An authentic prototype of Nintendo’s Tremendous Famicom, Japan’s (superior) model of the SNES, is presently up for public sale and up to date bids have already pushed the gray piece of gaming historical past north of $3.2 million. The “god-tier” nostalgia bait reveals the marketplace for retro collectibles can nonetheless be in all places.
The prototype, now on the market on Yahoo! Auctions Japan, differed from the ultimate system in few alternative ways. Probably the most notable is a fire-engine crimson energy button on the entrance as a substitute of the darkish gray one Nintendo finally went with. The experimental model additionally had a headphone jack and a quantity dial on the facet, in addition to an enlargement port on the entrance as a substitute of beneath the console.
The Tremendous Famicom prototype is what folks would have seen in magazines forward of the console’s 1990 launch. It was a window into the longer term as current followers twiddled their thumbs on the NES earlier than making the 16-bit bounce to next-gen hits like Tremendous Mario World. “I feel this has excessive nostalgic enchantment as a result of all of us spent so lengthy watching these prototypes and dreaming of a time we might lastly purchase this superb new Nintendo,” Digital Eclipse editorial director Chris Kohler wrote on Twitter.
Whereas the value began within the mere a whole bunch, it’s now jumped properly past what anybody appeared to count on. “I’ve had my eye on this because it was round $800 and figured I’d be prepared to pay as much as like 10 grand for it,” tweeted localization specialist John Ricciardi. “It’s now over $640,000 lol.” Lower than 24 hours later, the value has solely continued to spike.
Evaluate that to the legendary Nintendo Play Station prototype from again when the Mario maker was working with Sony on a next-gen console with a disc drive. That piece of {hardware} by no means got here to be as the 2 firms famously went their separate methods, and that window into another gaming historical past went for simply $360,000 just a few years in the past in 2020.
With an finish date of Could 12, the Tremendous Famicom prototype public sale nonetheless has just a few days left to go. At this level it already appears properly on its method to turning into the most costly gaming collectible ever.