Did you know that Nintendo created its biggest rival back in the early ’90s?
We’ve come a long way since the days of the original PlayStation – from the PlayStation 2, to 3, to 4 and now the mid-generation Pro we’ve seen the console take many forms. That’s not even mentioning all the slim variations that came between.
As many versions of the PlayStation we’ve seen, though, do you know about the console that almost became the very first PlayStation? Or rather, Play Station?
In fact, it was announced to the public back in 1991 … one day before Nintendo stabbed its partner in the back and announced a deal with Sony’s rival Philips instead. It’s one of the most amazing stories in gaming history, and one that has only become more intriguing over the last year with the discovery of a prototype Play Station console.
The SNES-CD or Super Disc, as it was called internally, was a planned collaboration between Sony and Nintendo to produce an add-on for the Super Nintendo, as well as a standalone console capable of running both Super Nintendo cartridges and Sony-made CD-ROM games.
Nintendo and Sony first linked up for the Super Nintendo itself, as Sony produced the S-SMP sound chip for the iconic 16-bit console. Ken Kutaragi, later known as «The Father of PlayStation,» developed the chip in secret from his superiors, who didn’t want anything to do with the video game business. Luckily, he was able to keep his job once they discovered his project – and when Nintendo began mulling a move to CD-ROMs, they came to him.
A deal was struck back in 1988, and Sony began work on a pair of devices: a CD-ROM peripheral for the Super Nintendo (not unlike the Sega CD) that would run Super Disc games, and a standalone console that could play both SNES (or Super Famicom) cartridges and CDs. Multiple prototypes had been designed and produced, and the companies planned to unveil the hardware to the world at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in June 1991.
Unfortunately for Sony, Nintendo got cold feet. According to a 2007 feature on Kutaragi at Eurogamer , Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi decided soon before the event that the contract struck between the companies unequally favored Sony rather than its own interests.
In essence, Sony would have complete control over the Super Disc format, from software approval to profits from sales of the games, with Nintendo seeing minimal benefit from the arrangement.
Fearing that Sony would gain too much power from the deal, Yamauchi dispatched Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln and president Minoru Arakawa to the Netherlands to sign a more lucrative agreement with Philips for a Super Nintendo CD-ROM add-on with a different format. With that deal, Nintendo maintained all rights to its software on the peripheral, and would allow for its characters to appear in Philips’ CD games.
