How much would you pay for this Super Famicom prototype with a headphone jack?

Some other variations include a large red power button and the fact that the controller ports are on the left side of the console, rather than centered as they were on the eventual production model. There’s also what appears to be the console’s expansion port on the front, rather than on the bottom where it was in the final design. The panel around the controller ports appears yellowed – it wouldn’t be part of the SNES family without that, would it?

Here is a gallery of images from the auction:

Compare this to the final version:

And the terrible thing we ended up with in the US:

These design touches were dropped for the US-released SNES, which ended up with a chunky, square design that had purple slide switches on top, rather than the round, slanted, compact design. Nintendo released a revised SNES, the Super NES with new stylein 1997, which came a little closer, but with a pill-shaped power button and a circular reset button.

Another lost Nintendo prototype turned up a few years ago in the Nintendo/Sony PlayStation that Pets.com founder Greg McLemore bought at auction — which also had a headphone jack. Two years before that, an unreleased wired version of the Wiimote that connects to the GameCube sold at a Japanese auction for $660. The Super Famicom prototype being auctioned today is, as of this writing, going for just over a million yen (just under US$7,000), with more than five days until release.