We turned on the Nintendo PlayStation: It's real and it works

When a mysterious "Nintendo PlayStation" prototype with both an SNES cartridge slot and a CD drive made the rounds back in July, many remained skeptical. Not even Sony PlayStation's head of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, wanted to confirm its authenticity. Or perhaps he just didn't want to bring up the bad blood between his company and Nintendo over this failed collaboration.

Back in 1988, Sony inked a deal with the legendary gaming giant to add its then new CD-ROM technology to the upcoming SNES console. But when it came to money, they couldn't reach an agreement: Sony allegedly wanted to keep all the money from CD licenses and then figure out royalties with Nintendo later. As you'd imagine, Nintendo didn't take to this arrangement too kindly. Eventually, just a day after Sony unveiled this "Play Station" at the Chicago CES in 1991, Nintendo retaliated with a surprise move by publicly breaking up with Sony in favor of Philips. Well, that partnership didn't work out for Nintendo, either. But this infamous rupture did lead to the birth of Sony's very own PlayStation, which went on to become one of the company's most profitable assets today.

The "Nintendo PlayStation" is now the stuff of gaming legend, with reportedly only about 200 prototypes ever produced. But, as luck would have it, one of those systems fell into the hands of a father and son: Terry and Dan Diebold. We met up with the Diebolds in Hong Kong, where they were in town for a retro gaming expo, to hear how it ended up in their possession. Most importantly, we got to turn the "Nintendo PlayStation" on, play a couple of SNES games on it, and even take it apart to see if we could fix the dormant CD drive.

Gallery: 'Nintendo PlayStation' prototype hands-on