the regular games that didn't require
the more exotic Slipstream controls to be used.
This version of the Navigator was released as a limited edition after the
Multisystem went for a burton.
7) Keyboard
Wyn had the notion that he could allow people to make use of the Multisystem
as a home computer to encourage bedroom coders to write for his system and of
course to keep it alive and viable. I've not seen any drawings or pictures of
any prototypes - so I think it's fair to say it was just a notion.
I think the Multisystem would have faired better as a console anyway - it
would have sent out confusing mixed messages at launch if a keyboard was
released alongside the machine. The machines reason for existing was purely
as a games machine - not a home computer like so many before it.
Gray or Black?
In all the pictures you see of the Konix Multisystem, it has to be said that the machine looked much better in it's light gray with red and pastel blue highlights. Instead of being sexy, the MSC controller just doesn't look as good when put next to images of the original. It just looks cheap. A couple of years into the products lifetime and it may have received a makeover or a revamp. Konix may have (as do other manufacturers) offered a redesigned black version. I don't think I'd have been at the front of the queue to buy it myself. What do you think? Gray or Black?