Back in the early 1990s, Nintendo and Sony collaborated to create something big: the Nintendo PlayStation. Sony basically agreed to furnish the CD-ROM technology that would be installed in the Super Nintendo. That meant developers could load games from discs, which opened up a whole new universe of possibilities that cartridges simply couldn’t compete with, and that was a major deal.
Ken Kutaragi was leading the charge for Sony at the time, putting in a lot of effort on the prototypes, but the talks began to fall apart. Nintendo abruptly jumped ship and collaborated with Philips to create their own add-on, leaving Sony fuming. They canceled the entire project and instead created the standalone PlayStation. That machine went nuclear, forever changing the gaming world.
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Only a few tiny traces of the initial partnership remain, but a few later prototypes have surfaced over the years. One of those sold for a good penny, around $360,000 at auction in 2019. Another gem was just sitting around in a box till someone came across it again. Ken Kutaragi, the guy behind Sony’s success, still carries his own prototype dear to his heart. Those ones were more polished, like something you’d see on store shelves, but what about this latest find? That’s an entirely different story.
Meet the Sony MSF-1, the oldest known piece of hardware from the entire project. It was essentially the first development system used by the Sony team to get their ideas for the SNES CD underway. Yes, as you would expect from a proof-of-concept prototype, it is a little rough around the edges. Stickers advertising “Not For Sale” are plastered across the front and sides, yet it still appears to be meant to fit directly into a SNES cartridge slot. There is an external disc drive to handle the CDs, a parallel connector for data transfers, and a small passthrough that allows the cartridges to flow into memory. Oh, and there are fast-forward buttons and, strangely enough, a “remain” feature that still makes no sense, but the major giveaway is that it’s just a large testing rig. This device does not even run a full operating system. You can see they put this together to check whether it worked.
As far as we know, this is the sole MSF-1 model still in existence, and it is safely on display at the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas. Fortunately for all of us, the curators were able to get their hands on it just in time, as previous discoveries have a nasty habit of disappearing into the ether and fading into nothingness. This time, the professionals will ensure that it is maintained in top condition for future generations.
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