Super NES CD-ROM

Background Released in 1990, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was Nintendo's entry into the fourth generation of video game consoles, also known as the 16-bit era. It became a major success worldwide, outselling its competitors, the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine and the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, becoming the most popular console of that generation. During the 1990s, compact discs (CDs) started to gain traction and popularity as a storage medium for music and video games, which were positioned as alternatives to the traditional cartridge format that was the norm in the video game industry at the time. Some advantages over the cartridge format include greater storage capacity, full-motion video (FMV) playback, and the inclusion of high-quality audio (including audio CD playback). Add-on accessories using CD technology were created to take advantage of this approach; the first one being NEC's TurboGrafx-CD/PC Engine CD-ROM² in 1988 and then Sega's Sega CD/Mega-CD in 1991. In response, Nintendo sought to create their own take on the concept to combat its competitors, and entered negotiations with Sony, who had previously designed the sound chips for the SNES, to create the project. Conception Sony engineer Ken Kutaragi became interested in video game development after observing his daughter play games on Nintendo's Famicom video game console. Without full corporate approval, Kutaragi secretly designed the S-SMP audio chip for Nintendo's upcoming Super NES console. At the time, Sony was uninterested in the video game business, so most of his superiors did not approve of the project (and he was nearly fired for doing so), but Kutaragi received support from Sony executive Norio Ohga, who allowed the project to proceed. Encouraged by the collaboration, and convinced that CD-ROMs (which Sony had co-developed with Philips) would eventually supplant cartridges, Kutaragi proposed a CD-ROM drive for the Super NES. Although Nintendo was initially skeptical, concerned about the slow load times of CD-ROM drives of the time, it permitted Sony to begin development after Kutaragi claimed the drive would be used for multimedia purposes rather than games. Under Sony's proposed agreement, the company would retain control over the Super Disc format and its software licensing, as well as reap the exclusive benefits from music and movie content on the platform—areas where Sony was aggressively expanding. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi found the terms unacceptable. He was already wary of Sony who had demanded game developers to use its expensive, proprietary audio tools for the S-SMP audio chip. He was also concerned by Sony's growing influence across music, film, and software. Yamauchi began to suspect that Nintendo was being used to advance Sony's ambitions of launching its own console. He soon began seeking an alternative partner. CES 1991 and aftermath on the right At the Consumer Electronics Show in June 1991, Sony publicly unveiled its hybrid SNES-compatible console, the PlayStation, which supported both cartridge and CDs. Despite the events at CES 1991, negotiations between Nintendo and Sony continued, and during this period, two to three hundred PlayStation prototypes were produced, and software development was underway. In early 1992, the companies reached a deal allowing Sony to produce SNES-compatible hardware, while Nintendo retained control and profit over the games. However, the strained relationship between the two firms had already taken its toll. Although Sony executives still believed that partnering with the more experienced Nintendo was the safer path, Kutaragi ultimately persuaded the company to abandon the Super NES CD-ROM and instead pursue development of a standalone console for the next-generation of video games, which would become the PlayStation in 1994. This new console dropped compatibility with the SNES and contained more powerful hardware specifications than any other consoles available at the time. In order to refocus their efforts on the new console, Sony cut all ties to Nintendo in May 1992. Meanwhile, the partnership between Nintendo and Philips led to the development of an add-on based CD-ROM peripheral for the Super NES, featuring additional hardware such as a 32-bit coprocessor and a new CD format based on CD-ROM XA technology known as the Nintendo Disc (ND). However, before any prototypes can be produced, Nintendo reportedly canceled the project quietly as late as September 1993, effectively ending development of all CD-based Super NES hardware. == Proposed devices ==

Sony PlayStation (SFX-100) The PlayStation was a proposed standalone console co-produced by Nintendo and Sony that used its own proprietary CD-ROM format designed and solely licensed by Sony known as the Super Disc while retaining compatibility with Super NES Game Paks via an included cartridge slot. until they were scrapped in favor of the next-generation PlayStation project. All of these units bear the model number SFX-100. , there have been two known examples of these units in existence. Photos of the prototype resurfaced in the 2000s, which were subsequently shared online as well as it being featured on an article published by Edge in April 2009 about the original PlayStation's history, showing what the unit would have looked like. A former Advanta worker, Terry Diebold, acquired the device as part of a lot during Advanta's 2009 bankruptcy auction. As shown in Benjamin Heckendorn's tear-down video of the unit in 2016, the prototype featured two Super NES controller ports, a cartridge slot, a tray-loading dual-speed CD-ROM drive, RCA composite jacks, S-Video, RFU DC OUT (similar to the PlayStation SCPH-1001), a proprietary multi-out AV output port (the same one featured on the Super NES, Nintendo 64, and GameCube), headphone jack on the front, a serial port labelled "NEXT" (probably for debugging), and one expansion port under the unit. The system was later confirmed as operational and plays Super Famicom cartridges as well as its included test cartridge, although the audio output and CD drive were non-functional. The unit was also missing its original power supply as Diebold likely never received the original one when he got ahold of it during the Advanta bankruptcy auction, and so the system could not be powered on without it. To remedy this issue for the time being, a third-party power supply was used. It came with a Sony/PlayStation-branded version of the standard Super Famicom controller (model number SHVC-005). Some groups have attempted to develop homebrew software for the console such as Super Boss Gaiden, as there were no known games that used the CD drive. In March 2016, retro-gaming website RetroCollect reported that it (and influential members of online emulation communities) had received (from an anonymous source) a functional disc boot ROM for the SNES-based PlayStation. Diebold gave the unit to hardware hacker Benjamin Heckendorn in 2016 to examine its contents. In doing this, he posted a tear-down video of the system that same year, which also included some technical specifications of the prototype that he published and compared it to the other two CD-based add-ons released for the TurboGrafx-16 and Sega Genesis. He said that the system would have probably been as powerful as a standard Super NES, but not as powerful as the Sega CD. This prototype was auctioned by Diebold in February 2020, with an initial price of , but the auction quickly exceeded within two days. It was sold for to Greg McLemore, an entrepreneur and founder of Pets.com, who has a large collection of other video game hardware and plans to establish a permanent museum for this type of hardware. In March 2025, it has been reported that a second prototype unit was found to be in Kutaragi's possession, which he has kept inside his closet for storage. This unit is identical to that of the first known prototype unit that was discovered nearly ten years prior, but in a much better physical condition. Super NES CD-ROM System The Super NES CD-ROM System was a proposed CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES co-produced by Nintendo and Philips that can accept CDs while also providing some additional hardware functionality to expand upon the capabilities of the Super NES. It was developed as a result of a partnership between the two companies that occurred alongside the ongoing development of Sony's standalone SNES-based PlayStation console and the Super Disc CD-ROM format. Like most CD-based add-ons, it can play CD-based games as well as audio CDs via its own built-in CD drive. It was designed to be used only in conjunction with a Super NES console, and attaches to the expansion port on the bottom of the main system. Unlike most CD-ROM based add-ons (and virtually most optical disc-based game consoles since), it does not use a tray loading or top loading drive and instead uses a cartridge-based caddy loading drive that can accept discs placed in enclosed caddy cases. This was designed to protect the discs from damage, and was similar to that of early CD-ROM drives used in contemporary computers of the time the ND format games would also be compatible with CD-i-based hardware. This new 32-bit CPU, known as the SCCP, was to be included inside a dedicated system cartridge that contains the extra hardware dedicated for the add-on such as additional RAM, ROM, and an additional coprocessor called "HANDS" (Hyper Advanced Nintendo Data Transfer System), a custom chip based around a single 65C02 8-bit processor clocked at 4.295 MHz. HANDS primarily acts as a decoder for the add-on's CD-ROM drive, but also enhances the SNES's sound capabilities with up to four channels of audio, complimenting with the add-on's CD audio as well as the Super NES' eight-channel S-SMP audio system. which were echoed in an issue of Electronic Games published in April 1993. The 1993 EGM and EG issues also showed concept art for the proposed add-on unit, with the EGM issue showing the Super Famicom design and the EG issue showing the North American Super NES design. Before a single prototype could be made, however, Nintendo quietly cancelled the project a few years into the concept phase, which was reported as late as the summer of 1993. Comparison The following table below is based on Benjamin Heckendorn's specs comparison of the first known prototype unit of Sony's jointly produced SNES-based PlayStation console shown in July 2016. The specs of the proposed Nintendo and Philips developed Super NES CD-ROM System add-on published by Electronic Gaming Monthly and Electronic Games in 1993 are also included on this table below. ==Legacy==

After the original contract with Sony failed, Nintendo continued its partnership with Philips. This contract provisioned Philips with the right to feature Nintendo's characters in a few games for its CD-i multimedia device, but never resulted in a CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES after Nintendo's silent cancellation of the project in late 1993. The Nintendo-themed CD-i games were very poorly received, and the CD-i is considered a commercial failure. These games later found its way into the early modern internet culture as a cult classic; the hand-drawn cutscenes of certain Nintendo-themed CD-i games in particular were used in various parodies and internet memes in the 2000s, including those published on video sharing sites such as YouTube. After Nintendo left the collaboration in 1991, Sony continued to work on the project on their own, cutting ties with Nintendo in 1992, and reworked the project into a standalone console that exclusively used CDs instead of cartridges and had more powerful hardware than any other consoles available at the time. It was around this time that Sony entered into a brief short-lived partnership with Sega under the agreement that both companies would share all costs and risk for the new CD-ROM drive (and ultimately the next generation console). Sega would cancel the partnership, however, claiming that Sony knew little of the industry at the time, and resumed development on what would eventually become the Sega Saturn. Kutaragi however became emboldened enough from his experiences working with both Nintendo and Sega, and Sony resumed development of their own console for the next generation after leaving both companies. The main game in development for the SNES CD platform launch was Square's Secret of Mana, whose planned content was cut down to the size suitable for cartridge and released on that medium instead. None of the additional hardware used in the Nintendo and Philips Super NES CD-ROM add-on project ever came to fruition, however the CPU of the proposed add-on, the NEC V810, did eventually make its way into at least two other video game products: NEC and Hudson Soft's PC-FX game console released exclusively in Japan in December 1994, as well as Nintendo's own Virtual Boy 3D stereoscopic game console released in July 1995 in Japan and August 1995 in North America. Sony released the PlayStation in December 1994 in Japan and September 1995 in North America and Europe, and soon became a major success worldwide. This next-generation CD-based console successfully competed against other CD-based consoles such as the Sega Saturn, the 3DO, and PC-FX, as well as Nintendo's cartridge-based Nintendo 64, making it a console leader. Sony had sold three times as many PlayStation consoles compared to the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn in the mid-to-late 1990s, establishing Sony as a major player in the video game industry. The broken partnership with Sony has often been cited as a mistake by Nintendo, effectively creating a formidable rival in the video game market as a consequence of Sony's and Kutaragi's shrewd determination to break into the market. Journalists have argued that if Nintendo had never broken the deal, its position may have been further undermined by Sony. Nintendo, still convinced of the faster load times and stronger anti-piracy measures of the cartridge format, did not produce an optical disc-based console until the release of the GameCube in 2001. == See also ==