Only Nintendo CD-ROM prototype console in existence for sale

[SquawkBox]

(barely a marketplace topic IMHO) We all know that circa 1991, a few Nintendo execs thought it would be a good idea to team up with Sony, hence the Super NES CD-ROM was born
but it was short-lived, as big N rapidly backed out from the deal.
A few years later, Sony would invent the PSX / Playstation from that intriguing prototype ashes, but that unique Frankenstein console remains as a testimony of that time period. Any thoughts on the short-lived Nintendo Sony partnership ? On the fact that Nintendo thought they had destroyed all the Super NES CD-ROM consoles in existence, bar one ? I am not too sure, but I would assume it has the ability to read carts, not CD-Roms' (not until some mate of T. Diebold fixed the CD reading mechanism later on). Do you think you may consider getting a 3D printed replica as a souvenir if the new owner took that chance ?

https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/07/world...sale-10875321/

https://metro.co.uk/2015/07/03/fan-d...nsole-5278031/


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[Amigajay]

Stopped reading the article when i read the words ‘Nintendo Playstation’

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Stopped reading the article when i read the words ‘Nintendo Playstation’

Stopped watching the video when I saw Ben Heck. I can't stand that guy.

[Retro1234]

Though it strange it's called Playstation also only adds CD-Rom and nothing more as I understand.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

Though it strange it's called Playstation also only adds CD-Rom and nothing more as I understand.

Well its Sony’s machine despite people wrongly calling it a ‘Nintendo Playstation’ and was designed to play SNES cartridges and SNES CD games as well as Sony’s own ‘educational cd-roms they had planned.

It’s best just to think of it as a rich man’s toy, Sony often made fancy equipment like the portable CD-i players that were priced out of the reach of most, the machine wouldn’t have been marketed at all in the gaming arena.

Nintendo didn’t have any plans to release an all in one machine, the SNES CD Drive would have sat underneath the SNES, and has never been seen outside their HQ prob due to very strict NDA’s which probably last a lifetime!

[SquawkBox]

That may be the case for the Super Disk (think 64DD for the N64) but then the team behind Ken Kutaragi manufactured the first Playstation in existence, hence the Playstation brand label slapped on the prototype discovered incidentally by that T. Diebold dude. Admittedly, instead of calling it the Nintendo Playstation, the author from these articles should have called it the "Playstation ancestor under Nintendo supervision who survived Sony wrath" but that would have been a bit long winded, don't you think .
So, yeah

The original [read : the first few dozens] Playstation was designed as a multi-media and multi-purpose entertainment unit. Besides being able to play Super Nintendo games, the PlayStation could play audio CDs and could read CDs with computer and video information.

Source : thoughtco.com

And I believe the other side of that convoluted story is the creation of the Philips CD-I.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

That may be the case for the Super Disk (think 64DD for the N64) but then the team behind Ken Kutaragi manufactured the first Playstation in existence, hence the Playstation brand label slapped on the prototype discovered incidentally by that T. Diebold dude. Admittedly, instead of calling it the Nintendo Playstation, the author from these articles should have called it the "Playstation ancestor under Nintendo supervision who survived Sony wrath" but that would have been a bit long winded, don't you think .
So, yeah

The original [read : the first few dozens] Playstation was designed as a multi-media and multi-purpose entertainment unit. Besides being able to play Super Nintendo games, the PlayStation could play audio CDs and could read CDs with computer and video information.

Source : thoughtco.com

And I believe the other side of that convoluted story is the creation of the Philips CD-I.

Well you’ve not really added anything i hadn’t already known and stated above.

Maybe they should think and maybe call it the SNES PlayStation or vice versa, basically anything that doesn’t imply its a ‘Nintendo’ piece of manufactured hardware.

[Retro1234]

What year would this of been released?

Seems a good thing that this never got released, Sony then designed there own console and the PS1 was a real game changer.

[SquawkBox]

According to that article from thoughtco.com, it was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in June, 1991. About the name, well, granted, it was about to become the Super NES CD-ROM nothing more, nothing less. This said, it can be argued that Sony brought up the technology for audio and CD-Rom reading, and big N its expertise for SNES cartridge reading, hence one can assume it was indeed manufactured by both Nintendo and Sony as there is no way on earth Nintendo would have transferred the corresponding patents to Sony.
You don't seem to realize (I don't mean you, Amigajay), it's a small miracle that (1) one unit was salvaged whatever it ought to be called, at the very least, it's prone to make that seemingly ordinary old fellow a rich man (we're talking hundreds of thousands quids here ), anyways.
There was no loss of face for Sony though. As a matter of fact, it's the Philips CD-I, as an aspiring gaming machine late in its modest career, which was put to shame with the use of Mario and Zelda characters for disc based games, ranging from embarrassing to abysmal.

e.q. check the following Mario Hotel gameplay sequence :


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[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by SquawkBox

This said, it can be argued that Sony brought up the technology for audio and CD-Rom reading, and big N its expertise for SNES cartridge reading, hence one can assume it was indeed manufactured by both Nintendo and Sony as there is no way on earth Nintendo would have transferred the corresponding patents to Sony.
You don't seem to realize (I don't mean you, Amigajay), it's a small miracle that (1) one unit was salvaged whatever it ought to be called, at the very least, it's prone to make that seemingly ordinary old fellow a rich man (we're talking hundreds of thousands quids here ), anyways.
There was no loss of face for Sony though. As a matter of fact, it's the Philips CD-I, as an aspiring gaming machine late in its modest career, which was put to shame with the use of Mario and Zelda characters for disc based games, ranging from embarrassing to abysmal.

It still was a Sony only manufactured piece of equipment, same with any Commodore, Atari or the like that use off the shelf pieces made by another company be it SNES chips sent to Sony to be used, otherwise you can call the A500 the Motorola Commodore Amiga 500!

Is it quite rare for something like that to come out sure, but as i said Nintendo’s HQ is like Fort Knox, the chances of seeing the SNES CD would be a bigger miracle!

I personally think Sony lost alot of face at the time, they were pretty much a laughing stock at the time, Nintendo pretty much slapped them in the face.

As for Philips and CDi, they were a laughing stock long before they got the rights to the Mario and Zelda IP’s for a few games, i don’t think it harmed sales for their particular market tbh, Nintendo knew the CDi was in a totally different market to the SNES otherwise they wouldn’t have done it, despite uninformed people trying to compare every single games playing machine against each other on youtube when they so weren’t back then is laughable!

[SquawkBox]

Agreed. A few months back, there was a brief discussion taking place on ROMhacking.net about it, and about how some hacker was rumored to have managed a BIOS dump out of it :

https://www.romhacking.net/forum/ind...?topic=21547.0

Also, I just noticed a playable mash-up demo that was made up with that Playstation CD-ROM prototype in mind (it won't load on the actual console though, more or less amounts to being a SNES homebrew rom) :


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[Retro1234]

Sony had the last laugh releasing the PS1 in 1994.

[SquawkBox]

Sure, but in the meantime, Nintendo had a whopping three and a half year period to milk the SNES with only serious competition coming from Sega (check these charts for the sales figures). On another subject, if you ignore its ugly cut-scenes, that Mario platformer was not the worst one could imagine, considering the limited capabilities of the CD-I but it is probably a good thing they couldn't come up with the two remaining Mario games in the making, here is Wacky Worlds beta version :


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[SquawkBox]

Just noticed the corresponding controller could be bought on eBay since May, 2019. Playstation product number : DTL-H500C. Best of luck to potential bidders (it's still on sale)!





https://nintenfan.com/nintendo-news/...t-auction.html

[SquawkBox]

Outcome of that story, said item was sold at auction for $360,000 :

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming...uction-360000/

[robben74]

Well.. quite a price for a console without a single game!

I guess it plays music cds very well...

[Avanze]

Relic. Not like it has any games either.

[SquawkBox]

Originally Posted by Avanze

Relic.

Obviously, although some relics deserve recognition e.q. the Archimedes.

Originally Posted by Avanze

Not like it has any games either.

None indeed, but back in 1991, Square execs had great plans for Seiken Densetsu II (re-branded Secret Of Mana for the North American market) to grasp some of the popularity the first Zelda received. Actually, they thought they could achieve this goal by using the additional storage capacity the Nintendo CD-ROM had to offer. Watch this video :


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