PlayStationbegan life as a bizarre collaboration between Sony and Nintendo. Sony didn’t have an interest in games or a foothold in the industry, but engineer Ken Kutagari pushed for the two to work together and introduce CD-ROMs to the SNES, arguing that they would be used for everything but games (viaKotaku). I.e., manuals, encyclopedias, and homekaraoke.
Nintendo agreed, not seeing a future for CD-ROM games anyway due to their longer load times. This would take shape as a separate add-on for the SNESanda standalone console called the PlayStation that would use SNES cartridges and Super Disc games, breaking that initial promise. 200 to 300 prototypes were produced, but the deal fell apart and the two companies went their separate ways.
One of these lost prototypes was found in 2015, allegedly thrown away by former Sony CEO Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson. It sold for $360,000 in 2020, five years later. So, if you want to get your hands on the collaboration between two of the still-standing console juggernauts, you need over a quarter of a million dollars. Not exactly cheap. Instead, YouTuber James Channel built his own.
The real Nintendo PlayStation has a cartridge holder on top and a disc drive on the front, merging the SNES with what would become Sony’s debut into the gaming world, but James Channel has gone for something a bit more stylised.
His own take on the console has an exposed disc drive, so you see the CD spinning at all times, and it doesn’t take SNES cartridges. It’s more of a SNES box with a PlayStation’s guts.
The deal between Sony and Nintendo fell apart for a few reasons. Sony wanted to control the licensing for all CD games (making it a major competitor) while Nintendo was working to strike a deal with one of Sony’s biggest competitors, Philips. Kutagari suggested Sony instead splinter off and make its own console, and here we are 30 years later.
James' iteration clearly works, supporting PlayStation games, memory cards, and controllers, tightly fitted together inside of an old Japanese SNES shell. He showed it off with the originalGrand Theft Autoand the strange soda tie-in game Pepsiman - equally as iconic, I’m sure.
We don’t know what happened to all of the other prototypes. But since the original Nintendo PlayStation is such a pivotal part ofconsole history, the one that we do know exists will likely remain in the hands of collectors with hefty price tags to match for the foreseeable future.
James' attempt at building a Nintendo PlayStation might be the closest thing we have outside of the real deal that’s even remotely affordable.
