Rare Nintendo 64 Disk Drive Prototype FOUND!

One of the weirdest flexes in my game room is a North American prototype of the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, aka the 64DD, a piece of hardware so rare in the U.S. it spent years being spoken about in hushed tones like Bigfoot or Half-Life 3. Officially, the 64DD only launched in Japan, which made this thing in the West basically a gaming urban legend with worse marketing. I didn’t find it in a museum or a vault, though. I found it the most magical place of all: Seattle-area Craigslist. On the unit is the “Lot Check” label and an unmarked blue developer disk that immediately gives off “you were not supposed to see this” energy, so naturally I made a video about it. Here’s the part where it gets extra unhinged: the system boots in English and is region-locked to the U.S. It straight up acts like it was ready to be sold at a GameStop in 1999 and is now offended that I don’t have a retail American 64DD game to feed it. A console that never released here, demanding games that never existed.