Unfortunately the deal went sour, and it was thought that all prototypes of the mythical Sony-Nintendo console were gone.
Until now. A working copy of what has been dubbed the “Nintendo PlayStation” was recently brought to light and shown off online for the world to see.

Before we look at the console itself though, here’s a quick rundown on how the “Nintendo PlayStation” came to be. In the late 1980s, Nintendo and Sony made a deal for Sony to produce a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo, as well as their own console that would also play Super Nintendo games.

Unfortunately during the next few years the companies were driven apart by battles over licensing issues. After the dust finally settled, Nintendo partnered with Sony’s rival Philips to produce the Super Nintendo CD-ROM, and Sony made their own console, the PlayStation. This resulted in Sony’s legacy living on up to today with the PlayStation 4, and the Philips CD-i going down as one of the worst consoles in history.

But during a brief period in the early 1990s, a few working prototypes of the “Nintendo PlayStation” were, in fact, produced. For the longest time it was believed that they had all been lost to history, becoming little more than a mythical gaming console—until recently, when one finally surfaced online. You can watch the full story as reported by Engadget in the video above.

We can't help but wonder, would everything have progressed faster, and we’d be in a golden age of gaming? Or would the lack of competition have stifled innovation and we’d still be in the 16-bit era? It’s a question that we can only speculate about, though it’s hard to imagine that more Sony-Nintendo gaming crossovers could ever be a bad thing.