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Earlier this year, a prototype SNES PlayStation was discovered in the wild and caused quite a stir among fans and collectors alike. The system - which was supposed to be start of a beautiful friendship between Nintendo and Sony but the former left the latter at the altar - never saw release and what images existed were believed to be little more than case mock-ups.

However, the prototype system was very real, and even came with a cartridge which suggested that the internals were functional. At the time of discovery many skeptics stated their belief that it was nothing more then a very clever hoax, and the fact that it was never shown working seemed to support this claim.

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Fast forward to the present, and the time for being a naysayer is finally at an end. Dan Diebold and his Father Terry took the unit to the Retro.HK Expo to show it off, and at the same time booted up the machine and played some games on it (not SNES CD games obviously, as none were ever made).

As has already been revealed, Terry at one time worked for Advanta Corporation - the company at which former Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Olaf Olafsson was CEO. When the firm went bust in 2009, Terry bid on some of the firm's items, paying $75 for some cups and saucers. These items arrived alongside the console itself - presumably left at Advanta by Olafsson - which was placed in storage, with its new owner not realising its potential worth, until son Dan decided to post some photos online this year.

Interestingly, the years of being in storage have not impacted the console's ability to power on - it boots up and shows a "Super Disc" BIOS screen, and can play standard SNES games. Sadly, the cartridge discovered with the system appears to be faulty.

Despite this, Dan reveals that he and his father have been offered as much as $45,000 for the system. Both father and son are adamant that they will not part with the console for any price - despite previous comments - but may consider putting it on display in a museum.

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You can check out the full selection of images over at HKGolden.

[source retrocollect.com, via hkgolden.com]