The only clear photo of an early Nintendo console prototype has been released online and it’s not the PlayStation hybrid. The mythical Nintendo PlayStation – the prototype console created during that brief time when Nintendo and Sony were partners rather than rivals – is usually regarded as the rarest console in the world, since until recently no working model was known to still exist. There is another rival to that title though, even if it doesn’t sound quite so exciting, and that’s an early prototype of the GameCube, which many fans will known was called the Dolphin.
The codeword is well known, and sometimes even referenced by Nintendo as an in-joke in games, but surprisingly there’s never been a proper photo of one ever...
until now. The best photo until now is the blurry image below, of a partially obscured console, which is strange given how well know the codename is and how there must’ve been multiple prototypes. The new photo was obtained by website Consolevariations but it’s not clear if they own the console or not, as they talk about having to sign an NDA and being prevented from uploading a photo, so it may be in private hands or still owned by a game developer.
If you study the image, you can see that while the basic shape is the same as the final model the logo is different, and made up of multiple letter ‘G’s, which implies the name GameCube had already been decided – even though the console clearly has ‘Nintendo Dolphin’ written on it. .