Ten years ago, the mythical 'Nintendo PlayStation' became a solid reality when a prototype was discovered. This would eventually change hands for $360,000 in 2020, and was believed to be the only surviving example of the unreleased system—until now, that is.
Japan-based videographer and photographer Julian Domanski recently posted that he got to "fondle" a second prototype during a meeting with former Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Ken Kutaragi himself—also known as the Father of PlayStation.
Kutaragi spearheaded the PlayStation project when the deal with Nintendo went south. The arrangement had been for Sony to create the CD-ROM add-on for the SNES as well as the stand-alone, all-in-one PlayStation, but the story goes that Nintendo was unhappy with Sony's insistence that it took a cut of every SNES CD game sold. At CES 1991, Nintendo threw a curve ball by announcing it was teaming up with Philips instead—embarrassingly for Sony; it had only revealed it was working with Nintendo the previous day.
"I never thought I'd see something so rare, but today I actually got to fondle a Nintendo PlayStation," says Domanski on social media. "The last one in existence was believed to have sold at auction for $300,000. Turns out the ex CEO of SonyCEA has one in his closet. Ken Kutaragi, top bloke. Signed my PS1 too!"
Given how close he was to the project, it's not a massive shock to learn that Kutaragi has a Nintendo PlayStation in his house; what is surprising is that it's taken this long for it to become common knowledge.