Before There Was A PlayStation, There Was… Whatever the Hell This Is

  As the gamertastic among us will know darn well, console wars have always been a thing. Back in the day, the Mario/Sonic divide was as vicious as any gang war. Sure, you were just refusing to play with the ‘other’ kids at recess, and not inviting them over after school to ogle the Playboys you stole from your older brother in your treehouse, but it was serious business. These were the drive-by shootings, make him an offer he cannot refuses and dead-snitches-tied-up-in-the-trunk-of-cars of fourth grade.  

After Sega’s consoles died on their asses (RIP Dreamcast, you were too damn sexy for this world), and before Xbox arrived on the scene, the two major players were Nintendo and Sony. Originally, though, the two were set to collaborate on a system. Someone made an innocent remark, it was taken the wrong way, things got heated, mamas and their weight problems were brought into it, and the deal fell through (that’s how I like to think it went down, anyway). Sony worked on and released what would become the PlayStation by themselves, and the rest is history.

That lil’ story is fairly well known, but you probably had no idea that the legendary PS1 wasn’t the company’s first console. Earlier this week, Video Game Densetsu dug up this bad boy from the archives.

No doubt you’ve already seen the header and thought, what in the name of Satan’s saggy scrote is that? It looks like some fancy NASA tech, that astronauts would use to trim their pubes in space or something. Turns out, though, it’s a prototype Sony console from decades ago. A mysterious one too, as Kotaku reports:

‘It was a games console made by Sony, it used cards/cartridges, and...that’s about all anyone knows for sure about it. Simply labelled a “Prototype TV Game Machine”, it’s thought… that the console dates all the way back to the 1970s, meaning that any games it would have played would have been relatively simple affairs.   With no controller, it’s speculated that the red (???/Kotae, or ANSWER) and blue (???/Susume, or PROCEED) buttons were how you actually played games. If that were the case, video footage or graphics would be displayed on the TV screen, and players would make selections (for answers, or decisions) on the console itself. And the giant wheel on the side? It’s assumed that would be for scrolling through stuff.’

What a sad loss for the world that this thing never saw the light of day. Twisty-wheel powered gaming would have changed the course of human history, no doubt about it. Hit the links for more on the device.

Header image: Famitsu.