When it comes to video games, the 1990s are considered by many to be the age of experimentation. The amount of wacky and downright absurd gaming paraphernalia to come from that era is nearly impalpable. Thus, whenever anything rare or unheard of from that era resurfaces, it tends to catch a lot of attention from the gaming community and that is exactly what happened at a recent auction where a Nintendo PlayStation was sold.
The Super NES CD-ROM or as it's more colloquially known, the Nintendo PlayStation, was a rumored hardware collaboration between Nintendo and Sony back in 1991. The intended use of the console was to publish Super Nintendo games on CDs or "Super Disks" as the company referred to them. This collaborated console was actually conceived a full three years before the launch of the PlayStation 1.
However, due to unforeseen circumstances involving Nintendo partnering with a rival company without giving Sony any notice, the console was scrapped and the public never saw a finished product. Until a full twenty four years later when a prototype of the Super NES CD-ROM had randomly surfaced, confirming the existence of the console's supposed development.
A prototype of the Nintendo PlayStation has been up for auction since mid-February, but has just recently sold for the steep price of $360,000. What's interesting is the fact that on February 15th the highest bid had been $350,000. It seems odd that the price went up by only $10,000 dollars over the course of twenty days. Perhaps 350,000 dollars alone was likely too much for the majority of collectors.
Considering how short a time frame the video game industry has existed compared to other mediums of entertainment, it's amazing how much of the industry's history is lost on most members of the gaming community. There's likely a plethora of obscure or cancelled gaming systems like the Nintendo PlayStation that next to nobody in the community knows about due to their obscurity.
With all of this being said, it does seem a little excessive to spend so much money on a console that is essentially an SNES that plays games on disks rather than cartridges. Speaking of games, since this is still a prototype system, there's likely no games developed on the "Super Disks" that are available to purchase. The system can still play SNES games on cart, but at that point it's better just to purchase a normal SNES if all one wants to do is play games. Then again, there are plenty of game consoles that found next to no success compared to mainstream gaming platforms. Still, the Nintendo PlayStation serves as a nice piece of gaming history.
Source: Gizmodo