A Nintendo PlayStation prototype – the mythical Frankenstein of a video game playing console glimpsed in the late 1980s – has been found and, thanks tech guru Ben Heckendorn, is actually up and running games of old.
Heckendorn, host of the Ben Heck Show on YouTube, revealed the rare prototype in a video, according to Mashable.
The console came from a collaboration between Sony and Nintendo but failed to make it to production .
Heckendorn said when he first got his hands on the prototype it was only partially functional, but after working on it for a little less than a year, he was able to get it working completely.
The game system has both a disc drive and a cartridge slot. However, the disc drive never worked properly until Heckendorn worked his magic.
After replacing old capacitors and “jiggling some things around,” Heckendorn finally figured out how to get the CD-ROM to at least “boot up a game,” according to IGN.
Heckendorn had to test the disc drive by using a “fan-built game” since Sony and PlayStation never rolled out any CD games for the system.
According to Fact magazine, Terry and Dan Diebold purchased the old console at an auction in 2015 for just $75.
While the failed Sony-PlayStation collaboration was disappointing in the early 1990’s, it ultimately gave birth to the “disc-only” PlayStation in 1994 and the “cartridge-loaded” Nintendo 64 in 1996 – two classic systems that took the video game world by storm.
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