Alright, a quick write-up for the time being.While recording some gameplay of a certain Pico game, I managed to learn quite a bit about the Pico accessory known as...
The Multidrive!
You can see it on the left, in yet another picture I've obviously had stored from Japanese auction sites. The Multidrive has the shape of two gears, four buttons and a big button akin to the Pico's own traditional buttons, and a knob that looks kinda like the Drive Pico's key.
The game below it in the picture is the game that it is designed to be compatible with, "Exciting! Hataraku Norimono-tachi" (エキサイティング！ はたらくのりものたち). That is also the same game I have most recently uploaded footage of to Youtube.
And indeed, said footage is from emulation!
Similarly to the Drive Pico, the Multidrive is emulated, albeit strangely, by a combination of the buttons and mouse movements. In fact, it seems to control very similarly to how the Drive Pico does. It makes me wonder if I could swap out the gears for the Drive Pico's steering wheel on the actual hardware...
Anyhow, the instructional modes on "Exciting!" show you how the Multidrive is meant to be used, although in the video I only popped in one to show as an example (Play the ROM and you can see the rest, although it's all Japanese, of course). Based on the game, the Multidrive was designed as a "generic" big vehicle control accessory, in contrast with more specific car or train control sets. The construction and demolition trucks were given particular attention in the game.
I'm currently not sure of any other games the Multidrive is compatible with, or at least meant to be compatible with, anyway.
