Whenever a new piece of gaming hardware is announced, there's a rush to fill in the gaps and produce 'mock-up' images of what it could potentially look like.
If you've been following the Switch 2 news, then you'll no doubt have already seen at least one fan-made 3D render of what the console could look like – and before the arrival of the PS5, there were similar unofficial images doing the rounds online.
This isn't a new trend, as hand-drawn predictions were being produced over 30 years ago, before the arrival of the Super Famicom / SNES and Mega Drive / Genesis. Artist impressions of upcoming systems would be shared in magazines across the globe, and, in the case of the Japanese publication Beep, the mock-ups got pretty crazy.
Here's what the magazine thought the Mega Drive / Genesis would look like, for example:
The removable screen is rather forward-thinking, we have to say – but the rest of the console looks like it belongs in an episode of Star Trek.
The magazine's stab at what the Super Famicom would look like didn't get any closer to the mark, either:
It's perhaps worth giving some context here – when this illustration was produced, the Famicom had already had a keyboard interface released for it, and Japanese computers like the MSX, PC-88 and X68000 were making waves thanks to their surprisingly decent gaming software. Perhaps the artist behind this mock-up assumed Nintendo would side-step into that particular market with its next machine?
What do you make of these mock-ups? Let us know with a comment.