The infamous Nintendo PlayStation has a new home after all these years

The fabled ‘Nintendo PlayStation’ has resurfaced and been snapped up by the National Videogame Museum.

Although it made sound like a gamer’s fever dream, back in the 1990s, Sony and Nintendo had been all set to join forces to build a new console. 

However, as we now know, the project never really got off the ground, and the two companies went their own way.

But one of the prototypes has recently been snapped up by a museum in Texas.

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The collaboration between Sony and Nintendo didn’t last

Back in 1990, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System – or SNES – was released, following on from the hugely successful NES. 

The console sold almost 50 million units worldwide, and had the likes of Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Final Fantasy VI in its library. 

However, in the months following its release, many console makers began to believe that CDs, rather than cartridges, would be the future of gaming. 

This led to a short lived collaboration between Nintendo and Sony, with Sony brought on to provide CD support to the cartridge-based SNES, to create a hybrid console that could play either. 

But no-sooner was the partnership announced, then Nintendo had a change of heart and announced it would be working with Philips instead. 

This meant that Sony decided to go it alone on the PlayStation, and – well the rest is gaming history. 

While the collaboration failed to launch, the two companies did create a prototype development kit, called the MSF-1. 

And this piece of gaming history has recently been snapped up by the National Videogame Museum, which claims it’s ‘the oldest Nintendo PlayStation hardware artifact’ and the only one of its kind known to exist. 

The museum branded the Nintendo PlayStation as one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ of all time, and we have to agree. 

A Nintendo PlayStation prototype sold for a huge amount in 2020

It’s thought that there could have been several Nintendo PlayStation prototypes, but it’s not clear how many of them have survived until today. 

In fact, they were so rare that many people believed them to be a myth until one was unearthed in the attic of a man named Terry Diebold.

Diebold had bought several boxes of various items at auction after his employer, Advanta, went bust.

It’s believed that the console had come from Olaf Olaffson, who was an executive at Sony before moving to Advanta.

In 2020, that rare prototype went up for sale at Heritage Auctions. 

Even more incredibly, the console worked, with the auctioneers telling the BBC they tested it with a SNES Mortal Combat cartridge and ‘played a couple of rounds’. 

The ultra rare Nintendo PlayStation attracted plenty of attention from gaming enthusiasts, and ended up selling for $300,000.

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