Last Friday, an ultra-rare Tengen Tetris protoype for the NES --one of only three known to be in existence-- showed up on video game auction website GameGavel. At the time of writing, the auction has garnered a highest bid of $1000, but is expected to continually increase in the remaining days, as the reserve price necessary for sale has not been met.
After a long series of lawsuits between Nintendo and Tengen in the 1980s, Tengen Tetris for the NES was pulled from store shelves and destroyed after Nintendo claimed they had exclusive distribution rights to Tetris on home consoles. There wasn’t much left of Tengen after this and Nintendo’s version of Tetris dominated the time of NES players, despite fans’ cries that the Tengen version was clearly superior, offering two-player cooperative and versus modes that weren’t found in the Nintendo release.
The item description claims that this is possibly one of the last builds created before Tengen Tetris was originally released. It even says “Licensed by Nintendo” on the title screen, despite the title never having certification through Nintendo. The prototype was a review copy given to an EGM employee back in the late ‘80s, which explains its near-final build in prototype form.
It’s important to note that this is the same prototype that was up on eBay last week for the low Buy It Now price of $45,000. This auction is expected to pick up soon, according to Mike Kennedy of GameGavel, who claims that this listing has a “much more reasonable and reachable reserve price” that buyers should find attractive.
Alex Rubens is a freelance writer based in Seattle who spends too much time talking about Star Wars and The Fast and The Furious. Talk to him about it on Twitter at @alexrubens. Seriously, he loves it.
Source : ign[dot]com
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