Video: Ben Heck Fixes and Plays the Rare SNES PlayStation Prototype

It's still amazing that this was discovered in the condition it was. A rare piece of video game history that deserves to be preserved.

The odd thing is that both the controller and the system itself say "Sony PlayStation", not Nintendo. A shame really, since it is a Nintendo system first and foremost.

Cool. Next challenge will be to get the CD drive to read a disc.

Nice work. Having some software to run would be nicer.

@ThanosReXXX
Probably part of the issue that caused the agreement to break down. The add-on would make more sense to have Sony branding only. Of course this is not a retail unit and there's no way it would release without Nintendo on it.

Sony wanted most of the profits from the games, and can you blame Nintendo for being wary about that?

@aaronsullivan I was thinking more along the lines of a combined name, which the name mentioned in the article already is. Back then Sony already supplied a lot of devices (not just consoles) with their chips and cd drives, so it wouldn't have been all that odd.

And the device having some sort of visible label besides Nintendo is one thing, but seeing "Sony" on a SNES controller just doesn't feel right.

Nice video. To comment above, didn't Nintendo cancel the deal mainly because don't basically wanted to take control of Nintendo with this console? Weren't they set up to make money on a Mario game? It's a shame this deal ever went bad because it created nintendos biggest rival. However, they coexist just fine and have both changed video games over the years. So I can't really complain. It's just my Nintendo consoles are better

Before the Sonytards come marching:

" When the Play Station was announced in summer 1991, it caused headlines. Acknowledging that the video-game business had grown too large to ignore any longer, Sony was entering the fray in partnership with the dominant force in the industry, Nintendo. Sony also had awakened to the fact that it could use a relationship with Nintendo to explore the CD-ROM business. The Sony Play Station seemed to be an ideal vehicle that would usher in the era of CDs since it played CD-ROMs, called Super Discs, as well as Super NES cartridges. It was an extraordinary alliance; two Japanese companies, giants in their respective industries, were joining forces. But this was before Nintendo’s executives realized the implic tions of the deal they had signed with Sony back in 1988.

By 1991 it was seen as a disaster, one that contradicted Nintendo’s cardinal tenet of giving nothing away. Nintendo, which had predicated its business on complete control of its game software, had granted Sony the right to control (and profit from) all CD-based software that played on the Play Station. When it had announced the Play Station, Sony emphasized that it was the “sole worldwide licenser of the Super Disc format,” and Nintendo was left to twist in the wind.

…

Sony was in a position to cripple Nintendo, and this deal set the stage for it to use Nintendo to win customers, steal licensees, and then discard the company."

David Sheff. Game Over

@Minotaurgamer That's pretty interesting, if Nintendo did go ahead with it then they would have essentially been no different than a third party developer for the Playstation.

I can see why they chose not too.

Nailed it with the Game Over quote. That book is solid gold.

Finally got around to watching the first video as well as this one. Absolutely fascinating stuff! In particular it's great to understand what the hardware was (and wasn't!)

I had always assumed the add-on was basically the same hardware as the PS1 and Sony just spun it off into a standalone console after Nintendo dumped them, but actually this was literally just a CD-ROM drive connected to a SNES with almost no extra hardware.

It would have been interesting to see how the SNES CD squared up to the Mega CD, based on Ben Heck's spec comparison the lack of any extra processing power would have left the SNES CD just having the advantage of being able to display more colours simultaneously. The SNES always struggled with lots of sprites on screen so a souped up port of Final Fight to compete with the Mega CD version wouldn't have worked, it would have still been limited to three enemies on screen at once.

Now that we have a clearer picture of things, I think Nintendo were right to dump Sony, although it would have been better if they'd not got into bed with them in the first place!

@BulkSlash amazing that Nintendo ended up in such a deal in the first place. While the Sega CD had added hardware, including sprite scaling and rotation as a response to mode 7, it may have added complexity to development and it often wasn't used well. At least in Japan, the PC Engine CD showed that an add on with no processing upgrade could be successful. I wonder if it would have been possible for Nintendo to include an enhancement chip in the bios/memory cart.

tl; dr: he put a raspberry pi in it

@sdelfin Yeah one thing I thought when they noticed the board was code named SFX was that perhaps they could have included a Super FX chip on the RAM cart so that all games could take advantage of the extra processing power.

@Donutman I reckon Nintendo got scared when Sony started looking like they might make good games. They partnered with Philips because they could see all their games would suck and not harm Mario!

This is just a prototype. The consumer version would probably have shipped with a super FX enhanced cart, or something like that. The NES and SNES were basically designed to be upgradable in that way...

Very interesting?

Also, new to this website.

@3MonthBeef yes,indeed it does

@nitwit welcome!

@Thegentleman Thanks and nice Pikachu sir. :3

It's really neat to actually get to see the genuine article after hearing about the fabled Nintendo Playstation many years ago. It's also very interesting to think about what might have been and where gaming would be today if these two industry giants continued to collaborate throughout the years.