The “Nintendo PlayStation” has sold at Heritage Auctions for an astounding $360,000 – one of the highest prices for a piece of video game memorabilia ever.
This fabled console was the result of a short-lived collaboration between Sony and Nintendo in 1992. Two hundred of these systems were allegedly made, all of which had been destroyed except for Heritage Auctions’s sole unit.
The Nintendo PlayStation is essentially a Super Nintendo with a built-in CD-ROM drive. No disc-based titles exist for the console, but it does play SNES and Super Famicom cartridges. The CD-ROM drive can be used to play back music CDs – a small LCD screen on the top of system displays what track is being played.
“Though the CD-ROM drive was not currently working when it was found in 2009, it has since been repaired by Benjamin Heckendorn, a YouTube personality known for his console repair videos,” explained Heritage Auctions.
“It now has the ability to play music CDs like the commercially produced PlayStation, but there is no proprietary software that’s known to have been made during the prototype’s development.”
The Nintendo PlayStation was originally owned by Olaf Olafsson, the first CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. He later joined the now-defunct banking company Advanta Corporation, which ended up auctioning off the prototype console after it went bankrupt.