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What is it?

Consider this a cribsheet - or a blaggers guide to the Konix multisystem, if you want greater depth then carry on reading through the rest of the website - I've arranged the pages this way so as not to scare off the casual reader.

The Konix Multisystem is an unreleased british designed games machine (console) from circa 1989-1991. This video shows the Manufactures promotion

Of course by today's standards, it's dated , in fact it's scary just how dated it is! Put it alongside Gears of War for example and you might as well be comparing chalk with cheese. But the concept none the less was unique back then and it's only just now that a mainstream manufacturer - Nintendo has chosen to try to create a whole games machine concept around the way that you interact with the games in a move to try to make the games playing experience more involved, dynamic and possibly immersive.
Nintendo, and to be fair, several other manufacturers have had quite a long history of trying to introduce new concepts to achieve this goal, using devices like gloves with controls mounted on them, simulated vehicular controls, light guns 3D goggles and some even more weird and wacky devices that never really caught on. And possibly the biggest stick in the mud of all, these add-ons always sold in very low numbers, were generally unsupported - usually having only a handful of games taking advantage of the novels controls or methods of playing that were afforded by the add-ons. Software publishers although quite possibly very excited by the possibilities of creating games to use these controls were generally very scared of putting a lot of effort into developing titles which ultimately were only going to sell comparatively small amounts and would therefore be a waste of time.

So where does the Multisystem fit into this picture? Well, like the new Nintendo Wii - one manufacturer of the era was brave enough to come up with a concept for a games machine that recognised the potential of offering more interactive ways of playing games. Unusually though it was a Joystick manufacturer from Wales in the UK with no experience of making games machines that decided to offer it's take on what it thought the games playing public wanted.

Evolving from a quite cute design for a steering wheel controller (noting new there) came a design that easily morphed between a steering wheel, a motorbike handle bar and a flight yoke for an airplane. This design in it's own right would have been quite impressive, but the designer (Wynford Peter holloway - more commonally Wyn Holloway) saw the potential this machine could have if it were the basis of a complete games machine. Luckily the designer read an article in Ace magazine - the same magazine that you or i were probably reading at the time about a prototype system for a very impressive games machine which was looking for a manufacturer and putting two and two together he had the start of a potentially great machine.

Letting his imagination run wild Wyn came up with all manner of add-ons such as a home version of a hydraulic chair (popular at the time in the arcades for games like Outrun and After burner) he identified a way of providing a very similar effect but for a fraction of the cost. He also came up with a light gun that had a recoil feature. Constantly adding ideas into the melting pot and letting everyone know his ideas, he managed to gerenate a frenzy of enthusiasm surrounding his product.

The controller design called "Slipstream" could be modified by the user with simple and quick twisting actions to form the handle bars of a motorbike, the yoke of an airplane and with the addition of a slip on cover - a steering wheel.
The controller integrated controls that mimicked gear selection, and could be locked into several positions that were appropriate for the operating mode. For example when in airplane yoke mode the shaft the control was mounted on could pivot through an axis to simulate pitch controls. it's said that the controler also had rumble features. this can't be confirmed until a prototype machine turns up.

The electronics for the Multisystem were based on the revolutionary Flare one computer system. It was adapted over the development life of the machine to suit programmers needs for more memory and some other features that made programmers lives easier and made the machine more capable. Technical demos showed the power of the machine, although the games in development didn't really seem to create such an impact as they were mostly ports of successful games already released for other platforms.

because the macine was such an unknown quantity - afterall konix had never built a computer or console before most major developers were very interested, but held back from investing any time or effort into producing games for the machine. of the handful of developers that did take an interest, some of the games were quite run of the mill, but others such as AMC'89 did show the potential the machine had.

Origionally intended to use cartridges, the system was redesigned to use cheaper to produce floppy disks with propriety copy protection.

It was only going to cost around £200 with games at around £14 so it was fairly affordable. This was a good price to pitch a new machine at,

Such was the coverage in the press - born both through general interest and enthusiasm at the novelty of it all and Wyn's charisma and ability to sell anything to anyone, there was such great enthusiasm and anticipation for the release of the machine that it felt like a devastating blow to anyone who had been collected in the swell of the tide of hype and expectations that existed at the time.

So why didn't it make it? - was it vapourware? - Well, it's definately wasn't vapourware, the devkits for the machines existed and were what developers were using to create the games. a few hand built prototypes of the complete machine as it may have been sold to us were used for promotional purposes at trade shows and in magazine articles etc.
The reson it didn't make it? It's allways been said that konix just ran out of money, and as dissapointng an end to a products potential sounds, this is probably the most accurate description. It's not that the product wasn't generating A LOT of interest from the press and public and the rest of the games industry of the time, it seems to be a case that there was too much riding on it, the investment wasn't there to fund the production and there may have been an element of pride, shelfishness or greed on Wyns part that meant that he wasn't going to sell the idea off to anyone else if he wasn't going to get top dollar - and Oh there were interested parties, Lucasfilm being the most famous of potential suitors.

After the konix project fell through a lot of people had a bad time of it all, but Wyn rose pheonix like from the ashes and launched MSU - a company which made use of the engineering contact wyn had previously in his experience putting together the konix project. MSu tried to create a Multisystem 2, but that failed and we didn't see anymore of the multisystem.

It's commonally written that the Atari Jaguar is the Multisystem 2 - this isn't true. The Jaguar is really the Flare Two and was sold to Atari where Atari further developed the idea into what became the atari jaguar. It's more a spiritual successor to the KMS and no doubt share so similar but further developed ideas. So the essence of the Jaguar was developed by 2 of the people that developed the KMS, but they were only part of a bigger team that developed the Jag into what atari wanted.

slipstream

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