Second Nintendo Playstation Homebrew Released

The Nintendo Playstation prototype has been making the rounds over the last few years. I conducted an interview with Terry Diebold, the owner of the unit, awhile back and will be releasing that soon (editing nearly 20,000 words total takes time). Since the Nintendo Playstation was discovered it has been fixed (CD-ROM originally was not functional) and now we know about the second homebrew release for it. The first release was a simple puzzle game called "Magic Floor" (also available for Game Boy Advance, DSi, DS and e-Card).

Benheck fixed the CD-ROM attachment at a tradeshow meeting with Terry as shown in the video below.

Super Boss Gaiden is is based on the assumed reaction of a higher-level Sony executive at the news of the Nintendo Playstation prototype being released into the wild and a new game has been made for it. The player controls that Sony executive who is on a rampage – beating up everyone in his path. Your end goal is find the person, or persons, responsible for letting the prototype get out.

There are two versions of Super Boss Gaiden available. One is for the Super Nintendo and is playable using regular emulators and on actual hardware using flash carts. The second version is made for the CD-ROM attachment. Now, you may be thinking how are you supposed to be able to play that version? I mean, that is quite a limited audience capable of running the CD-ROM version since there is literally only one known piece of hardware it runs on. If you grab the no$sns emulator you can play the CD-ROM version of Super Boss Gaiden by using the dumped BIOS file from the Nintendo Playstation.

Please be aware that downloading that BIOS file is technically illegal.

Before you start thinking the CD-ROM version is vastly superior to the cart version, it is not. The CD-ROM honestly only adds a much higher capacity storage option for developers. There is no discernable improvements to games outside of more storage and the ability to include better audio.

The Nintendo Playstation does feature a cartridge slot which is rumored to be how Nintendo/Sony planned on upgrading the hardware as time went on. Additional RAM (the prototype features 2 megabits) could be included on a cart, also an additional CPU could be added to the consumer hardware (something Nintendo did with games like Star Fox).

While it is probably more of a marketing gimmick to get people talking about their game, it is still interesting to see homebrew being released for the Nintendo Playstation prototype.

Grab Super Boss Gaiden here.
This article was inspired by @rerez and his retelling of his experience playing the prototype here.