Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions
There’s an alternate universe where Nintendo and Sony weren’t competitors but collaborators, and for a brief time, it was true. Before there was the Sony PlayStation, there was the Nintendo PlayStation, a CD-based add-on for the SNES. The collaboration went far enough to result in actual prototypes, most of which have been completely lost to time.One still exists, however, and it just sold for $360,000 at auction.The owners of the prototype, according to an interview with Engadget, acquired it for the shockingly low price of $75 through a bankruptcy auction. The person who acquired it didn’t know what it was and tossed it in their attic. Later, the buyer’s son was reading reddit and came across a post talking about the abandoned SNES add-on. That’s when they finally realized what was hiding in that attic. Remarkably, the device still turns on and functions.The $360,000 paid for the Sony PlayStation prototype far exceeds the already massive $100,150 paid for a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. for the NES in 2019.Follow Patrick on Twitter. His email is patrick.klepek@vice.com, and available privately on Signal (224-707-1561).