7 Beloved Video Game Consoles That Were Almost Completely Different

In the early 90s, Nintendo partnered with a Japanese electronics company to develop an add-on for the Super Nintendo that would allow it to play CD-based games. The agreement gave Nintendo's partners full control over the new disc format, an arrangement which made Nintendo increasingly uncomfortable.

Nintendo's collaborators were ready to reveal the project at the June 1991 Consumer Electronics Show, but Nintendo made their own surprise announcement there: they had secretly entered into a new agreement with Philips to produce the add-on instead.

It was at this point that the cosmic force responsible for punishing gaming companies for their transgressions cracked its knuckles and said "jackpot."

Nintendo's Philips deal never resulted in a SNES-CD add-on, but it did infamously result in Nintendo characters appearing in Philips CD-i games that were so bad Nintendo pretends they didn't exist. Nintendo's original partners, meanwhile, were humiliated by Nintendo's public underhandedness and resolved to finish the add-on as a stand-alone console.

It should be noted that this company was Sony, and that the project eventually became the PlayStation. By backstabbing Sony, Nintendo missed out on having CD technology early, saw their most important properties bastardized by Philips, and created their own industry rival.