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Concept
Konix Multisystem
Summary
The Konix Multisystem was a cancelled video game system under development by Konix, a British manufacturer of computer peripherals.
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 magazine in July 1988, featured Flare Technology, a group of computer hardware designers who, having split from Sinclair Research (creators of the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers), 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 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.
Official source
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