Prototype Super Nintendo abruptly disappears after reaching at least $3.2 million at auction, and nobody knows why
May. 9, 2024That’s nearly 10 times the price of the infamous Nintendo PlayStation
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Earlier this week, a rare prototype of the Super Famicom, the console that would come to be known as the Super NES worldwide, went up on a Japanese auction site. After quickly racking up millions in bids, the auction was pulled, and nobody seems to know why.
TheYahoo Japan auction listingwas atjust a few thousand dollars when I last checked in on it, but that number quickly ballooned into the millions - $3.2 million, according to aKotaku report. You can still see the details of the auction in the original listing, but the ultimate price has disappeared since the close of the auction. I’ve seensuggestionsthat the bids actually reached nearly $7 million, but I’ve been unable to independently verify that number.
Another thing that remains unclear is whether this thing is even real. The account that posted the auction has a history of positive feedback for less exotic items, and the console does appear very similar to prototypes that appeared in Japanese gaming media at the time. But, as Chris Covell notes onTwitter, it’s certainly not exactly the same as previously seen models. That could mean it’s a fake, or it could simply mean it’s a previously unknown prototype - it’d be impossible to tell without a historian having the chance to look at the machine.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that this won’t be the last time we hear about this console. In an ideal world, it’ll turn out to be authentic, and the seller will make a tidy profit getting it to some philanthropic collector who’ll get the machine in the hands of gaming historians who can properly examine and document it. That is, admittedly, a lot to hope for, but such is the state of gaming history.
One thing’s for sure: this console won’t be an ideal way to play thebest SNES gamesof all time.
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