SNES CD-ROM thread - Nintendo. Sony. Philips (16-bit, 32-bit versions)

[SharpX68K]

Electronic Gaming Monthly #29 December 1991

Click to shrink...

Electronic Gaming Monthly #32 March 1992

EGM June 1992

Electronic Gaming Monthly - April 1993

Then I found this article in Electronic Games magazine (the 1992 incarnation of EG) from their April 1993 issue.

Skip forward to Feburary 1997 - an article on the Nintendo 64 "Bulky Drive" / 64DD, and the history with the Nintendo Disc CD-ROM (32-bit version) from 1993.

(#1) 1990
Sony/Nintendo "Super Disc" format - expansion CD-ROM and an all-in-one "Play Station" - no actual processor upgrade, other than RAM

(#2) 1991
SNES CD-ROM (Nintendo, Philips)- expansion CD-ROM - extra RAM, again, no actual processor upgrade other than RAM

(#3) 1993
Nintendo Disc aka CD-ROMXA (Nintendo + Philips + maybe Sony) - expansion CD-RPM - 32-bit, 21 MHz co-processor upgrade. Plus the decompression processor. This is the one that was not only a CD expansion, but also had additional power, making it an upgrade, like the Sega-CD, but 32-bit and even more powerful. The previous two were more in line with the PC-Engine / TurboGrafx-16 CD-ROM systems, which were CD drives with more (and more) RAM but no extra processing chips.


The prototype SNES CD-ROM system that was unearthed a few years ago, which got quite a bit of coverage,
was the all-in-one version of SNES CD #1 - the 'Play Station', or just 'Nintendo PlayStation'.

 

[XDevil666]

I remember this from the GAF days when it was discovered, amazing piece of history

 

[SharpX68K]

Aside from historical value with the 16-bit Nintendo PlayStation, the only one I would have been interested in for playing games was the 32-bit upgrade system.

From what I've read, and this could very well be incorrect, the 32-bit co-processor was similar to the SuperFX2 (aka GSU-2 ??)
used in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island and the unreleased (but now released!) Star Fox 2.