The Super NES CD-ROM system or SNES-CD was the beginning and the end of the brief joint-venture between Nintendo and Sony in 1991. Only 200 consoles were made, but the project never got to the distribution stage, and 199 of the consoles were allegedly destroyed, along with the company’s business relationship.
The main bidder is Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR.
Terry Diebold, the current owner of the console got the prototype from an Advanta sale of goods, an American banking company on the brink of bankruptcy. Supposedly, the console would have ended thereafter the former CEO of Sony left the company and went into the banking industry.
Diebold has already declined a $1.2 million offer from an unknown European party; this is the first time the console has gone into auctioning. Diebold explained through Twitter: “I’ve put a lot of work into this by travelling with it and we have made nothing on it. Every trip that we... have taken with it has cost us money out of pocket.”
The console was tested with Mortal Kombat and Heritage Auctions reported that it works perfectly. While no games were specially made for it, the console supports Super Nintendo cartridges.
Engadget reported: “The current high bid for this retro prototype at auction is $300,000 (plus a buyer's premium of $60,000).” This quantity makes the Nintendo Playstation the most expensive video game item to ever be sold.
As of right now, the main bidder is Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR. After selling his company to Facebook for $3 billion and being kicked out for supporting Trump, Luckey has stated that he is “on a quest to digitise and preserve the history of physical video games.”
Featured image credit: @engadget (Twitter)