“Nintendo PlayStation” Prototype Hands-On And Teardown

Megalith

24-bit/48kHz
Staff member
Joined
Aug 20, 2006
Messages
13,000
I can’t believe this thing is still in existence and wonder if there are any others left.

The "Nintendo PlayStation" is now the stuff of gaming legend, with reportedly only about 200 prototypes ever produced. But, as luck would have it, one of those systems fell into the hands of a father and son: Terry and Dan Diebold. We met up with the Diebolds in Hong Kong, where they were in town for a retro gaming expo, to hear how it ended up in their possession. Most importantly, we got to turn the "Nintendo PlayStation" on, play a couple of SNES games on it, and even take it apart to see if we could fix the dormant CD drive.
 
Man did the SNES really have controllers that short? Those cords looked like 3 feet long or so.
 
Man did the SNES really have controllers that short? Those cords looked like 3 feet long or so.

From my fading memory, I recall there being 3 and 6 foot controllers.

It wasn't as much an issue back then, as considering the size of TVs back then, we tended to sit closer anyways. The TV in our place at that time was a 24 inch.
 
From my fading memory, I recall there being 3 and 6 foot controllers.

It wasn't as much an issue back then, as considering the size of TVs back then, we tended to sit closer anyways. The TV in our place at that time was a 24 inch.

True, and the SNES was actually out in front of the tv not in it's own little shelf nice and organized. I think I might have some SNES pads somewhere... but that would require me to go look for them, nah.
 
Man did the SNES really have controllers that short? Those cords looked like 3 feet long or so.

Yeah, remember that TVs were a lot smaller back then. Many people sat almost computer-monitor distance from their tiny TVs while playing consoles back then.

Nonetheless, I recall having several extension cables handy for my SNES controllers.
 
The controllers that came with my SNES were the ones that came in the retail box with Super Mario World and those two pads definitely more than 3ft long.
 
the devs units came with 3m cables, 3m cables were orignal meant for asia but made it to usa/europe
shame this didnt have the tech/demo discs some dics just had movie trailers and from memory games wise tetris was on one disc along with some short game early animation demos
 
Wow, i really thought this was fake. I'd still like to see the rom dumps of those carts and the internals.
 
I still have mine hooked up and I play it often... Going to check right now... I would say about seven feet or so. I can get the tape measure if anyone really cares that much.
 
I believe it will read normal SNES carts. The part that they haven't got working yet is the CD driver.

Yeah, this is like the Sega CD system IIRC, it'll play Super Famicom games or CD games (which none were ever made for it, at least in a releasable state). The control ports are a dead giveaway to what it was supposed to be because Nintendo has a history of changing their controller ports with ever iteration of game system.
 
I still have mine hooked up and I play it often... Going to check right now... I would say about seven feet or so. I can get the tape measure if anyone really cares that much.

Did you replace the batteries in any of your cartridges so you can save?
 
Where's the "teardown", or do you mean tears dropping from our faces?
 
I wonder what the value of it really is.

10 years ago? $1000. Today, with the huge retro gaming market - $10 billion! (source: future CNN article).

So many articles telling people their Atari VCS or NES is worth $500 or more, so people try selling it at that. It's hard to find real value these days. An SNES with 2 sports games are regularly seen on Craigslist for $200+. No box. No special accessories. Sad.
 
Back
Top