Rarest ever Nintendo console is not what you think as new photo found-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

The legend of the Dolphin lives on (Nintendo/Metro)

There’s finally a clear photo of one of the most obscure Nintendo consoles ever produced, but can you guess what it is?

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 know was called the Dolphin.

The codeword is so well known it’s 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.

Previously, the best photo has been 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 on – even though the console clearly has ‘Nintendo Dolphin’ written on it.

Reportedly, instead of the iconic GameCube jingle when it starts up it makes dolphin noises instead, but there’s no actual footage of that.

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 also 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 its 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 technically advanced than the GameCube.

This article was first published on 6th August 2024.

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

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