Back in 1988, Nintendo inked a deal with Sony to produce a disc-based console tentatively titled the "[[HilariousInHindsight Play Station]]" (two words). Sony and Philips jointly created the CD-ROM format, which boasted greater capabilities and (at the time) better anti-piracy measures than floppies. (Sony also designed the [=SPC700=] sound chip which is found in the {{SNES}}.)

A Play Station console was shown at trade shows in 1991, and while it was originally envisioned as a way to play [=CDs=] on the SNES, a deal was struck in 1992 to have Sony's console sport a slot for SNES cartridges (with Nintendo keeping full ownership and most of the profits from said carts).

Everything quickly fell apart when the then-president of Nintendo realized the contract's wording let Sony have full ownership and profits over the console's games. The company terminated the contract and forged a partnership with Philips — while Sony rebuilt the project from scratch, dropping the cartridge slot and creating the CD-ROM-only {{PlayStation}} (now one word).

Nintendo later terminated its contract with Philips, and the latter company created the [=CDi=] — which featured [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaCDiGames three games]] based on the ''Zelda'' franchise and [[HotelMario one]] based on the ''SuperMarioBros'' franchise (another two were planned, one based on ''VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld'' and another called ''Mario Takes America'', but didn't get very far). These games were all reviled (although it's almost always the low-quality animated cinematics of ''Hotel Mario'', ''Link: The Faces of Evil'', and ''Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon'' that draw the ire), and are best left [[CanonDiscontinuity unmentioned]] in discussions about their parent franchises.

During this situation, Squaresoft — known these days as SquareEnix — was becoming increasingly frustrated with Nintendo's draconian censorship policies, publishing restrictions, and refusal to move away from cartridge media (which, at the time, had far less storage space than [=CD-ROMs=]). Squaresoft — then Nintendo's most popular third-party development studio — eventually signed a contract with Sony, which eventually published the [=PlayStation's=] KillerApp: ''FinalFantasyVII''.

In other words, '''Nintendo [[CreateYourOwnVillain indirectly created one of its greatest rivals.]]'''

Nintendo's next system, the {{Nintendo 64}}, was the only cartridge-based system of its era. Nintendo's decision to stick with cartridges when other systems had moved on to a CD-based format '''was''' boneheaded, but this isn't the place to discuss that. Nintendo's systems after the N64 use discs — but the {{GameCube}}'s discs were half-size (80mm) and weren't quite mini-DVD, while the {{Wii}} discs aren't quite DVD either, and the WiiU is said to use a proprietary format which isn't Blu-Ray.

As an aside: the company who was ''really'' scared of all this was {{Atari}}, whose [[AtariJaguar Jaguar]] console wasn't doing too well against the SNES and SegaGenesis (despite apparently being the technologically superior system). Then-CEO Sam Tramiel began idiotically boasting about how the Jaguar was better than both the [=PlayStation=] the SegaSaturn, both of which hadn't been released at the time. Tramiel also threatened to take Sony to court if it sold the [=PlayStation=] for less than $500; Sony did — $300 — and Tramiel didn't. Atari's foray into the CD format (a CD add-on for the Jaguar) didn't help matters, as only 15 games were made for it (none of which were very good) and it was '''really''' badly designed.

As another aside: an enterprising emulator developer, byuu, took it upon themselves to create a "[[WhatCouldHaveBeen What If]]" situation as to what this CD-ROM add-on could've been capable of. To that end, the [[http://byuu.org/snes/msu1/ MSU-1]] enhancement chip was created with media streaming capabilities and a storage capacity of [=4GBytes=], well above any official game ever released. There's currently one game that uses it: ''[[http://dforce3000.de/?p=news&t=msu1 Super Road Blaster]]'', a homebrew SNES port of the Sega CD game ''Road Blaster'' (size [=512MBytes=]). If nothing else, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJvsIezXrQ it's worth watching a true CD-quality game running on an actual SNES]] (albeit with a modern flashcart with a built-in MSU-1).
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