×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
INTEREST: Legendary Nintendo PlayStation Prototype Auctioned for US$360,000




Note: this is the discussion thread for this article
Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
GeorgeC



Joined: 22 Nov 2008
Posts: 795
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 8:00 pm Reply with quote
Heh...
And it was reported on a YouTube channel that the guy who owned that prototype was offered $1.2million to sell it to someone but he thought he could do better at auction!
It works -- I've seen video of the CD-ROM loading from discs but it really doesn't do much. It's a glorified SNES with a music player built in at this point.
They never got far with game development for the CD-ROM; there's no playable games for this CD drive that I'm aware of.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Kruszer



Joined: 19 Nov 2004
Posts: 7983
Location: Minnesota, USA
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 8:46 pm Reply with quote
That much for a piece of useless junk that won't play anything... Confused
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message My Anime My Manga
Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2544
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:03 pm Reply with quote
Kruszer wrote:
That much for a piece of useless junk that won't play anything... Confused


It always played Super Famicom games just fine. It was the CD drive that was busted, and as the article mentioned, respected tech guru Ben Heck not only fixed the problem, but even was able to figure out all of the specs for it, so we know pretty much everything it was capable of. Heck even managed to get a small homebrew game (not Super Boss Gaiden, as that was likely too big for the actual on-board RAM to support) that was developed to run on it via the CD drive, so it's theoretically possible to develop games that it can play via CD.

Unfortunately, Ben Heck realized that, had this device come out, it really wouldn't have been anything special. Unlike the Sega CD, which included some extra hardware for things like sprite rotation & scaling, the original "Play Station" was literally nothing more than a Super Famicom that could play CDs. Without any extra hardware, it would have been nothing more than the TurboGrafx-CD, i.e. the same kinds of games that the base hardware could handle, only with the potential of redbook audio played from the CD & more load times, and even the latter would likely be worse than what was on the Sega CD, as there wasn't even any extra RAM to utilize, and the Super Nintendo was already low on that as it was.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Psajdak





PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:22 pm Reply with quote
Legendary. Rolling Eyes
Back to top
Puniyo



Joined: 08 Oct 2015
Posts: 271
PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2020 2:35 pm Reply with quote
It was bought by a guy with established plans to open a video game museum, which is at least much better than it disappearing into some private collection.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4364
Location: New York
PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2020 2:59 pm Reply with quote
Puniyo wrote:
It was bought by a guy with established plans to open a video game museum, which is at least much better than it disappearing into some private collection.


Well good luck to him. Only museum I can think of is the Museum of Play in Rochester, and the Nintendo Store in Manhattan has a miniature display of all their consoles through the years, including the famous Iraq veteran Game Boy.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> Site-related -> Talkback All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group