I guess this might be worth discussing? Not sure if it's a fake...if it is, it sure as hell is a very well done fake or a very well done photoshop.
http://www.gamesradar.com/original-sony ... prototype/
Just found this on Ars Technica recently, thought it might be of interest to everyone here ->
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/07/f ... iscovered/I always wanted to see what one of these machines looked like, you know?
I smell a fake. I could be wrong, though.
If it's fake, it's the best "My Uncle Works at Nintendo" story ever.
That's similar to "Play Station" prototypes that I saw years ago. I imagine that it would have been available in two forms: the CD-ROM accessory for an existing Super NES and a single unit with both cart and CD slots.
I'm loving how people claim that thing at the back is a HDMI port (somebody never saw a PSX joystick port? because it sure as hell looks like the same as the two PS2 joysticks I have in my bedroom).
An hdmi port from what, 1993?
I always love the way these things fall into the hands of people who have absolutely no business owning them.
"Looks like a Super Nintendo controller, but I'm not really sure." >_>
And handling it like it's a $10 toaster >___>
The video doesn't make me think it's any more real than the pictures did, though. (I don't know if it's fake or not, I'd say 50/50.) I wanna see the PCB.
This is very exciting indeed.
After three years, I finally get an opportunity to use the merge tool.
Might this be the same kind of
Play Station that Dudley Dursley threw out? The PS1 came out in 1995 in our universe, but perhaps in the
Harry Potter universe, the SNES CD accessory and the "Play Station" combo unit made it to market.
byuu wrote:
The video doesn't make me think it's any more real than the pictures did, though. (I don't know if it's fake or not, I'd say 50/50.) I wanna see the PCB.
But then somebody could say the PCB is fake as well (especially since it'd have SNES components for the most part). Booting the ROM would be great, but then somebody would say it's just a SD2SNES inside the cartridge...
That's gonna be hard to prove as real.
Simple: take the cartridge apart.
What makes me belive it's fake are:
1) The original PlayStation would have been a CD extension that plugs in the bottom of the SNES. The original SNES controllers and console would have been used. Very similar to what the FDS is to the NES. There would not have been such a thing as PlayStation controllers.
2) I don't think any prototype unit was even made. The project was cancelled before when it was still in design phase. There was probably some early prototypes that Sony made that did not even connect yet to the SNES or something like that, then their contract was cancelled so they designed it so it would be a standalone machine instead.
Bregalad wrote:
What makes me belive it's fake are:
1) The original PlayStation would have been a CD extension that plugs in the bottom of the SNES.
Both a CD accessory you mention and a combined "Duo" unit were available for the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16. In Turbo language, this would have been the "Super Nintendo Duo". Compare with Nintendo's later partnership with Panasonic to produce the Q: a Japan-only second-source GameCube that plays DVD-Video.
Quote:
The original SNES controllers and console would have been used.
These are Super Famicom controllers; they just say PlayStation on them. The Turbo Duo also has slight cosmetic changes compared to the TG16 pack-in.
Left: Original TurboPad for the TurboGrafx-16. Right: Redesigned TurboPad for the Turbo Duo.
Bregalad wrote:
1) The original PlayStation would have been a CD extension that plugs in the bottom of the SNES. The original SNES controllers and console would have been used. Very similar to what the FDS is to the NES. There would not have been such a thing as PlayStation controllers.
Everywhere people are saying that the original deal was both an add-on and a two-in-one system. Also let's face it, Sega did it all over the place with the Sega CD (remember JVC had a license to make its own unified system, that's why Wonder Dog even exists in the first place, it's their attempt at a console mascot).
Also reminds me of the Sega CD devkit, which is literally a model 1 Mega Drive and a Sega CD both crammed into the same shell. Like, same size as the original and everything, just with an unified shell. It's possible this is like that too.
Don't forget the Sega CDX, which was basically a Genesis + Sega CD in a compact shell.
There's also the Sharp Twin Famicom, which is a Famicom + Disk System made by a company other than Nintendo, which could very well be the case of this PlayStation.
Bregalad wrote:
2) I don't think any prototype unit was even made.
How do you explain
this article, specifically the 3rd, 9th, and 10th images? I mean, I guess someone at Sony might have thought it would have been funny to mess around (on-the-record no less) with an established gaming publication by sending them an elaborate fake, but I kind of doubt that.
More details:
http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/06/nintendo-playstation-is-real-and-it-works/BIOS works as does the test cartridge. Hopefully BIOS and test cart eventually get dumped.
Neat stuff, not sure if there are any additional helper chips (ala Super FX), or if it's just a SNES with a CD-ROM drive.
The pictures didn't show anything particularly novel on the mainboard. A standard 1/1/1 CPU/PPU revisison with WRAM and S-CPU and S-DSP. A portion of PCB is labelled "SFX" but it just looks like the standard SNES ICs.
Weirdly, it still has the standard SNES EXP port.
Perhaps Nintendo was planning to let stack expansions, with a Super NES on top of the CD-ROM accessory on top of something else. Does the Satellaview receiver also have a daisy-chained expansion port on the bottom?
Maybe this is just a CDX equivalent, where the CD module is built into the system, and that they planned to actually have an add on type unit. It would be nice to know if the SNES part of the system is exactly the same so you could know if this was even a possibility. (It does work with regular games, but I wonder if they did something like add more vram.) It's kind of a bummer the CD part of the system doesn't work...
drk421 wrote:
More details:
http://www.engadget.com/2015/11/06/nintendo-playstation-is-real-and-it-works/BIOS works as does the test cartridge. Hopefully BIOS and test cart eventually get dumped.
Neat stuff, not sure if there are any additional helper chips (ala Super FX), or if it's just a SNES with a CD-ROM drive.
Wanna say there's a new video about it from the owner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT15xl4ZzOII analyzed the pictures of the inside myself:
http://luigiblood.tumblr.com/post/13273 ... laystationSpoiler: It's just a SNES with a CD drive (+ components to use the drive). There is no BIOS in the console, everything is on the cartridge. On the comments of that new video, he said that nothing happens if there's no cartridge plugged. Cartridge IS the CD BIOS.
For the benefit of anyone else, the hiragana that shows up is nothing particularly informative:
きほんきのう (ki hon kinō) = basic functions
おんげん (on gen) = sound source
かくちょう (kakuchō) = extension
Quote:
There is no BIOS in the console, everything is on the cartridge.
Unsurprising since that's exactly how the FDS was based.
I still belive this video is a fake.
Bregalad wrote:
I still belive this video is a fake.
Do you really think someone would recreate a full SNES PCB, add some IC, a cd-rom, create a case, a new cartridge,
ask for endgadget to test it, just for a hoax ?
Do you really think engadget's journalist is a liar ?
I think even with the console in your hands, you'd still say «nah, it's a fake»
Bregalad wrote:
Quote:
There is no BIOS in the console, everything is on the cartridge.
Unsurprising since that's exactly how the FDS was based.
Yet the Twin Famicom, which has an internal disk drive, also has an internal version of the system card. So does the TurboDuo. My guess is that the prototype had the system card on a cartridge, and the add-on CD drive for the Super NES was going to be the same, but the final version was intended to be essentially a Twin Super Famicom (not to be confused with FC Twin) with an internal system card.
Zonomi wrote:
Bregalad wrote:
I still belive this video is a fake.
Do you really think someone would recreate a full SNES PCB, add some IC, a cd-rom, create a case, a new cartridge,
ask for endgadget to test it, just for a hoax ?
Do you really think engadget's journalist is a liar ?
I think even with the console in your hands, you'd still say «nah, it's a fake»
If it is a fake, then it's a damn good fake. Fooled me!
I just hope the driver cartridge will be dumped and released quickly. I'd be really cool to disassemble it and see how it works.
Did anyone catch if there were any CD's with the unit?
Unfortunately there were no CDs with it, and when the drive was opened it was found to be empty. So the CD-ROM itself is apparently both non-working and useless (unless some software for it turns up), but quite interesting nonetheless. To be precise, there were CDs in the box with the unit, but they were just some normal Playstation games. Amusingly, one of the articles speculated that maybe the system plays those, but clearly they're unrelated, they just ended up in the same box.
Now I wonder if we'll ever see the Philips version of the SNES CD, I doubt it, but you never know. If it even existed. At least some of Nintendo's documents were released for it, which mentions that it has a 32-bit RISC CPU but it was pretty light on details.
Memblers wrote:
Now I wonder if we'll ever see the Philips version of the SNES CD, I doubt it, but you never know. If it even existed. At least some of Nintendo's documents were released for it, which mentions that it has a 32-bit RISC CPU but it was pretty light on details.
There are other documents like the System Service Utility, which talks mostly about managing files.
Game IPL is a file named "NINTENDO.CO", and if read fails, it looks for "NINTENDO.CO2".
https://twitter.com/stevenplin/status/4 ... 2609299457
Nothing new to add here, but I just went to that so called Retro Gaming Expo mentioned in the link today(I'm around that area every Saturday anyway) and took some (poor) photos with my 4-year-old phone, and here they are.
Seems that one can only attach 3 files to a single post.
2 more photos here.
Not much to see, as the console was just in display inside a box, not hooked up to anything.
Please elaborate on the so-called-ness of the expo.
Relevant Facebook page
here.
The problem being, it's housed in a small record shop and there was barely space to walk.
There were a few consoles and arcade cabinets(not sure whether they're just MAME cabinets or real boards) for visitors to try out and that's not really interesting.
There were display cases showing NEC, Sony, Sega and Nintendo consoles of various generations(ironically one of the machines in the NEC case was a Famicom Titler, possibly because the Nintendo case was out of space), and those of higher rarity were housed in their own boxes, including a working Bandai Kousokusen(Japanese Vectrex), a working PC-KD863G(Monitor integrated with a PC-Engine), a working Sharp SF-1(Monitor integrated with a SFC), a working Super Famicom Box and the aforementioned Play Station prototype. BUT, as there were no attached description or anyone to explain(maybe it's because I arrived there late) you don't know what they are if you
didn't know what they are. This is especially annoying considering that the Play Station prototype has reached legendary status, if you're unaware of it, you're only scratching your head seeing a box labeled 'Sony' but with a Nintendo joypad attached to it.