Once upon a time, before the birth of the mighty PlayStation that we know and love today, there was another…a hybrid born of unholy union with Nintendo. In 1998, Sony inked a deal with Nintendo where it would provide Sony CD-ROM drives so that the SNES could play disc based games in addition to the cartridges. And thus the Nintendo PlayStation was to be born.

However, this marriage was short lived as contract disputes led to Sony telling Nintendo that it could build its own console with black CDs and a less powerful processor. Prior to the contract breakdown, there were reportedly about 200 of these hybrid Nintendo PlayStations being built and rumors were abound for many years on the creation of these devices. Officially, these devices were to be named SNES-CD or Super Disc.

Shuhei Yoshida, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment could not confirm or deny their existence when he was asked years ago about the device.

The truth must always prevail and finally we have a look at the device in its entirety.

Engadget’s Richard Lai managed to catch up with the owner and share in their experience as they turned on the console after many years. Unfortunately, the CD drive doesn’t work but check out the video in the source link to see how this console would have been and imagine for a second if the deal did go through. Would we have had all the amazing IPs that have come out of Sony since then? Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, Jak, Daxter? We’ll never know and perhaps that’s better as Sony’s drive to create games that catered to different audiences saw the creation of God of War, Last of Us, and the Uncharted series, which might have never come to pass if they had remained a part of Nintendo.