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Article archive Hype The Press Effect Can I Help?

Article archive

This section is offered to allow you to gauge the mood of the press regarding the Multisystem at the time and after its demise.

If the magazine is still in print, I have offered nothing other than the front cover and a link to the website of the publisher so that you can go and buy it. If the publisher has the ability to reproduce an out of print magazine, but don't choose to offer it for sale, then you should press them to re-print it as a back issue.

About the magazines

ACE
ACE magazine majored on the Konix, they produced very technical reports (as was the nature of ACE) - it was a more serious magazine than it's contempories, much like EDGE is these days.
ACE really did set the benchmark for reporting the technical details of the machine and reporting what the developers were up to.

The Games Machine (TGM)
The Games Machine were also very keen on the Multisystem, they had a slightly less technical slant (but still more technical than others), but were equally keen to give it column inches. They charted the progress of the Multisystem from it's glorious birth to it's embarrasing death.

C&VG
Computer and Video Games covered the Multisystem via a number of double spread pages. They did seem very excited by the Multisystem, but seemed to exercise more restraint than the others. Also, it wasn't as technicaly biased in it's reporting as the others, but then, it had a very particular demographic.

EGM
This American magazine took a keen interest in the fact that it was a British console. EGM Magazine had described the Multisystem as "A toilet seat with handle bars" which came to be a commonly used term to refer to the machine. And they say Britian suffers from too much toilet humor - What a load of shit, I'm off to play with my Wii.

Zero
Zero magazine were certainly positively interested in the Multisystem, giving it a double page spread in their first issue. I don't have any other copies of Zero so I'm unsure how they covered the rest of it's lifetime - maybe you can help?

Edge
Edge magazine for thoses not in the UK or US is the most serious magazine availalbe to the public - it is unfortunately also a bit too self aware and likes to bring style and high art into the mix - maybe it's just the pragmatic engineer with no real design flare in me, but it would be nice to just be able to read the content somethimes tha't hidden amougst the fancy layouts and sometimes illegable typeography.

Micro News
A bit of an oddity this one - it just turned up on a random ebay search for Konix. I hated learning french at school and later went on to learn Japanese so I can't be bothered to try to translate it.

Retro Gamer
Ah, what can I say - a great magazine then and a great magazine still. I was gutted when Retrogamer published Craig Vauaghns excellent article for two reasons - 1) Becasuse I was allways going to create this website - I may have done it about 5 years ago , but didn't pull my finger out so they beat me to it. and 2) - It's actually a bloody good article that told me stuff that was a revelation to me and I was possibly the most voracious consumer of Konix info. Still it suprred me on to go a slightly different root and try to compliment Craigs excellent article, and with contributions and help from Craig, I think we've got it mostly covered from every angle.

Popular computing weekly
A trade magazne - great source of news.

Games™
Excellent magazine, I buy two gaming magazines a month without fail - Edge because I feel I need to, and Games™ because it's a bloody enjoyable read (especially Kongetsu and the Retro section)

Site News

August 18th, 2010:
Forum!
I have now created a Forum specifically for this website. Please feel free to register and start talking, asking questions and sharing opinions. Just click the Forum link on the navigation panel, or follow this link

August 9th, 2010:
What happened to the Multisystem after the collapse of Konix might be more interesting than I first thought. When Konix became MSU it started to get really interesting. I've been talking to former Employees and they weren't happy Bunnies, and I think I've uncovered a picture (an MSU mock-up) of what the Multisystem 2 would have evolved into and it's quite sad! For the moment, head on over to the MSU page for a quick look, I will try to develop the MSU pages a bit more as it's not just a footnote to the story; it's a whole new soap-opera in its own right!

August 2nd, 2010:
I was kindly given a scan of a proposal for a the Sailing game by ODE on the Multisystem, I thought you might be interested to read it to see how games companies were pitching their ideas to Konix for the right to develop on machine. Download the PDF

July 21st, 2010:
Time for a bit of a revamp, I've looked back in horror at all the typos and will do something about them.
Also, what with Sony Move and Microsoft Kinect, the whole world is going crazy for new ways to interact. I wonder if Wyn is thinking of a comeback?

February 17th, 2009:
Don't get too excited - no major news I'm afraid. I have been contacted by a former employee of MSU who gave me some interesting information about the company Wyn formed after Konix. I'll massage the info into the site when I have some time. I'd also like to say that I'll be tweaking the site a little, hopefully fixing up some of the embarrassing spelling mistakes and maybe making it a little more organised. I'll also re-write some of the stuff that's now out of date.

April 4th, 2008:
Sorry for the outage, my hosting account lapsed while I was away on business. All fixed now.

April 4th, 2008:
No news to report on trying to contact Jeff Minter for an interview, although I have recently been contacted by one of the developers from Bellfruit who offered his assistance where possible

Recommended links

View all 23 Multisystem Videos

Wyn Holloway - creator of the Multisystem Interviewed

Download the actual Multisystem technical reference document
Warning, it's 25Mb click here to start the download