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    The truth behind Konix...

    This console is known as the "Konix Slipstream".

    Legendary machines are usually remembered for their classic games, however the Konix Multi-System became legendary for two quite different reasons. One is it?s completely revolutionary design, and the second is it?s failure to every become more than just a pipe dream.

    This sad story begins with one man, Wyn Holloway, who after designing an alternative styled joystick, The Speedking, set up Konix to manufacture and market it. Commercial success led to a spin-off company, Creative Devices Ltd, which developed technical products for many leading companies.

    Speed King

    In early 1988 Wyn Holloway designed the ultimate games controller, a unit that could morph between steering wheel, airplane yolk and motorbike handlebars. Originally this was intended as a controller to be used with the PC, however after discussions with several potential customers it became apparent that this product could be so much more than just a joystick. Enter Flare, a trio of computer engineers with aspirations to design the ultimate games machine. At around the same time work was nearing completion on the multi-system, Flare had designed and constructed their own machine. The Flare 1 was capable of shifting 3D images faster than any other machine on the market. They demonstrated their machine at a trade show and received interest from various companies, including Atari, Amstrad, and of course Konix. Incidentally, Flare went on to design the Atari Jaguar.

    A Partnership was formed

    Konix wanted a machine to fit inside the restrictive shell of their fantastic joystick and Flare obviously saw this as the best possible home for their hardware. Flare were faced with a very difficult task, their huge motherboard had to be compressed onto a single chip, and Konix insisted on 4098 colours, and that the Flare 1?s original 8-bit chip be replaced with a 16-bit chip, obviously a marketing ploy to add system credibility in the 16-bit dominated industry of the time.

    The two companies worked closely together until the completion of the prototypes, and by the Winter of 1989 the machine was ready to show off. Konix had constantly leaked lots of information to the gaming press right from the beginning of development, and the public were now desperate for more detailed facts. The feeling of anticipation was comparable to the recent Playstation launch build-up.

    The design of the Multi-System was simply amazing. Gamers still dream of a decent steering wheel with force feedback, well this also had additional plug-in pedals containing two separate analogue switches, allowing variable acceleration and braking. The steering wheel was easily switched into it?s other guises as a motorbike or airplane controller. The games were stored on 3.5? disk, allowing cheap duplication. Konix also developed a fail safe anti-piracy disk format. To top it all off, games were to be priced at ?14.99, half the price of other console software.

    Not only did Konix promise the ultimate in console design but also a complete range of cheap and revolutionary add-ons. These included a helicopter controller, possibly because Thunderblade was all the rage at the time, a full plug in keyboard, a keypad, and an exercise bike controller, an idea recently brought to fruition on the 3DO. There was also a light gun in the works, with real hydraulic kickback. The final add-on promised to be the most awesome gaming peripheral of all time. A hydraulic chair which you bolted your TV and Multi-System onto , to create the ultimate arcade experience.



    But what of the games? Well the only titles shown to the press were conversions of the 16-bit titles ?Last Ninja 2? and ?Hammerfist?, which were hardly capable of showing the true power of the console, and were completely unsuited to it?s revolutionary design. This was perhaps, the very reason for the eventual downfall of the system. Excited prospective purchasers (myself included) clamored to the 1989 PCW show at London?s Earls Court, expecting to be ?Blown Away? by the machine, only to find almost Amiga-Identical versions of two old and dull games. Not only this, but the revolutionary design never made it to the show in it?s proper form. The games were being played from NES style grey boxes. However there was a prototype of the hydraulic chair, but on the first day of the show, it?s motors burnt out.


    This was the ultimate add-on for a games console. With this chair connected to your KMS you could play games like e.g. After Burner, and actually follow the movements as they were happening on screen (just like the Afterburner Arcade cabinet ). Needless to say this would have been a real revolution in the games industriy, but alas...

    Konix's Last Ninja 2

    It was one of the few attempts to create a British-made video game console. The Konix would run games from specialised 3.5 inch floppy disk drive and had a 16-bit processor. It was announced for a 1989 launch at an expected price of ?200. But this never happened due to the many promises for add-ons that could not be fulfilled, such as light guns, motorised chairs and exercise bikes as well as the delays and changes being made to the console all the time.

    With the release of the Sega Megadrive the following year, interest in Konix sank to an all time low and despite a cash injection from a company called Add-Ons Ltd, Konix went under leaving thousands of gamers disappointed. No-one stepped in to resurrect the project and the Konix Multi-System is sadly now just a piece of computer legend. I have heard that some of the early Konix MS prototypes still exist in working form, if anyone can clarify this, please let us know!

    This machine is probably the best proof of the rule that without one awesome game, any machine , however amazing it is, is doomed to fail. I will close this article with a profound quote from Wyn Holloway, which he made had the first press showing of the Multi-System. "What do they want? Do they want the Japanese to completely take over the business and dictate to us what we can publish, where we can publish it, and how many units we can sell?" -

    Konix Multisystem Technical Specifications
    * CPU: 16-bit 8086 Microprocessor with a custom 12 MHz ASIC chip
    (includes video generator, colour palette, disk controller, Blitter, ROM, fast RAM, 12 MIP Arithmetic and Logic Unit, RISC Digital Signal Processor, stereo compact disk DACs and digital and analogue ports
    * RAM: 256K (in later versions upgraded to 512K)
    * Graphics: 512 x 200 pixel resolution, 4096 colours palette, displays 16 colours simultaneously
    * Sound: 25 channel stereo CD quality sound . Output via TV or stereo headphone socket
    * Display: Standard TV or RGB composite video
    * Software: Customised 880K 3.5 inch disks and expansion cartridge

    Konix's release schedule:

    - Starglider 3 - Argonaut

    - Bikers - Argonaut

    - Last Ninja 2 - System 3

    - Vendetta - System 3

    - Tunnel of Doom - ATD

    - Chess - Konix

    Misc: Other Legends?

    There are quite a few computer legends, a very famous one is the Sinclair Pandora. This was to be a totally portable Spectrum, with built in LCD screen. This finally saw the light of day as the Z88, a failed business machine.

    MGT launched the ill fated SAM in a flurry of publicity in 1989. This machine was a Spectrum Compatible! Spectrum owners saw it as their machine?s savior, while everyone else saw it for the outdated machine it was. MGT only issued 800 units, and then went bust. I have yet to get my hands on one.

    Commodore excited many gamers when they released the Commodore 128. The machine was said to have hundreds of games in the works, all of which would be incomparable with their C64 cousins. what purchasers got was a remodeled C64. Only three dedicated C128 games were ever released. - www.retrogames.co.uk

    - Sad story that, I was looking forward to Konix!...

    #2
    The Konix was really just an Amiga with more colours technology wise. It had a version of a fairly popular Amiga game running on it called HammerFist. If im correct, it had more colours and that was about it for improvements.

    At the end of the day the machine was too gimicky for its own good. The controls in all their guises were fairly weak and the machine just didn`t have the power to produce games to Wow people away from the Amiga and Megadrive.

    I could see what all the fuss was about, as a little kid, I thought it looked really advanced and offered a new frontier in gaming. In hindsight I think most people were being naive about the machine, it wasn`t as great as the hype suggested.

    It would make a great collectable, if someone could find one.

    Comment


      #3
      Thanks for that.

      Memories come flooding back - I remember watching the faltering progress of the Konix Multi-System via Games Machine.

      The Speedking was an excellent joystick too, almost as good as my trusty Kempston microswitched!

      Comment


        #4
        I believe Jeff Minter still has the work he did on a Konix version of AMC somewhere... in some form or other. He got about 60% of the way through before it bit the dust. Of course the link with Flare (as noted) meant he later did T2K on the Jag...
        Lie with passion and be forever damned...

        Comment


          #5
          Sounds like you typed it out of ACE magazine...

          However a few corrections...

          The Flare One was a fast machine at filling large areas but apart from a few graphical demos which were written to show off the processer, nothing really was shown of what it could do in real life the fact it was running a Z80B would have probably thrown up some bottle necks (see Jaguar).

          The Flare One was sold the Bell Fruit and was used in skill with prize machines (aka pub quiz machines)

          Flare Technology became Flare Two and they used their DSP know how on the Panther to create the Jaguar. However in an interview, John Mathieson did say the game thay pushed the Jaguar the hardest was erm Doom... says it all really.

          The Konix system would have been the most powerful system of its day given they got rid of the Z80 and replaced it with a true 16 Bit processer. A few dev kits were made but all the machines were mock ups according to Mr Jeff Minter on of the people working on games for the machine.

          Konix ran out of money, they tried to be too clever making add ons rather then getting the main system up and running and to a stage where they could make it, I am sure they never got the board to a stage where it could have been mass produced... It was sold finally to a Korean company who did bugger all with the system and they went bust. The company who made the controller had to fight through the courts for around 6 years before they got the rights to their controller back and release it as a PC controller (funny that....), in a funny twist virtualy no games used the special controller at all...

          The C128 was intended to be a business machine rather then a C64 beater. It ran C64 software happily, it had a dedicated 128 mode with 80 column facilities and it ran CP/M it also had a different drive so it could read MFM discs. Sadly CP/M was coming to the end of it's life, so the machine was dead in the water. Still the machine is a good dev machine as it's possible to use the Z80 and the 6502 at the same time and as there are two video controllers (one VIC chip and one 80 Column chip) you can use both at the same time with clever programming.

          The Sam Coupe was made as an Spectrum beater sadly bugs and problems getting the machine out meant it was dead in the water when it came out.... More then 800 machines were made, but it was in the several thousands. MGT went bust but they reformed the company twice before giving up and giving the rights to the Sam Couple to the guy that used to run the Format fanzine...

          The Z88 was released as when sinclair sold the rights to the Spectrum to Amstard the contract stated that Sinclair was not allowed to make another home computer or business computer for about 5 years, sadly the lawyers forgot Laptop... So Sinclair who was always going to make a laptop made the Z88, a Z80 based laptop that had the famous dead flesh keyboard, but one that worked this time plus a suite of programs that were very good including a word processer and BBC BASIC.

          Some of the Flare team went to work on Nuon, you would think they would have learnt by now (Curse of Sinclair and all that), some of them now work for NVidia which means that give it a year and NVidia will be bust.

          Comment


            #6
            The Konix speedking helped me and the missus complete Uridium on the C64. God bless 'em.

            A more interesting, nay remarkably similar take on Konix can be found at http://www.retrogames.co.uk/RGonline/html/page_5-6.html

            Comment


              #7
              There are quite a few computer legends, a very famous one is the Sinclair Pandora. This was to be a totally portable Spectrum, with built in LCD screen. This finally saw the light of day as the Z88, a failed business machine.


              8) My dad has one of these and the keyboard is indeed like deadflesh.

              The word processor on it is called pipedream and it is indeed very very good for its time. Infact like all of sinclairs babys it was a very well thought out bit of kit.

              Comment


                #8
                I had a SAM Coupe. I loved that machine.

                I could play all my Speccy games on it, and even quicksave them to floppy disk for instant loading. It was also capable of some pretty good graphics, and had the second best version of Tetris I've ever played.

                I even hand drew every frame of Guy from Final Fight's walk animation using the paint package that came with it, and then looped them with a little program to show off what it could do.

                I'm going to dig the little white and blue bugger out of my dad's loft!

                Comment


                  #9
                  Good on ya,

                  I remember getting really excited about the SAM. Do you remember that cute little robot dude they used in their ads. My local speccy outlet actually had one of these machines running a pretty impressive space shooter. I thought the hardware itself also looked sweet. A nice clean white colour with those blue rubber feet. Almost ahead of its time in that respect.

                  Look at it its pure sex.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    It was a beauty wasn't it.

                    I had that shooter! I think it was called Parallax if i remember correctly.

                    There were quite a few great games on it - Klax, Prince of Persia (an excellent conversion too), Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, Pipe Mania (cost me HOURS).

                    I'm all excited now. Damn my old man for being out of the country!

                    He better still have it. Having said that, this is the guy who bought a Z88. Then bought 2 more for spare parts. And he had a Sinclair QL. And an Oric 1, and two Oric Atmos.

                    Never one for the popular choice my dad. If you couldn't buy it in mainstream stores, had to write your own software, and could only get peripherals from weird computer fairs, he was as happy as Larry.

                    I remember him coming home with a VCR.

                    "Is it a VHS dad?"
                    "No son."
                    "Is it a Betamax dad?"
                    "No son."
                    "What is it dad?"
                    "It's a GRUNDIG VIDEO 2000!!! Amazing quality, double sided tapes, proper pause and slow motion!"
                    "Can we rent a video dad?"
                    "Yes son, there's on shop in the whole of Scotland that stocks the format. A wise choice eh?"

                    Cue children sobbing, and praying for a less technomad father, and just a normal dad who was happy with the common choice...

                    Ooops! Sorry for railroading this thread! Go about your business like I was never here.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Brodie, I your dad! When I grow up, I know I'm going to be exactly the same! Yay! Or maybe

                      Comment


                        #12
                        100%, definitely YAY for Brodie's dad. It'd have been so boring if you'd actually been able to USE the things he brought home... :-P


                        Also... is the SX-64 the same as the Z88?
                        If so... someone's found a new use for them

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Nah, although that does look very cool

                          this is the Z88



                          it was a great bit of kit. Seriously though I think my dad also had one of those VCRs, did they take huge square tapes? We used it for many years before finally succuming to VHS.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by Magnakai
                            100%, definitely YAY for Brodie's dad. It'd have been so boring if you'd actually been able to USE the things he brought home... :-P


                            Also... is the SX-64 the same as the Z88?
                            If so... someone's found a new use for them
                            I normally find those kind of 'stuff a PC into a small object' projects a bit wank, but that one is awesome!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Got on the phone to my dad to ask about the Sam last night. He still has it yay!

                              Also he mentioned that he's converting a corner of his garage into a little computer area. I think he means ALL his garage, considering he's got -

                              Oric 1
                              2 X Oric Atmos
                              Sinclair QL
                              3!!! Z88's
                              2 Speccy 48k rubber key
                              Spectrum +
                              Spectrum +3
                              C64
                              Amiga 500
                              Atari ST
                              About 5 old PC's
                              The Sam (not for long...)
                              And god knows what else since I last saw him...

                              As for the VCR Madbury, It had pretty damn big tapes. Dunno that they were square, but they were double sided, so you could record on either side like an audio tape, and were waaaay higher quality than VHS. He's probably still got it.

                              GOing back to the Konix though - i used to dream about playing Afterburner on that seat. Shame it never happened eh?

                              Comment

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