Right now, there is a lot of hoopla going on about the recently made public discovery of an SNES CD-ROM prototype that carries the Sony logo.  What is interesting about this news is that there, at one time in history, was to be a Super Nintendo CD-ROM system that Sony was indeed working on.  It was to be a partnership for the ages, and had it gone through to fruition we probably would never have known the Playstation like we do today.  Some boardroom backstabbing happened after the contracts were examined closely and that is how we got Mario and Zelda games on the Philips CD-i system and no Nintendo Playstation console.  Until now, only artist conception drawings were available, drawings which broke in publications like Electronic Gaming Monthly and Video Games and Computer Entertainment and later republished on many websites..  Allegedly, a prototype of that fabled system has been found. 

Originally started in 1988 as a partnership between Sony and Nintendo, the CD-ROM attachment for the upcoming Super Nintendo was to be the cat’s meow of gaming.  This was long before Sega launched their CD-ROM attachment, the Sega CD, and the only console competition was the Turbo Grafx-16 CD-ROM attachment, at least in the foreseeable future (sega hadn’t announced their CD-ROM yet).  Work began and then work ended abruptly as stated above, leaving Sony in quite a precarious position.  They could just turn a blind eye and leave the Sony Super Nintendo CD-ROM on the shelf forever or rework it into their own console.  Remember, Sony was the manufacturer of those wonderful sound chips inside of every Super Nintendo.  This proved that Sony was not just a third party game developer that could be pushed around.  They knew how to manufacture things for gaming, and to maximize profits doing so (especially working with Nintendo).  There is probably not a lot of the technology from the Sony Super Nintendo CD-ROM hardware that lived on in the Sony Playstation, other than standard items involving the actual CD-ROM drive.  That doesn’t take anything away from the recent announcement by a Reddit member that his father bequeathed to him a Sony Super Nintendo CD-ROM system, complete, not just the aforementioned CD-ROM only attachment.

Image source: Edge Online

The problem with this story is that it is quite a tall tale and one that you will have to really read and take with a grain of salt (or a whole bottle).  DanDiebold is the member that claims to be the owner of one of five systems like this.  He had this to say (everyone is using this quote and it is succinct so here it is):

“My dad worked for a company, apparently one of the guys he used to work with, I think his name was Olaf, used to work at Nintendo and when my dad’s company went bankrupt, my dad found it in a box of ‘junk’ he was supposed to throw out”. 

Gamesradar thinks this is referencing the co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Ólafur Jóhann Ólafsson.

Over on AssemblerGames.com’s forums though, it has come to light that a French gaming site- PXLBBQ.com, is linking this to Vadu Amka (who is taking credit on his Twitter account).

So, is this a fake?  We are not sure.  DonDiebold is not capable of booting it up (though he has a CD-ROM and cartridge for it) because he doesn’t have a power supply.  That is awfully convenient folks.  It appears to use a standard SNES video connection so it is reasonable to think it would use an SNES power supply (or would that not supply enough power for the CD-ROM add-on?).  It is just awfully convenient that it can’t be powered on, the owner won’t open it to show the internals (so we can see chip numbers, etc) and the story connected to this is “just too good to be true.”

The way the French article is written, and Vadu’s response, lend those to be satire but at this point, there is more negatives than positives on this one.

Source: Gamesradar and PXLBBQ.com

Carl Williams

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