The discovery of the SNES PlayStation sent shockwaves through the gaming community back in 2015. A collaboration between Sony and Nintendo, the unit was intended to meet the challenge of CD-based systems like the Mega CD and TurboDuo, but it was never released; Nintendo infamously left Sony at the altar and signed a deal with rival Philips (which ultimately led to nothing more than a few Nintendo games on the ill-fated Philips CD-i).

Despite the failure of the venture, prototype SNES PlayStations were made by Sony, and the one discovered in 2015 has since been sold for $360,000 USD. That's a lot of loose change for a system which doesn't have much in the way of unique software, so gamer_lafan / LASTFANTASY created his own take on the project. He's even gone as far as to print bespoke spine art for games; check out his copy of King of Fighters '98.

So how did it pull this off? He's taken a Super Famicom Satellaview attachment – the Japan-exclusive device used to download data to the console via satellite – and transformed that into a working CD-ROM drive complete with PlayStation innards. While this isn't exactly the same as the all-in-one SNES PlayStation prototype (it looks different for starters, and that machine wouldn't have featured the increased 3D power which made it into the eventual PlayStation), it closely resembles the proposed bolt-on unit that Nintendo was due to release as part of its deal with Sony (the combined SNES PlayStation was very much Sony's baby).

Mock-up images of this bolt-on unit appeared in games magazines in the '90s during the height of CD-ROM fever, but no one has ever actually seen what it looks like in the flesh (if indeed it even exists at all).

Nintendo PlayStation
Heavily circulated during the early '90s, this image of the CD-ROM attachment forms the basis for this cool, 2020 mod (this image is taken from UK magazine Super Play issue 3, Jan 1993)

And yes, this fancy mod does work – you can see it in action below.

[source instagram.com, via blog.attractmo.de, blog.attractmo.de, kotaku.com]