Sony veteran Shuhei Yoshida reveals PlayStation's first video game: an FMV space shooter for Nintendo that was "almost finished"

Nintendo PlayStation
(Image credit: Heritage Auctions)

The PlayStation brand famously rose from the ashes of a planned collaboration between Sony and Nintendo, and while the Nintendo PlayStation hardware has been thoroughly picked apart in recent yea🐻rs, comparatively little is known about what its software library would've looked like. But Sony veteran Shuhei Yoshida has now revealed that the company was working on its own FMV space shooter for the system.

Yoshida joined Sony after the partnership with Nintendo had fallen apart, becoming part of Ken Kutaragi's team as it was transitioning to work on the standalone PlayStation console. But the fruits ♛of the collaboration with Nintendo were still there to see when Yoshida arrived in February 1993.

. "They had almost finished a game on it, and I got to play the game on the system the day I joined."

Revealing PlayS🦹tation’s First Game - Created For Nintendo - YouTube Revealing PlayStation’s First Game - Created For Nintendo - YouTube

Yoshida describes this game as being similar to the Sega CD version of Silpheed, a space shooter with a faux 3D perspective and FMV backgrounds streamed from the disc. Because the backgrounds were made of pre-rendered 𒈔videos, Yoshida explains, the canceled game had "richer graphics than the standard of that time."

Unfortunately, Yoshida doesn't remember who was leading the game's development, or even whether it was made in the US or Japan. Sony would ultimately publish a few similar games on the actual PlayStation. It releaseꦅd Philosoma from developer G-Artists in 1995, and Sony subsidiary Psygnosis explored a similar concept with Novastorm a few years prior before that title came to the PS1.

This is a pretty rare insight into what the software library for the Nintendo PlayStation might've looked like. Up to this point, Secret of Ma🍃na was the best-known game in development for the add-on, and it supposedly in the transition from CD to SNES cartridge. Who knows what form this space shooter might've ultimately been able to take.

Ex-PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida says Switch 2 "could have been a larger reveal" and "the only surprise to me was that mice thing that they showed."

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a ♏Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.