Hudson Soft / Sony · 1993 · Super Nintendo / PlayStation
The Multitap was a multi-port adapter allowing up to four or five players to connect simultaneously to a single console, enabling the multiplayer party games that became a defining feature of the SNES and PlayStation eras.
The Multitap concept was pioneered by Hudson Soft for the PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16) in 1990, allowing up to five controllers in simultaneous connection for games like Bomberman, which had been designed around the five-player maximum. When Hudson ported Super Bomberman to the SNES in 1993, they produced a SNES-compatible Multitap to accompany it, and the accessory became essential for the game's four-player mode. The concept spread to the PlayStation, while the N64 sidestepped it with four controller ports built in. Sony's PlayStation Multitap, released in 1996, became particularly significant due to the PlayStation's library depth in multiplayer-focused genres. The PlayStation Multitap enabled four-player simultaneous play in games including Crash Team Racing and the genre-defining NFL GameDay and NBA ShootOut series — sports games that sold their legitimacy partly on the basis of four-player support. The PlayStation 2 retained Multitap compatibility through an updated version, extending the peripheral's usefulness into the sixth generation. The Multitap's broader cultural significance lies in enabling the party gaming format that would become central to gaming's social identity throughout the 1990s. Games built around four-player competition — Bomberman, Crash Team Racing — required the Multitap on platforms without four native controller ports. These games represented a meaningful proportion of high-attachment-rate software sales, meaning that Multitap ownership was significantly correlated with ownership of some of each platform's best-selling titles. On the PlayStation, the Multitap was a necessary accessory for any household that played multiplayer sports or racing games seriously. Multiple incompatible versions of the Multitap existed simultaneously: SNES multitaps from different makers varied in compatibility, the PlayStation version was incompatible with the PlayStation 2 Multitap on many games, and third-party versions sometimes had compatibility issues with specific software. This fragmentation occasionally frustrated consumers, but the fundamental value proposition — enabling social multiplayer that the console hardware did not natively support — was sufficient to sustain strong sales throughout both platforms' commercial lifespans.