Former PlayStation Boss Played Company’s First Game On Scrapped Nintendo Console

Shuhei Yoshida, the former president of Sony Interactive Studios, was there from day one of the PlayStation. And in a new interview, the former exec shared a story of how, on his first day at PlayStation, he got the chance to play the company’s first game on the infamous Nintendo PlayStation system.

In a recent interview with MinnMax, Yoshida—who left the company last month after 31 years—explained that when he was first brought on board the PlayStation team in 1993, Ken Kutaragi, “The Father of the PlayStation,” showed him the first game the team had put together. But it wasn’t made for the PlayStation console you might have played in the ‘90s. Instead, it was developed for the failed Nintendo PlayStation—a proposed device that would let the SNES play CD games.

“The first thing they showed us was that Nintendo Sony PlayStation, like a [working] prototype,” said Yoshida. “And also they had almost finished a game on it and I got to play the game on the system the day I joined.”

According to Yoshida, the game was a 2.5D or 3D space-shooter-like thing and used the power of the CD to stream in assets to create something similar to the Sega CD title Silpheed. Sadly, Yoshida doesn’t remember who developed it, suggesting it might have been a team in the U.S. or Japan. When asked if it’s possible that this never-before-seen Nintendo PlayStation space shooter game still existed somewhere within Sony’s archives, Yoshida seemed to think it was.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if [the game was saved]. You know it was like [on a] CD so yeah,” explained the former PlayStation Studios president.

Now someone within Sony just needs to find that game and dump the rom online. Or maybe that will be one of the secrets buried in the next Astro Bot game.