The Konix Multisystem is one of the most famous unreleased gaming platforms of all time. First shown off in 1989, it was created by a team of former Sinclair Research staffers, it boasted a moving chair accessory and light gun—but the project collapsed when Konix went under in 1990.
However, the technology seen in the Multisystem lived on in a way. The "Multisystem 2", as it was unofficially called, wasn't a hardware platform as such but would find its way into the market via some rather odd devices, such as the unsuccessful TXC Multi-system—a combination of CD player, photo viewer, karaoke machine, and console.
Around this time, Dark Technologies began working on a game which would leverage the power of this new technology called Magician's Apprentice. When the fabled "Multisystem 2" project failed to make an impact, the game was canned—although it would see release on PC as a bonus in the title Alien Olympics.
Fast-forward to 2025, and the wonderful folks at Games That Weren't were tasked with preserving some code archives. They found that Magician’s Apprentice was potentially included. The source code was indeed part of the archive, but there was no way to actually play it, as no emulator existed for the Multisystem 2.
In stepped Lee Hammerton, whose Konix Slipstream Emulator was capable of handling the game, as it was developed with unreleased hardware ventures in mind, too.
The end result of all this activity is that you can finally play an unreleased version of a game that was intended to be run on a system which never really existed. What a time to be alive!