Nintendo PlayStation hybrid retro console fully recovered

In 2015, information appeared on the Web that a hybrid console was found somewhere, in which two consoles were combined — SNES from Nintendo and Play Station from Sony. Initially, these rumors seemed to many fiction, fake. But no - it turned out that the console really exists. The fact is that in the beginning of the 90s of the last century both companies mentioned above worked together on a project whose goal was to add a CD to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. In the framework of the same project, the specialists created a prototype game console capable of working with SNES cartridges.

Unfortunately, the matter didn’t go further than the prototypes. Nintendo began working with rival Sony, Philips, and Sony declined to collaborate. As for the prototypes of the Nintendo PlayStation, 200 of them were manufactured, but only one has survived to this day. He fell into the hands of Reddit Analogueboy .

This user is the son of a former employee of the Advanta Corporation, who, after the bankruptcy of his employer, bought part of the property of the company put up for auction. In the boxes, which he received on his hands, there was a lot of interesting things, but the most interesting was a console of a strange kind, which also worked.
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In 2015, the system was completely disassembled to understand how everything works. At the same time, experts found out that the console prototype does not reproduce sound, plus the CD drive does not work. And after the prefix was sent to Hong Kong, it completely stopped showing something.

As a result, the owners of the console turned to the well-known e-master, and part-time and video blogger Ben Heck Ben Heck (Ben Heck). He agreed to try to repair the console and took two videos with a demonstration of the process of disassembly and repair.


During disassembly, it turned out that the button, which was responsible for disabling SNES cartridges, was blocked by someone. As a result, the master used a special plug to connect the power to 7.5 V. He removed the extra wires, replaced the jumpers, replaced the old capacitors. After that, the console began to show the video again, the CD-ROM motor started working, a sound appeared. It turned out that the system is set too weak laser diode, which is responsible for reading discs.


Last year, a special game was written for this console, in which the protagonist, the head of Sony Corporation, is trying to prevent copyright infringement and recover the stolen technologies, with the help of which the console hybrid in question was created. Against the head of the company are such heroes as Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet, Parappa the Rapper and others.

Well, this year the console managed to finally bring to mind. She was again handed to Ben Heck, who completed the job by repairing the CD-ROM.

He himself says that he does not quite understand why the drive has earned: “I worked with the prefix yesterday, and the drive did not even detect the disk. This morning I started work again, went over the wires and it all worked suddenly ... maybe the el-wizard came at night? ” Most likely, the problem was in the connecting wires. If we consider that the console is more than 20 years old, this is not surprising.

First, testing was carried out with audio CDs, after which finishing of several potentiometers was needed to improve the focus, track the disc balance and other things. Well, after the audio, a disk with the game, which was mentioned above, was inserted into the drive. While Super Boss Gaiden did not start, producing an error, the simple Magic Floor game “went” without any problems, except for a couple of graphic artifacts.


The problem is added by a specific data loading system when a cartridge is used to load data from a CD into a 256 KB RAM cartridge. Therefore, in order for games that are written by modern programmers for this console to work normally, this feature must be taken into account.



Actually, to say that the console again began to work, as before, it is impossible. The fact is that no official software was created for it, including games that, in many respects, are similar to the original games for SNES, with the exception of more memory used to store music, data levels, etc. Rather, we can say that the prefix was finalized, after which even the functions that were initially blocked were turned on.

Anyway, the console is now working, so you can write games for it. It is a pity that out of 200 manufactured prototypes only one survived. Perhaps someone is storing another prototype in his collection, and maybe not one? Who knows. In any case, another piece of the history of video games is restored.