He used a SNES and a PS1 to do it, and since the Sony-Nintendo collaboration was supposed to be a CD-ROM add-on for the Big N’s 16-bit platform, his idea is apt…

A YouTuber named James Channel created the unique console, which can run PS1 games as well as some Nintendo products. The exterior looks like a SNES, but the hardware is more like Sony’s console. The YouTuber has created some unique, quirky video game hardware before, so he was able to make the TI-83 calculator run Super Smash Bros. (Texas Instruments calculators are having a unique renaissance, to say the least…).

The Nintendo Play Station was born in 1988, and we’ve already seen a prototype. The console, which could run Nintendo’s SNES cartridges, was transformed by Sony’s CD-ROM add-on into a console that was ahead of its time, but ultimately not realized due to the disloyalty of the big N. (Nintendo had made a deal with Philips behind Sony’s back, which is how Mario and Zelda IP appeared on their CDs, and Sony essentially released the PlayStation in Japan at the end of ’94 as revenge…)

The hardware challenge for YouTube was to fit the PS1 architecture into the Japanese SNES (Super Famicom, SFC) chassis. Some elements had to be moved, so the power, reset, and eject buttons are not where they were originally. Placing the disk drive was an additional challenge. You can essentially see it ABOVE the architecture, and that’s how the CD-ROM can spin…essentially in midair. It’s understandably not a perfect solution, but a cartridge is smaller than a CD, and it doesn’t take up as much space as an optical drive.

Still, it’s an existing solution, as you can see in the video of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto working. Even games that were originally region-locked (like the Japan-only Pepsiman) will work, but with a little trickery. Nintendo games (not SNES titles, ironically; the PS1 isn’t hardware strong enough…) work with emulation.

Source: GameRant