RetroVision – Nintendo PlayStation Finally Revealed

You may remember that we earlier reported on the discovery of a prototype build of the fabled Nintendo PlayStation, by Dan Diebold in his father’s attic.  This console, originally planned to be an add-on for the Super Nintendo / Super Famicom, eventually ended up becoming PlayStation, after the project was shut down by Nintendo.  Considering how hushed both companies had historically been regarding the project, many had thought the details of this collaboration were lost to history.  Certainly nobody expected a working build of the machine to be discovered.

Yet exactly that happened, and now the fabled console has recently been put on display at the Retro.HK Expo in Hong Kong, undeniably proving its existence.  As part of this display, Diebold also went on to showcase the inner workings of the console, and even load up an original Super Famicom Street Fighter II cartridge, of course after which it’s obligatory to play a few rounds.  He also went on to boot up the machine without a cartridge, in turn revealing the “Please Insert Screen”, similar in many ways to that of the SEGA Mega-CD.

What this has proved, is that after all these years the CD-Drive, and the machine’s firmware, seem to be completely intact.  Additionally, an inspection of the motherboard was also conducted when investigating the console’s inner workings.  This revealed that the “PlayStation” CD-ROM attachment actually had no bearing on the processing power supplied to the console.  Meaning that in theory, the Super Nintendo would have largely performed the same as the console we all know and love.

Nevertheless, some things didn’t survive the long period in hiding, namely the cartridge which would have come supplied with the console.  This would have contained the Bios for the CD-ROM, and appeared to not be in a working state upon testing.  However, even if this had worked, it’s not as though any games were developed for the console, well not that we know of anyway.  They could yet be discovered

All in all, this essentially reaffirms the long held belief that not only was the project very real, but that it was quite a way into development too.  It’s also nice to see the console being displayed to the press and public alike, preserving this unique moment in gaming history for years to come.  It also leaves gamers worldwide contemplating what could have been if two of the biggest names to ever be involved in gaming, had actually been able to team up.

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* Images courtesy of Engadget and HKGolden.com