Extremely Rare SNES CD-Rom Drive AKA “PlayStation” Discovered

A lot of people don’t know that Sony wasn’t preparing to go into the console business all those years ago. Their PlayStation console started life as the CD-ROM add-on for the once king of the console world, the Super Nintendo (SNES). It was created to help give them the edge over Sega, who also experimented (badly) with CD-Rom drives with their failed Mega-CD.

The SNES PlayStation never saw the light of day in the consumer world, as Sony revealed the new hardware at CES 1991, only to find out Nintendo had slipped away to work with Phillips. Fool on Nintendo, as they backed the wrong horse, yet left their once loyal allies at Sony with a grudge. Sony got their revenge of course, they made their own console, the Sony PlayStation and it changed the world of modern gaming forever.

There’s been images and mock ups shared on the web before, but it wasn’t believed that there was a near-production model or working prototype in the wild; until today! As you can see in the images here, the console looks pretty neat and tidy, it’s still a standard SNES with cartridge slot, but features a drive tray for the CD-Rom functionality.

“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 dads company went bankrupt, my dad found it in a box of “junk” he was supposed to throw out.” – said dnldbld on Assembler Games

Does he mean Olaf Olafsson, once president and chief executive office of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Inc?  What we really want to know now is does it work and what game, if any, were on the cart or any if any discs were also found.