Rarest ever Nintendo console pictured properly for the first time-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The GameCube in its final form (Wikipedia)

The only clear photo of an early Nintendo console prototype has been released online and it’s not the PlayStation hybrid.

The mythical Nintendo PlayStation – the prototype console created during that brief time when Nintendo and Sony were partners rather than rivals – is usually regarded as the rarest console in the world, since until recently no working model was known to still exist.

There is another rival to that title though, even if it doesn’t sound quite so exciting, and that’s an early prototype of the GameCube, which many fans will known was called the Dolphin.

The codeword is well known, and sometimes even referenced by Nintendo as an in-joke in games, but surprisingly there’s never been a proper photo of one ever… until now.

The best photo until now is the blurry image below, of a partially obscured console, which is strange given how well know the codename is and how there must’ve been multiple prototypes.

The new photo was obtained by website Consolevariations but it’s not clear if they own the console or not, as they talk about having to sign an NDA and being prevented from uploading a photo, so it may be in private hands or still owned by a game developer.

If you study the image, you can see that while the basic shape is the same as the final model the logo is different, and made up of multiple letter ‘G’s, which implies the name GameCube had already been decided – even though the console clearly has ‘Nintendo Dolphin’ written on it.

Hopefully some videos of the console in use will be made as, reportedly, instead of the iconic GameCube jingle when it starts up it makes dolphin noises instead.

As far as anyone knows there’s no special reason for the name dolphin, with most consoles having their own unique codenames before release. The Xbox Series X was codenamed Anaconda, for example, while the Switch had the rather boring codename ‘NX’ – although Nvidia referred to it as Odin before release.

For whatever reason, the name Dolphin has lingered in the fandom imagination, with the most popular unofficial GameCube emulator also called Dolphin.

Ironically, the GameCube was one of Nintendo’s least successful consoles and was outsold in its generation by both the PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox.

Despite being considerably more powerful than the PlayStation 2, the GameCube sold less than 22 million consoles by the end of the lifetime and given the middling success of its predecessor, the N64, represented one of the darkest times for Nintendo as a company.

Their follow-up to the GameCube was the Wii though, which was a huge success, even though technically it wasn’t much more advanced than the GameCube.

Isle Delfino in Super Mario Sunshine literally means ‘Dolphin Island’ (Marioverse Wiki)

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Entertainment – MetroRead More