The Nintendo PlayStation That Almost Was

I saw something in a Toys R Us about a Sony "Playstation" (I remember very clearly how idiotic I thought the name was), but it was way before the actual Playstation was ever released. I thought I was nuts for years.

That clears that up, thanks! lol
 
An artifact (if real) from a funny little tale of good old fashioned Japanese revenge that would change the console gaming market forever.
 
What kind of carts does this thing use? SNES? 91 is a little early for N64.
 
Burticus,

Nintendo was working with Sony on a CD addon for the SNES that would connect to the bottom of the SNES. They were also allowed to make a stand alone console, called the Play Station, that would play SNES CD and SNES cartridges. The deal fell apart because Nintendo didn't like the terms of the deal and starting working with Phillips. Phillips was allowed to use Nintendo's franchises for the CDI as part of the deal. Sony was upset and killed the deal and made their own console called the PlayStation.
 
Yea, I too thought the name "playstation" was too childish to be taken seriously by anyone over the age 5. I actually thought it was a joint effort by sony and fisher price. I didn't expet that it'd be nintendo that went that route in the end
 
One other item on the demise of this. Miyamoto HATED the extremely slow load times of the 2x CDRom drives at the time. He wanted the instant on of cartridges instead. This lead to the rather large and expensive to make carts of the N64. I will give it to Nintendo that when they went disc format they had some really nice streaming technology so it felt almost like a cart. I remember the first time I fired up Luigi's Mansion, impressed me for the time.

As to why I know this, at the time I was working on a 3d version of BattleChess for CdRom device for the SNES.

Croaker
 
This was big news back in the SNES days. I remember seeing the artist renditions in the magazines. Then, it was no more and Nintendo went with carts on N64 and Sony busted in with the Playstation.
 
hes too scared to plug a power cable into it? it looks like it lists the input voltage specs right above the port. he needs to fire that thing up and see what it does
 
I remember this from so long ago, its crazy to see the real thing after all these years.
Kid need to plug it in and boot it up. This is one amazing find.
 
hes too scared to plug a power cable into it? it looks like it lists the input voltage specs right above the port. he needs to fire that thing up and see what it does

This would debunk whether it's a fake or not I'd think.
 
This guy seriously needs to get in contact with a museum or such and have an expert handle it, document the ENTIRE thing (Seriously this would make a great documentary) an dthen after the experts look at it have someone rip into the cd/cart and things (like Mame with arcade cabinets) so it can live on.

After all of that then he should decide to sell it, hopefully a museum would take it vs a private collector that wouldn't let the public see it.
 
Plug it in guy!! 7.5 volts, to hell with the MA, pick something like 7.5/500 MA and go from there. I can see some serious Ebay'ing out of this.
 
Burticus,

Nintendo was working with Sony on a CD addon for the SNES that would connect to the bottom of the SNES. They were also allowed to make a stand alone console, called the Play Station, that would play SNES CD and SNES cartridges. The deal fell apart because Nintendo didn't like the terms of the deal and starting working with Phillips. Phillips was allowed to use Nintendo's franchises for the CDI as part of the deal. Sony was upset and killed the deal and made their own console called the PlayStation.

To continue that story: It sounded very interesting that year at e3.. Sony announces the joint venture, while a few booths over Nintendo denies it and says they are working with Phillips. This left sony out of the loop and created to a degree Nintendo's biggest rivalry. Sony didn't like it and went on to make a new platform called "playstation". Guess who wone the next two gens?

I kinda miss the sony of the playstation 1 and playstaion 2 years.. Hungry like the wolf..

Yea, I too thought the name "playstation" was too childish to be taken seriously by anyone over the age 5. I actually thought it was a joint effort by sony and fisher price. I didn't expet that it'd be nintendo that went that route in the end

I don't know.. I was born in 78 so Im looking at it from 16 to 17 years old. From the get go, they really targeted an older crowd, and the name kinda fit. a station you play games on. As I was telling a xbox live friend that ive been playing games with for like 5 yars, "that time across pc and console, was soooo magically." Across the board, most people didn't think twice about the name, and was more intrigue by the weird, mysterious, and good ad campaign sony had going for the playstation during the prelaunch, launch and next couple years. Plus by the time sony was advertising and preparing for playstion, sega had already shown Nintendo was more kiddish/family oriented, especially with the whole Mortal kombat 1 issue.

One other item on the demise of this. Miyamoto HATED the extremely slow load times of the 2x CDRom drives at the time. He wanted the instant on of cartridges instead. This lead to the rather large and expensive to make carts of the N64. I will give it to Nintendo that when they went disc format they had some really nice streaming technology so it felt almost like a cart. I remember the first time I fired up Luigi's Mansion, impressed me for the time.

As to why I know this, at the time I was working on a 3d version of BattleChess for CdRom device for the SNES.

Croaker

This guy seriously needs to get in contact with a museum or such and have an expert handle it, document the ENTIRE thing (Seriously this would make a great documentary) an dthen after the experts look at it have someone rip into the cd/cart and things (like Mame with arcade cabinets) so it can live on.

After all of that then he should decide to sell it, hopefully a museum would take it vs a private collector that wouldn't let the public see it.
 
Plug it in guy!! 7.5 volts, to hell with the MA, pick something like 7.5/500 MA and go from there. I can see some serious Ebay'ing out of this.

doesnt the amperage not matter for the power supply as long as its high enough? I thought the device would only draw what it needs, and you cant have a power supply with too much amps, just as a PC power supply can have a nice high amp rating on the 12v rail, but it doesnt draw that constantly.
 
One other item on the demise of this. Miyamoto HATED the extremely slow load times of the 2x CDRom drives at the time. He wanted the instant on of cartridges instead. This lead to the rather large and expensive to make carts of the N64. I will give it to Nintendo that when they went disc format they had some really nice streaming technology so it felt almost like a cart. I remember the first time I fired up Luigi's Mansion, impressed me for the time.

As to why I know this, at the time I was working on a 3d version of BattleChess for CdRom device for the SNES.

Croaker

true.. that was one thing they harped on with n64, no load times.. but then again there was Makes me wonder what the n64 could have been if they did cdrom man alive.... I think when they went cd, it was a bit later and speeds did pick up.; Plus they were very good at hiding it. building it into certain aspects fo the game. Kinda like destiny doing the whole ship flying/doctor who style with narration while it loads the level. Nintendo is truly a great game maker.
 
This guy seriously needs to get in contact with a museum or such and have an expert handle it, document the ENTIRE thing (Seriously this would make a great documentary) an dthen after the experts look at it have someone rip into the cd/cart and things (like Mame with arcade cabinets) so it can live on.

After all of that then he should decide to sell it, hopefully a museum would take it vs a private collector that wouldn't let the public see it.

that's a good suggestion. Though I don't think this really offers any benefits to snes other than a better sound (cd quality sound) and more storage. So really just a super large cartridge. though lunar on sega cd did help prove what could be with more storage. one of the few games to show how games could evolve to be quite a story telling medium..
 
The three major flaws of the N64 was all almost directly related to the cartridge. While the system itself was more powerful than the Playstation these three things caused it to lose market share.

1. The system was hard to code/design games for.
2. Cartridges cost more to make than CDs so cost to production was higher than the PS.
3. CD-ROMs could hold way more data than a N64 cartridge. IIRC, the largest cartridge for the N64 was 512MB and it wasn't until almost the EOL of the system. I believe Resident Evil use a 512MB cartridge. While CD-ROMs could not only hold 650MB of data, but you could easily use more than one CD-ROM per game and still be cheaper than a single N64 cartridge in costs.

I think if Nintendo went back to cartridge based games it would be a whole different ball game. Just look at how small physically a SD card is compared to how much data they can hold these days. Not even a BD-ROM can hold as much data as the largest SD cards.
 
doesnt the amperage not matter for the power supply as long as its high enough? I thought the device would only draw what it needs, and you cant have a power supply with too much amps, just as a PC power supply can have a nice high amp rating on the 12v rail, but it doesnt draw that constantly.

Yep. You can always go over on amperage safely, but not under. Best to get a 7v 2A wart and allow it to have more than it needs.
 
I thought the port for the add-on CD-ROM was on the bottom of the N64, not the SNES. I'll have to dig them out of their storage box and see. The N64 would have had much more potential for CD-ROM in my opinion.
 
That wasn't a cdrom add-on. It was a Disk drive.
 
The three major flaws of the N64 was all almost directly related to the cartridge. While the system itself was more powerful than the Playstation these three things caused it to lose market share.

1. The system was hard to code/design games for.
2. Cartridges cost more to make than CDs so cost to production was higher than the PS.
3. CD-ROMs could hold way more data than a N64 cartridge. IIRC, the largest cartridge for the N64 was 512MB and it wasn't until almost the EOL of the system. I believe Resident Evil use a 512MB cartridge. While CD-ROMs could not only hold 650MB of data, but you could easily use more than one CD-ROM per game and still be cheaper than a single N64 cartridge in costs.

I think if Nintendo went back to cartridge based games it would be a whole different ball game. Just look at how small physically a SD card is compared to how much data they can hold these days. Not even a BD-ROM can hold as much data as the largest SD cards.

The max cartridge size was 64 Megabytes = 512 Megabits. Easy to confuse the two :D

This was an order of magnitude smaller than a single CDROM.

And no kidding about The RCP being a pain in the ass to program: Conker is notorious for being delayed in order to maximize the graphics detail.

Another shortcoming of the RCP is the 4k texture memory, which reallly limits the size of textures. Even with 16 colors, you are still limited to textures smaller than 64x64, which is 1/4 the resolution of textures used in Quake.
 
Across the board, most people didn't think twice about the name, and was more intrigue by the weird, mysterious, and good ad campaign sony had going for the playstation during the prelaunch, launch and next couple years.
Yea, like this ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDdNn0x7Y0Y

:D

Of course the first time I actually saw playstation in action I didn't think it was a toy, that was merely my first reaction when I saw the name and colorful logo. N64 logo and console looked more toy-ish, for sure... but that SNES CD-ROM attachment looked like serious business, I also saw really excited for it after seeing it in the magazines.

Anyways, yea, those were exciting times for sure, just wasn't a fan of the blocky 3d and loading times.
 
Anyways, yea, those were exciting times for sure, just wasn't a fan of the blocky 3d and loading times.

Just like CGA and EGA or Atari 2600 games looking like ass, we had to start somewhere. At least Sony could have implemented Z-Buffering and perspective correction, my two biggest bugbears with it's 3D capabilities. Considering 4 million transistor chips were most doable for the time, with the heavy lifting silicon clocking in well under 1.5 million transistors across 2 chips, these would have been cheap to implement features that would have greatly boosted image quality.

#whatcouldhavebeen
 
Just like CGA and EGA or Atari 2600 games looking like ass, we had to start somewhere. At least Sony could have implemented Z-Buffering and perspective correction, my two biggest bugbears with it's 3D capabilities. Considering 4 million transistor chips were most doable for the time, with the heavy lifting silicon clocking in well under 1.5 million transistors across 2 chips, these would have been cheap to implement features that would have greatly boosted image quality.

#whatcouldhavebeen

what the PS needed was bilinear filtering to get rid of those blocky textures.
 
what the PS needed was bilinear filtering to get rid of those blocky textures.

No, you really needed all three features. Seee this thread, which covers all three:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=879050&page=2

Basic summary:

You got artifacts from the simple painters algorithm used to sort the polygons without a hardware z-buffer.

You got edge judder from triangles as they moved about the scene because the hardware was entirely fixed-point DSP, with limitation on matrix transformation (and differences in accuracy between pieces of hardware).

And finally, thanks to limits on how much you could subdivide textures, you would still see the horrible uncorrected texture artifacts even if you added hardware bilinear filtering. They would simply be more clear.

There's a reason bilinear filtering was one of the last features to be added to PC graphics cards: it was expensive, and didn't matter if the rest of the pipeline was a hacked-together mess.
 
No, you really needed all three features. Seee this thread, which covers all three:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=879050&page=2

Basic summary:

You got artifacts from the simple painters algorithm used to sort the polygons without a hardware z-buffer.

You got edge judder from triangles as they moved about the scene because the hardware was entirely fixed-point DSP, with limitation on matrix transformation (and differences in accuracy between pieces of hardware).

And finally, thanks to limits on how much you could subdivide textures, you would still see the horrible uncorrected texture artifacts even if you added hardware bilinear filtering. They would simply be more clear.

There's a reason bilinear filtering was one of the last features to be added to PC graphics cards: it was expensive, and didn't matter if the rest of the pipeline was a hacked-together mess.

For me it was Texture Filtering what bothered me the most. It was the thing that made a big difference visually when it was implemented with emulators.
 
For me it was Texture Filtering what bothered me the most. It was the thing that made a big difference visually when it was implemented with emulators.

I hated how every character had a bad case if the palsies.
 
Marketing, Nintendo is about to announce that Sony is going to develop the hardware for the NX.
 
I'd be afraid of powering it up due to aged capacitors. The number one killer of old consoles. And for a prototype there would be no obligation to use high realiability caps.
 
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