Scooby-Doo's Shaggy Owns A Piece Of Gaming History
If you've seen Scoob!, the latest movie adventure of Scooby-Doo and the gang, you may have noticed plenty of easter eggs hiding in the background. Many of the references within the film are to previous Scooby adventures, but there are a few bits of pop culture history sprinkled throughout the wacky adventure. One of these is a piece of gaming history that seems almost impossible, even in a movie that involves fighting super villains and hunting g-g-g-ghosts.
As spotted by Twitter user @GirlyWolfPup, it appears as though Scooby's best friend Shaggy somehow came into possession of a Nintendo PlayStation prototype. It can be seen in the background of a scene in Shaggy's bedroom. While it's not immediately obvious, closer inspection makes it appear pretty clear to any hardcore video game aficionados that Shaggy somehow has one of the rarest consoles in existence.
As @GirlyWolfPup put it, So nobody's mentioned this but Shaggy seems to be the owner of the Nintendo Playstation." The presence of this impossible console led this fan to believe that "Scoob must take place in an alternate timeline where the deal between Nintendo and Sony actually went through."
So nobody's mentioned this but Shaggy seems to be the owner of the Nintendo Playstation
Scoob must take place in an alternate timeline where the deal between Nintendo and Sony actually went through pic.twitter.com/78FhDbND3E
— Danika 🌸Wing Wolf🌸 (@GirlyWolfPup) May 20, 2020
For those of you not in the know, the Nintendo PlayStation is actually something that came extremely close to happening. In the late 1980s, Nintendo and Sony entered talks to collaborate on a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo. The working title for the system was the very familiar-sounding "Play Station." The deal eventually fell through, seemingly due to Nintendo's reluctance to invest in CD-based gaming.
However, we know what the system would have looked like. A prototype of the system surfaced in an online auction earlier this year, which ended up selling for $360,000. It's hard not to notice that the console that appears in Shaggy's room bears more than a passing resemblance to the pictures we've seen of the unproduced console. Considering the fact that Shaggy is (presumably) not a millionaire, this leaves us to wonder how in the heck Shaggy came into possession of this piece of history.
A few fans have surmised that Scoob! takes place in some kind of alternate dimension. Others feel that the presence of the Nintendo PlayStation further muddies the timeline of the new movie. One user mentions that Shaggy clearly uses a smartphone at one point in the film, but he appears to own a much older console. Adding this to the sort of retro aesthetic shared by much of the movie, one has to wonder if Shaggy is just a retro-minded gamer.
Then again, maybe he's more of a collector than we know. Another user says that Shaggy probably just likes retro games. This makes sense. After all, who wouldn't want to unwind with some classic games after a long day of hunting ghouls and monsters?
Some users seem to think that the console glimpsed in the film is meant to just be a generic video game system and that people are reading too much into it. As one fan writes, "the controller plug ins and the cartridge slot are in different places its most likely just a generic game console but the similarities are cool." Another mentions, "I'm pretty sure this is just 'we wanted to make it a Super Famicom but also didn't want to be sued so we made it a box.'"
Still, it's a cool thing to think about. What if Shaggy has more pull in the gaming industry than we suspected? It would make a lot of sense, especially considering how popular the character has become among video gamers in recent years.
It all began with a series of bizarre memes and fan art that described Shaggy as a being of unknowable power (no, really). That meme led to a petition from fans who were trying to get Shaggy added as a DLC character in NetherRealm's Mortal Kombat 11. Even after that possibility was roundly squashed by NetherRealm's Ed Boon and Tyler Landsdown, it didn't stop fans from taking matters into their own hands.
Shaggy has been modded into numerous games with insane results. If you've ever wanted to battle Dragon Ball's Goku as Mystery Inc.'s lovable coward, at least three different mods have you covered. Shaggy was also added into such incongruous titles as Resident Evil 2, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Left 4 Dead 2 (in which he was joined by his whole team).
Why, yes, the internet is a weird place. Maybe in the alternate universe where the Nintendo PlayStation was actually released, Shaggy was also added to Mortal Kombat 11. We can dream.