Remember the Nintendo PlayStation? We're talking about the famous hybrid console that Sony and Nintendo officially presented at CES 1991... only for Nintendo to throw it overboard 24 hours later by signing a deal with Philips. The only known working prototype sold in 2020 for more than $350,000, a price too steep for most. That includes James from the James Channel, who decided to build his own version of the Nintendo PlayStation... with all the chaos and improvisation that define him.
Attention to detail is essential for any retrohardware and DIY enthusiast who wants to rebuild a console. Some rely on 3D printing to create new shells, others follow the path of custom PCBs, and there are always projects that combine the best of both worlds. However, there are also those who embrace chaos, and James from the James Channel is one of them. James is a serious collector, and recently he showed us the Samsung Gam*Boy that Samsung and Sega sold in South Korea, but this time James decided to build a Nintendo PlayStation... with an angle grinder and a drill.
The most chaotic “Nintendo PlayStation” you've ever seen
Basically, a couple of years ago James received “half” a PlayStation, and kept the Super Famicom shell (whose innards were used in a previous video). The PlayStation power supply needed minimal repairs (a capacitor replacement), but the good news for this “project” is that we can still get compatible optical drives. Its quality is questionable at best, but this unit works “well,” aside from some scratches on a disc and a few scuffs.
The rest was left to the mercy of an angle grinder... and I'm not exaggerating. James cut, adapted, cut again, lengthened cables, and re-cut until everything fit inside the shell. Neither the motherboard nor the power supply managed to escape the grinder. The original Super Famicom switch went from “cutting” 9 volts to 240... and worked the same.
The last touch was to install the PS1 optical drive outside the shell, so part of the disc takes advantage of the cartridge space. In short, anyone expecting precise work or respect for the integrity of the original hardware will not find it here. The James Channel is like an “ElectroBOOM” for retrohardware, and it won't be the last time we see this kind of extreme surgery.
