An Extremely Rare Console Auction Could Change Video Game History
And Palmer Luckey may be the big winner
Last month, an extremely rare prototype of the never-released Nintendo Play Station went up for auction. (It’s so rare, in fact, that it may be the only one left in existence.) Among the bidders for this unique piece of video game history — physical proof of how close bitter rivals Sony and Nintendo once came to partnering on gaming hardware — was Palmer Luckey, founder of the Facebook-owned virtual reality platform Oculus (and more recently of Anduril, a defense firm responsible for military surveillance technology).
There are major hurdles to playing old or rare video games today: The physical materials may be degraded, and even if they’re preserved, only a small number of people will ever have access to the hardware. Game emulation doesn’t recreate the feeling of playing with classic equipment, but virtual reality could one day allow any number of people to interact with an elusive device like the Nintendo Play Station, digitally recreating the hardware in precise detail.
“I am on a quest to digitize and preserve the history of physical video games,” Luckey tweeted. “Perfect VR will ensure the original experience lives on forever, but we need to keep these things alive and functional in the meanwhile.”
