Multitap

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Hudson Soft released a Super Famicom Multitap in the shape of Bomberman's face.

A multitap is a video game console peripheral that expands the number of controller ports available to the player, thus allowing additional controllers to be used in play. A multitap often takes the form of a box with three or more controller ports which is then connected to a spare port on the console itself.

Mainly sports games supported multitaps, though some RPGs and first person shooters have taken advantage of multitap support. Early examples of multitaps include the NES Four Score and NES Satellite for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and Electronic Arts' 4 Way Play for the Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis. Shortly after that, Sega made their own 4 player adapter which was incompatible with EA's adapter. A slightly redesigned adapter which supported both the Sega and the EA formats followed.

The first multitap device to be produced was by NEC for the PC Engine. The PC Engine is one of the few consoles to have been originally fitted with only one controller port. To make "multiplayer" gaming possible, you had to purchase the multitap, that expanded the PC-Engine to be played up to 5 people at once.

Nintendo, in conjunction with Hudson Soft, released in 1993, the "Super Multitap" for the Super Nintendo, it could be purchased bundled with the well regarded game Super Bomberman which helped establish the popularity of the peripheral.

Other games with Super Multitap support included NBA Jam, Secret of Mana and EA Sports' Madden series of American football games.

Codemasters developed a quasi-multitap for the Mega Drive called the J-Cart; the game would have two extra joypad ports built into the cartridge itself, thus negating the need to buy extra hardware (beyond two more joypads) to play four-player games.

A few games released for the Amiga home computer system after 1995 included support for custom-built Multitaps. Instructions for how to build a Multitap were included in the manual to classic Amiga racing sequel Super Skidmarks. The Amiga multitap would plug into the computer's serial port and provide two additional ports for use.

With the success of the Nintendo device, the term "multitap" became synonymous with similar devices. Later, multitaps were released by Sega for the Saturn and Sony for its PlayStation and PlayStation 2 consoles.

The PlayStation and PlayStation 2 multitaps also have memory card ports, allowing the same number of memory cards as controllers. In games such as Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, this allows all players to insert memory cards and track their personal statistics.

In recent years the multitap has become an increasingly redundant peripheral, with most console designers preferring to simply expand the number of controller ports on the console itself. While the first console to actually feature 4 controller ports onboard was the Bally Astrocade, the feature would not be widely used for well over a decade until the arrival of the Nintendo 64. Subsequent consoles, with the exception of Sony's PlayStation 2, all included four ports as standard. With the advent of standard wireless controllers in the next generation of consoles, the multi-tap seems consigned to history.