Konix Multisystem
Encyclopedia
Konix was a British computer peripheral company primarily known for making joystick
s such as the distinctive Speed King during the 1980s. Although this was its primary business for years, its place in videogame folklore was cemented by its ambitious and ultimately ill-fated plans to release its own video game console
, the Konix Multisystem.
However, it soon became apparent that the Slipstream project had the potential to be much more than a peripheral. Konix turned to their sister company Creative Devices Ltd, a computer hardware developer, to design a gaming computer to be put inside the controller to make it a stand-alone console in its own right. It was shortly after this development began that Konix founder and chairman Wyn Holloway came across a magazine article that described the work of a British group of computer hardware designers whose latest design was looking for a home.
The article in question, published in issue 10 of ACE
magazine in July 1988, featured Flare Technology
, a group of computer hardware designers whom, having split from Sinclair, had built on their work on Sinclair's aborted Loki
project to create a system known as Flare One.
Flare's prototype
system was Z80
based but featured four custom chips
to give it the power to compete with peers such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST
. The 1MB machine (128k of ROM, 128k of video RAM, 768k of system RAM) promised graphics with 256 colours on-screen simultaneously, could handle 3 million pixels per second, output 8 channel stereo and had a blitter chip that allowed vertical and horizontal hardware scrolling.
Flare were specifically aiming their machine at the gaming market, eschewing such features as 80 column text display (considered the requisite for business applications such as word processing
) in favour of faster graphics handling. This meant that in spite of its modest 8-bit
CPU the system compared well against the 16-bit
machines in the market at the time. It could move sprites and block graphics faster than an Atari ST, and in 256 colours under conditions when the ST would only show 16 colours. It could also draw lines 3 times faster than an Amiga and even handle the maths of 3D models faster than the 32-bit
Acorn Archimedes
.
In spite of these specifications and bearing in mind their target gaming market, Flare aimed to retail their machine for around £200, half of what the Amiga and ST were selling for. However they lacked the resources to put it into mass production.
.
Konix wanted the machine to use a 16-bit processor, so the Z80 was removed and replaced with an 8086 processor. They also demanded that the colour palette be expanded to 4096 colours, the same as that of the Amiga. To reduce manufacturing costs, the Flare One's four custom chips were integrated into one large chip. In order to keep the cost of software down, it was decided that the software media would be 3.5” floppy disc
s rather than ROM cartridges used universally by consoles up to that time.
The embryonic console was revealed to the computing press at a toy fair held at Earls Court Exhibition Centre
in February 1989. It boasted market leading performance, MIDI support and revolutionary peripherals including a light gun
with recoil
action and the Power Chair, a motorised
seat designed to ape in the home what “sit-in” arcade games such as After Burner
and Out Run
delivered in the arcades
using hydraulics
. Another innovative feature was the ability to link 2 MultiSystems together to allow for head-to-head two player gaming. Release was slated for August that year.
Brian Pollock of software publisher Logotron highlighted the limitations caused by the shortage of RAM (kept low to keep prices down), “My only concern is memory, or lack of it. For instance, in the game that I'm writing I am using six-channel FM synthesized sound. Now that takes up a hell of a lot of memory. I couldn't usefully fit any more samples, and that's sad.”
The memory issue was also flagged by Crash
magazine, which pointed out that the floppy disk format meant that games had to be loaded into the machine's RAM (originally intended to be 128k) in turn requiring the system to be constantly accessing the disk drive. Konix intended to remedy the problem with RAM upgrade cartridges, provided that the price of RAM fell in the future.
Overall though, programmers received the system positively. Jeff Minter described the controller itself as “superb,” while Chris Walsh of Argonaut Games
stated that “Polygon based games like Starglider 2
are going to be easy to program. The machine is geared up to rotating masses of vertices at incredible rates.”
Numerous game developers were recruited to produce games for the system, including Jeff Minter's Llamasoft, Electronic Arts
, Psygnosis
, Ocean
, Palace
and U.S. Gold
, with Konix promising 40 games to be available by Christmas. Lucasfilm
was mooted as a developer with the possibility of releasing their own branded version of the machine in the US, but nothing was ever confirmed.
Games known to be in development for the system during 1988 included Llamasoft's Attack of the Mutant Camels
, System 3's Last Ninja 2
, Vivid Image's
Hamerfist, and Logotron's Star Ray.
In March 1990 it was revealed that Konix had sold the rights to sell their joystick range in the UK to Spectravision
who also manufactured the rival QuickShot
joystick range. They had effectively sold off the family silver in order to keep the MultiSystem project alive. Autumn 1990 was to be the new release time.
Eventually, beset by delays and in spite of all of the media coverage and apparent demand for the machine, the project ultimately went under when Konix ran out of cash without a completed system ever being released. Some people, including Holloway, contend that this was due to major international competitors leaning on Konix's suppliers and financiers to prevent the project reaching the market.
and, after further development, formed the basis for the Atari Jaguar
game console.
The original Flare One technology was purchased by arcade gambling machine manufacturer Bellfruit for use in their quiz machines. Drivers for these games are also included in the multi emulator MAME
.
The Konix Multisystem's design was later released independently by a Chinese company called MSC (MultiSystem China) as the MSC Super MS-200E Multi-System, although this was simply an inexpensive PC games controller, without any special internal hardware.
In terms of its long lasting impact on the video game industry, perhaps the most intriguing aspect is Wyn Holloway's claim that Lucasfilm had their frequent partner Sony
lined up to manufacture their version of the system, this being contemporaneous with Sony's development of the SNES-CD for Nintendo
, which ultimately led to the first PlayStation
.
Video taped footage showing several games being worked on for the system survives. Excerpts from the footage were later issued on the cover disc of issue 8 of Retro Gamer magazine.
Joystick
A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks, also known as 'control columns', are the principal control in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or...
s such as the distinctive Speed King during the 1980s. Although this was its primary business for years, its place in videogame folklore was cemented by its ambitious and ultimately ill-fated plans to release its own video game console
Video game console
A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...
, the Konix Multisystem.
Background
The Konix Multisystem began life in 1988 as an advanced Konix peripheral design intended to build on the success of the company's range of joysticks. The design, codenamed Slipstream, resembled a dashboard-style games controller, and could be configured with a steering wheel, a flight yoke, and motorbike handles. It promised advanced features such as force feedback, hitherto unheard of in home gaming.However, it soon became apparent that the Slipstream project had the potential to be much more than a peripheral. Konix turned to their sister company Creative Devices Ltd, a computer hardware developer, to design a gaming computer to be put inside the controller to make it a stand-alone console in its own right. It was shortly after this development began that Konix founder and chairman Wyn Holloway came across a magazine article that described the work of a British group of computer hardware designers whose latest design was looking for a home.
The article in question, published in issue 10 of ACE
ACE (games magazine)
ACE was a multi-format computer and video game magazine first published in the United Kingdom by Future Publishing and later acquired by EMAP.-History:...
magazine in July 1988, featured Flare Technology
Flare Technology
Flare Technology was a computer hardware company based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1986 by Martin Brennan, Ben Cheese, and John Mathieson, former engineers at Sinclair Research....
, a group of computer hardware designers whom, having split from Sinclair, had built on their work on Sinclair's aborted Loki
Loki (computer)
Loki was the codename for a home computer under development at Sinclair Research during the mid-1980s. The name came from the Norse god Loki, god of mischief and thieves. Loki was based on the ZX Spectrum, but intended to rival the Commodore Amiga as a games platform. When Amstrad bought out...
project to create a system known as Flare One.
Flare's prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
system was Z80
Zilog Z80
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
based but featured four custom chips
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
to give it the power to compete with peers such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals...
. The 1MB machine (128k of ROM, 128k of video RAM, 768k of system RAM) promised graphics with 256 colours on-screen simultaneously, could handle 3 million pixels per second, output 8 channel stereo and had a blitter chip that allowed vertical and horizontal hardware scrolling.
Flare were specifically aiming their machine at the gaming market, eschewing such features as 80 column text display (considered the requisite for business applications such as word processing
Word processing
Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...
) in favour of faster graphics handling. This meant that in spite of its modest 8-bit
8-bit
The first widely adopted 8-bit microprocessor was the Intel 8080, being used in many hobbyist computers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, often running the CP/M operating system. The Zilog Z80 and the Motorola 6800 were also used in similar computers...
CPU the system compared well against the 16-bit
16-bit
-16-bit architecture:The HP BPC, introduced in 1975, was the world's first 16-bit microprocessor. Prominent 16-bit processors include the PDP-11, Intel 8086, Intel 80286 and the WDC 65C816. The Intel 8088 was program-compatible with the Intel 8086, and was 16-bit in that its registers were 16...
machines in the market at the time. It could move sprites and block graphics faster than an Atari ST, and in 256 colours under conditions when the ST would only show 16 colours. It could also draw lines 3 times faster than an Amiga and even handle the maths of 3D models faster than the 32-bit
32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes
The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...
.
In spite of these specifications and bearing in mind their target gaming market, Flare aimed to retail their machine for around £200, half of what the Amiga and ST were selling for. However they lacked the resources to put it into mass production.
Development
Holloway approached Flare and proposed a merger of their respective technologies to create an innovative new kind of gaming console with the computer hardware built into the main controller and in July 1988 a partnership was formed. Development work was carried out by Flare, with assistance from British games programmer Jeff MinterJeff Minter
Jeff 'Yak' Minter is a British computer/video game designer and programmer. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and his recent works include Neon , a non-game music visualization program that has been built into the Xbox 360 console, and the video games Space Giraffe , and Space Invaders...
.
Konix wanted the machine to use a 16-bit processor, so the Z80 was removed and replaced with an 8086 processor. They also demanded that the colour palette be expanded to 4096 colours, the same as that of the Amiga. To reduce manufacturing costs, the Flare One's four custom chips were integrated into one large chip. In order to keep the cost of software down, it was decided that the software media would be 3.5” floppy disc
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
s rather than ROM cartridges used universally by consoles up to that time.
The embryonic console was revealed to the computing press at a toy fair held at Earls Court Exhibition Centre
Earls Court Exhibition Centre
The Earls Court Exhibition Centre is an exhibition centre, conference and event venue located in west London, United Kingdom in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea . It is the largest exhibition venue in central London. It is served by two underground stations, Earl's Court and West...
in February 1989. It boasted market leading performance, MIDI support and revolutionary peripherals including a light gun
Light gun
A light gun is a pointing device for computers and a control device for arcade and video games.Modern screen-based light guns work by building a sensor into the gun itself, and the on-screen target emit light rather than the gun...
with recoil
Recoil
Recoil is the backward momentum of a gun when it is discharged. In technical terms, the recoil caused by the gun exactly balances the forward momentum of the projectile and exhaust gasses, according to Newton's third law...
action and the Power Chair, a motorised
Electric motor
An electric motor converts electrical energy into mechanical energy.Most electric motors operate through the interaction of magnetic fields and current-carrying conductors to generate force...
seat designed to ape in the home what “sit-in” arcade games such as After Burner
After Burner
is a 1987 Japanese flight simulator arcade game by Sega. It is one of the first games designed by Yu Suzuki. The player flew an F-14 using a specialized joystick , and the game spawned several sequels.-Gameplay:...
and Out Run
Out Run
is an arcade game released by Sega in 1986. It was designed by Yu Suzuki and Sega-AM2. The game was a critical and commercial success. It is notable for its innovative hardware , pioneering graphics and music, a choice in both soundtrack and route, and its strong theme of luxury and relaxation...
delivered in the arcades
Video arcade
An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...
using hydraulics
Hydraulics
Hydraulics is a topic in applied science and engineering dealing with the mechanical properties of liquids. Fluid mechanics provides the theoretical foundation for hydraulics, which focuses on the engineering uses of fluid properties. In fluid power, hydraulics is used for the generation, control,...
. Another innovative feature was the ability to link 2 MultiSystems together to allow for head-to-head two player gaming. Release was slated for August that year.
Specifications
- CPU: 16-bit 8086 processor (running at 6 MHz)
- Co-processor: ASICApplication-specific integrated circuitAn application-specific integrated circuit is an integrated circuit customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed solely to run a cell phone is an ASIC...
processor - RAM: 256KB (in later versions upgraded to 512K)
- Graphics:
- Custom blitterBlitterIn a computer system, a blitter is a circuit, sometimes as a coprocessor or a logic block on a microprocessor, that is dedicated to the rapid movement and modification of data within that computer's memory...
- 4096 colour palette
- Resolutions:
- 256x200 (256 colours)
- 512x200 (16 colours)
- 256x200 (16 colours)
- Custom blitter
- Sound:
- Custom RISC-based DSPDigital signal processorA digital signal processor is a specialized microprocessor with an architecture optimized for the fast operational needs of digital signal processing.-Typical characteristics:...
- Stereo sound
- Custom RISC-based DSP
- Storage: Custom 880KB 3.5" disk drive
- Misc: Cartridge expansion slot
Issues and limitations
Despite the impressive specification on paper, the design did suffer from some limitations. Nick Speakman of software developer Binary Designs pointed out that “the custom chips are very powerful, but they require a lot of programming talent to get anything out of them. The screen handling [also] isn't as fast as we anticipated it to be.”Brian Pollock of software publisher Logotron highlighted the limitations caused by the shortage of RAM (kept low to keep prices down), “My only concern is memory, or lack of it. For instance, in the game that I'm writing I am using six-channel FM synthesized sound. Now that takes up a hell of a lot of memory. I couldn't usefully fit any more samples, and that's sad.”
The memory issue was also flagged by Crash
CRASH (magazine)
Crash was a magazine dedicated to the ZX Spectrum home computer. It was published from 1984 to 1991 by Newsfield Publications Ltd until their liquidation, and then until 1992 by Europress.-Development:...
magazine, which pointed out that the floppy disk format meant that games had to be loaded into the machine's RAM (originally intended to be 128k) in turn requiring the system to be constantly accessing the disk drive. Konix intended to remedy the problem with RAM upgrade cartridges, provided that the price of RAM fell in the future.
Overall though, programmers received the system positively. Jeff Minter described the controller itself as “superb,” while Chris Walsh of Argonaut Games
Argonaut Games
Argonaut Games plc was a British video game developer. Founded as Argonaut Software by teenager Jez San in 1982 the company name is a play on his name and the movie title Jason and the Argonauts. It had its head offices in Edgware, London....
stated that “Polygon based games like Starglider 2
Starglider 2
Starglider 2 was an early 3D space simulator/flight simulator video game released in 1988 by Argonaut Games and was the sequel to Starglider...
are going to be easy to program. The machine is geared up to rotating masses of vertices at incredible rates.”
Numerous game developers were recruited to produce games for the system, including Jeff Minter's Llamasoft, Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
, Psygnosis
SCE Studio Liverpool
SCE Studio Liverpool is a video game development house head-quartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool, England. It is part of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. Founded in 1984 as Psygnosis, the company is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment and...
, Ocean
Ocean Software
The British company Ocean Software was one of the biggest European video game developers/publishers of the 1980s and 90s...
, Palace
Palace Software
Palace Software was a British video game publisher and developer during the 1980s based in London, England. It was notable for the Barbarian and Cauldron series of games for 8-bit home computer platforms, in particular the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64...
and U.S. Gold
U.S. Gold
U.S. Gold was a British video game publisher and developer from the early 1980s through the mid-1990s, producing numerous titles on a variety of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit platforms.-History:...
, with Konix promising 40 games to be available by Christmas. Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
was mooted as a developer with the possibility of releasing their own branded version of the machine in the US, but nothing was ever confirmed.
Games known to be in development for the system during 1988 included Llamasoft's Attack of the Mutant Camels
Attack of the Mutant Camels
Attack of the Mutant Camels was a surrealist computer game released for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers in the 1980s by Jeff Minter's Llamasoft. It is a horizontally-scrolling shooter.-Summary:...
, System 3's Last Ninja 2
Last Ninja 2
Last Ninja 2: Back with a Vengeance is an action-adventure computer game that was developed and published by System 3 in 1988 as a sequel to the 1987 game The Last Ninja. The NES version of the game was named simply The Last Ninja....
, Vivid Image's
Sobee
Sobee is a game development company founded by Mevlüt Dinç in 2000. Sobee's main headquarters reside in İstanbul, Turkey...
Hamerfist, and Logotron's Star Ray.
Demise
Signs of trouble in the progress to the release of the console did not take long to arrive. By May the release date had slipped from August to October. By October, a first quarter 1990 release was envisaged. The December edition of The Games Machine magazine revealed the scale of the problem. According to company sources, Konix had been on the brink of calling in receivers. Cheques had bounced, employees hadn't been paid and software development had been brought to a halt in mid-October as developers had reached the stage where they could continue no further without a finished machine.In March 1990 it was revealed that Konix had sold the rights to sell their joystick range in the UK to Spectravision
Spectravideo
Spectravideo, or SVI, was a U.S. computer company founded in 1981 as "SpectraVision" by Harry Fox. They originally made video games for Atari 2600 and VIC-20. Some of their computers were MSX-compliant or IBM PC compatible...
who also manufactured the rival QuickShot
QuickShot
QuickShot was a line of joysticks and other input devices produced by Spectravideo for video game machines including Atari, Commodore, MSX, Amiga, Nintendo and Sega. Relatively famous was its Quickshot Maverick joystick, compatible with multiple consoles and home computers...
joystick range. They had effectively sold off the family silver in order to keep the MultiSystem project alive. Autumn 1990 was to be the new release time.
Eventually, beset by delays and in spite of all of the media coverage and apparent demand for the machine, the project ultimately went under when Konix ran out of cash without a completed system ever being released. Some people, including Holloway, contend that this was due to major international competitors leaning on Konix's suppliers and financiers to prevent the project reaching the market.
Legacy
After the project was abandoned, Flare Technology began work on a new project, Flare Two, which was eventually bought by AtariAtari
Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...
and, after further development, formed the basis for the Atari Jaguar
Atari Jaguar
The Atari Jaguar is a video game console that was released by Atari Corporation in 1993. It was the last to be marketed under the Atari brand until the release of the Atari Flashback in 2004. It was designed to surpass the Mega Drive/Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Panasonic...
game console.
The original Flare One technology was purchased by arcade gambling machine manufacturer Bellfruit for use in their quiz machines. Drivers for these games are also included in the multi emulator MAME
MAME
MAME is an emulator application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. The intention is to preserve gaming history by preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten...
.
The Konix Multisystem's design was later released independently by a Chinese company called MSC (MultiSystem China) as the MSC Super MS-200E Multi-System, although this was simply an inexpensive PC games controller, without any special internal hardware.
In terms of its long lasting impact on the video game industry, perhaps the most intriguing aspect is Wyn Holloway's claim that Lucasfilm had their frequent partner Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
lined up to manufacture their version of the system, this being contemporaneous with Sony's development of the SNES-CD for Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
, which ultimately led to the first PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
.
Video taped footage showing several games being worked on for the system survives. Excerpts from the footage were later issued on the cover disc of issue 8 of Retro Gamer magazine.