A box of junk apparently contained a rare treasure: an extremely rare PlayStation prototype Nintendo made in collaboration with Sony.
Nintendo and Sony may be rivals now, but the two companies worked together at one point in the early '90s. The collaboration was for a SNES-CD device, with Sony charged to deliver a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES Nintendo console. The companies ultimately aborted this collaboration after creating roughly 200 prototypes, none of which ever made it into users' hands.
Up until now, the elusive SNES-CD was considered more or less mythical, but one lucky man just found a rare prototype buried in a box of junk. The story first appeared on popular website Reddit, but the main gaming discussion board, along with many subreddits, are now offline as part of a protest over the dismissal of a popular moderator.
The person who stumbled upon this rare treasure, Imgur user DanDiebold, explained that the box of junk he found belonged to his dad, who at one point worked together with a former Nintendo employee named Olaf. The company ultimately went bankrupt, and the SNES-CD device was apparently stuffed into a box of junk Diebold's dad forgot to throw out. SNES-CD, according to Wikipedia, refers to an unreleased video game media format and peripheral for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) that were planned to enhance the functionality of the cartridge-based SNES by adding support for higher-capacity compact discs.
The user further said he didn't get the chance to boot up the gadget because he didn't have the proper power cord. The prototype also came with an unmarked CD and cartridge, but the contents remain unknown for now. Nevertheless, Diebold said he plans to open up the gadget and take photos of the internal circuitry, so more information should come to light soon.
No confirmation is currently available that this is indeed a genuine SNES-CD prototype, but the images suggest it's the real deal. Diebold posted several images of the device in an album on image-hosting website Imgur, so anyone can check them out.
The device featured in these images sports the Sony PlayStation branding on the front, as well as a Nintendo Super Famicon Controller logo on its back. The man named Olaf, who worked with the user's dad, could be none other than Olaf Olafsson, former CEO and president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, but it's just speculation at this point.
