Little is known about Steve McKay.
WATA knows he was a General Manager at Nintendo for the company’s Mexico division. And in early 2022, McLaren Auction Services ran a Vintage Nintendo Online-Only Auction, which included many items from the late Steve McKay’s estate.
Among these items are roughly 100 prototype cartridges for the NES, SNES, and Game Boy.
These prototype cartridges included games from a variety of publishers such as Capcom, Takara, Jaleco, Tecmo, Nintendo, and more. The game builds on these cartridges ranged from versions still in production to retail-equivalent builds.
In collaboration with Video Game Historian Frank Cifaldi, WATA made a determination: Given the vast quantity and history encompassed within this collection, the prototypes acquired in the McKay Auction were worthy of a pedigree.
One idiosyncrasy within this pedigree is with the printed circuit boards (PCBs) found in several of the Game Boy cartridges.
“Given the authentic parts used, the provenance, and the unique data available across the items from this McLaren auction,” Cifaldi noted about these prototypes, “I have no reason to doubt the authenticity. Why a Nintendo rep might have a bootleg PCB is a mystery for others to solve.”
Regardless of why Steve McKay held on to these prototypes for decades, we are grateful to him for making sure these cartridges survived outside of Nintendo’s doors. WATA is honored to certify The McKay Collection as our first exclusively-prototype pedigree.
