Panic Playdate In-Depth Review | Hacker News Reader

Panic Playdate In-Depth Review

arstechnica.com

91 pointsmarcobambini89 comments

I'm normally into kitschy, retro handheld gaming devices like this. I was in a flurry to get the Analogue Pocket. I love the Gamebuino and Arduboy.

By all accounts, I should be smack dab in their target demographic.

Yet, for some reason I don't fully understand, I have no interest in the Playdate.

The design of the main device is super slick. I want to want to play games on it. Even the idea of the crank has some appeal. I can imagine Stardew Valley style fishing, or some Zelda mini games fitting right in with it.

Then I look at it all together and my heart gives it a big old meh that I can't explain.

Exactly what I feel. Part of what gives me that feeling is that Panic and Cabel Sasser are such Twitter “darlings”, so everyone has been gushing over this for years.

Also, some of the hardware choices are really stupid. No LCD backlight is ridiculous. Playing to nostalgia goes only so far. When it actively hinders the enjoyment of the product, the product just isn’t very good.

When it actively hinders the enjoyment of the product, the product just isn’t very good

I'm a bit confused here. In the beginning of your comment, you imply that you haven't used one. Then at the end, you state that the lack of a backlight "actively hinders" the product.

How would you know if the lack of a backlight actively hinders the product, if you haven't used it?

The review indicates that the lack of a backlight isn't a problem at all. That's from someone who's actually used it. How is it that you know more about this product's usability when you haven't used it?

31 comments in, and 90% of the posts here are people who have never used the product complaining how bad it is based on their pre-conceived assumptions, or making wild guesses.

I miss the old days of HN when people would post when they had something substantive to add, not just to slake their vanity by seeing their words in print and pretend they're an expert on things they know little about.

I know because I’m old enough to have used a Gameboy without backlight. There is, still, in 2022, a hardware modding scene that modifies old Gameboy, Color and Advance hardware to have active backlight. What do you reckon the reason for that is? Because the lack of backlight actively hinders the enjoyment of those products. But they were released decades ago, not in 2022.

Is it your “take” that without testing just about every product out there, people are not allowed to form and opinion, and post about it on the internet?

Did you read the article? It has images comparing the screen to the original Game Boy's under different lighting conditions halfway down the page.

Edit: as for why there isn't a front light (like the first GBA SP):

> So unlike an LCD, which has transparency to let a backlight shine through, ours is extremely reflective on the back and lets NO light shine through, so backlight isn’t possible! We tested a front light solution and it was… not great. But we’ll keep researching for future models!

https://www.twitter.com/playdate/status/1131736869153017856

I modded my original Gameboy in the early 90s to add edge LEDs (green ones), which was a significant improvement. Surely something like that would have been possible. Purely reflective LCD isn’t easy on the eyes, even if it’s super reflective. It was okay for PDAs (Palm Pilot) that you only use for a minute or so at a time, but for gaming it really isn’t very attractive.

Did those LEDs reflect off the front of the display? They said they tried something like that, but it wasn't good enough. It looks like the reflectiveness is closer to epaper than a mirror.

The system described by the commenter sits between the LCD and the front plastic. There are no reflection issues as far as I am aware.

That's what I assumed the person meant, and what the twitter link I posted talked about. I also mentioned the reflectiveness because the commenter talked about problems with overly-reflective screens.

That’s right. I actually had forgotten about the front plastic, but am remembering now that you mention it. The lighting from the LEDs wasn’t completely uniform (I had six LEDs, three on the right and three on the left, I believe), but good enough.

> Did you read the article? It has images comparing the screen to the original Game Boy's under different lighting conditions halfway down the page.

That's a good point, but how fair is the comparison really when the Gameboy's screen is at least 20 years old and has surely degraded during that time? With that said, neither look great under the dimmer lighting even if the Playdate is a step up.

Fortunately the review has you covered:

>"the contrast ratio on this screen is magnificent, which means ambient daytime light will generally do the trick, as opposed to needing a Game Boy-esque light bulb bolted over the screen"

GameBoys used a standard LCD screen, not the kind of screen on the PlayDate. It’s FAR more reflective so it should the a problem except in the dark.

But my whole point is about playing at the evening/night. I had no issues playing a GB during the day.

Do you play video games in complete darkness? Are you a gaming vampire? Just one light in the room should be enough for Playdate, if the pictures are any indication.

No, they're clearly getting at the fact you're making assumptions which the review, which you're citing, specifically refutes.

Is it your “take” that without testing just about every product out there, people are not allowed to form and opinion, and post about it on the internet?

Informed opinions are awesome. Uninformed opinions are not. They're just noise.

The fact that you think this is anything like the Gameboy screen shows that you not only didn't read the article, but that you haven't used the product. Therefore your "opinion" is uninformed, and therefore nothing more than what the children today call "a hot take."

Most other devices “actively hindered” by bright sunlight, whereas this one is not. Seems like an interesting tradeoff.

Maybe it’s my play style that is different. I don’t sit in the park, under the sun, to play handheld gaming devices. I do play on busses, trains and airplanes, as well as indoors, where there isn’t a lot of ambient light. I used to sit under a desk lamp to play the GB at evening/night. That was very uncomfortable.

My friend had one of those gameboy attachments that would shine a little LED lamp on the screen.

You're comparing your past experiences with old unlit screens of the 90s. Modern unlit screens are a whole different deal. Back then unlit screens existed to give good battery life. Nowadays, unlit screens exist to be useful under sunlight. It's a whole different ballgame.

The asking price is quite steep for what you get (steeper than the PinePhone I bought!). I think of it as the Zooey Deschanel of handheld consoles: it's cute, it's quirky, and it's there to make rich hipsters feel special and validate their alt/indie uniqueness. Playing games on it is secondary to the feeling of "I'm playing unconventional games on an unconventional console with an unconventional distribution model! I'm definitely outside the mainstream!" The fact that it looks like an Alegria style Game Boy helps it along in that regard.

Think I'm gonna pass on this one; my money is better spent on an Analogue Pocket or something.

It’s ok to accept that other people have different tastes without denigrating them. It’s possible for people to enjoy different games than you without them having ulterior motives. I ordered a PlayDate because the games and tools looked cool. That’s it.

In the history of gaming, has there ever been a game, console, or experience that wasn't immediately met with 'this isn't for real gamers' sort of gatekeeping?

I also ordered one because it looks neat and I can probably make my own games for it.

At ~230€ (w/ tax&shipping) it's a very hard proposition, even for someone with an interest in weird devices and disposable income. A gamer that likes indie games, probably be more at home with the cheaper Switch Lite and a few games from the online store.

Still, I love that we live in a world where making such an open device with 24 included games is possible. Consumer hardware at scale is quite hard and capital-intensive, so kudos to Panic on shipping. I might end up getting one at some point…

Still, I love that we live in a world where making such an open device with 24 included games is possible.

If that gets you excited you should check out the Funkey S. Same open hardware and open software and included community games, but also with the ability to emulate your favorite handheld consoles.

> Still, I love that we live in a world where making such an open device with 24 included games is possible.

It sounds like you love the idea of it (I do too), which I think is true of a lot of failed products. I'm not saying that you should buy it or that it will fail, just that there's an interesting lesson there for creators — loving that something exists isn't enough.

I thought similar, but then realized that a huge part of the device's value are the included games. I still feel like 230 Euro is quite on the high end, but relatively speaking, it's not as much overpriced as it first seems. E.g. assume that each game is "worth" 3 to 5 Euro on average, and you're looking at 70 to 100 Euro "worth" of games (though you probably wouldn't buy all 24 of them?).

My intuition says that, for the given spec and abilities, I would not feel bad paying 60 to 80 Euro. Add 10 Euro shipping to that, plus the games, and what I'd call a fair price is already 140 to 190 Euros. (Mind that my intuition is not yet calibrated for the current supply shortage).

> it's a very hard proposition

And yet they sold out 40K units in a matter of a couple of hours.

So the demand is clearly there regardless of how it compares to rational alternatives.

I've worked on consumer hardware projects where this was the weekly output cadence. And there are companies out there doing more than this number of devices daily. At scale hardware production is ruthless; which is why this relative success (for a niche) is great. As I said, I'm already on the fence, and I think it's quite good news for Panic.

I also found the marketing campaign had a quite good execution for something in such a niche.

How many units after that? You can sell a 40K units in five minutes but if that 40K = all your potential buyers, that is a dead product.

All that tells you is that 40K people knew about it, wanted it, and had the disposable income to purchase it.

I bet sales slowed pretty quickly after that.

To be fair, it was potential buyers who are buying sight unseen with an open ended delivery date. The potential retail market is likely an entirely different number.

Just imagine if Sony priced PlayStation 5s based on supply and demand and no loss-leadering for game sales. It’d be around the price scalpers charged.

According to the wikipedia page of the Playdate, it's run by a STM32F746 microcontroller [1]. It is interesting that it has lower specs than the Mario Game and Watch STM32H7B0 cpu [2], which is itself quite limited by its RAM and flash.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console) [2] https://github.com/Upcycle-Electronics/game-and-watch-hardwa...

Game systems aren’t limited by RAM and flash. They’re limited by the quality of games available for them.

Content and quality go hand in hand; and form defines function. The restriction on content size is going to restrict the sort of games that will achieve reasonable quality. We can probably expect that most of the best games will be short, simple arcade experiences. Which is fine, just don't expect more.

I think you’re missing my point. Great games can exist on any hardware. But great hardware gives you no guarantee of great games.

Phantasy Star was made for the Master System. How can the speed of a CPU lock out a console from anything but a specific type of game?

They have a colour display 256x240 whereas the playdate has a 400x240 mono display.

If we assume 4 bits per pixel for the NES (it offers 56 different colours but not all at once) That's 245.760 bits for the Game & Watch versus 96.000 bits for the Playdate, a significant difference.

The ergonomics of this device just seem to bite it. Yeah it looks nice, but it's not easy to hold and crank and do other things. So many reviewers seem to touch on it being uncomfortable, this one included.

I'm the target audience for this device, and this is the most important point I'm taking from the reviews.

I think the console might be too small for crank + buttons usage. If it'd be bigger, it could probably rest comfortably in the palm. In it's current form you'd probably need to have it rest on your pinky slightly elevating it up to use the dpad with the thumb.

The lack of buttons killed my interest. The difference between the Gameboy and Gameboy Advance was night and day with just those two extra buttons. The crank is cute, but nothing speaks to these games having enough depth or choices to actually want to carry around this device.

They built a handheld gaming system with a crank, put 24 games on it, and zero of them include fishing. Like really? Maybe I can sideload Legend of the River King.

I forget where I read this, but there was apparently an interesting phenomenon where each developer they went to immediately thought of making a fishing game, but felt that was so obvious that everybody else would already be making a fishing game.

And so, there are no fishing games :D

It's in https://www.polygon.com/23013686/playdate-panic-crank-histor...

> One of the difficult things was figuring out if the final version of the crank was going to be a floppy crank or a stiff crank

> I had a little technique where I would grease it just enough for it to feel really good

Dude! Really? lol

The NES and Sega Master System have a ton of fun and engaging games. Both systems have controllers with only a d-pad and two buttons. The Playdate adds a crank and accelerometer.

NES controllers have 4 buttons. SMS controllers have 2 buttons each, but some games, like Alex Kidd & Wonder Boy required you to also use the pause button on the console itself.

I agree you don't need a slew of buttons for a good game, but a lot of that design space has been explored already. I've seen some clips of the games in action, and it doesn't look like anyone is really using the crank or accelerometer in fun enough ways (after all, accelerometers have been on AAA console controllers for a while now and are relatively underutilized). I know this is subjective though :)

Looking at how the device was marketed as being easy to develop for, I was assuming it would be the physical equivalent of something like the pico-8.

Pico-8 is known for it's openness to hackability, and users have implemented features that aren't originally provided by the API like sprite dithering and 3D rendering.

But looks like the device has really under-powered hardware to provide that, especially given the price.

If the playdate SDK doesn't allow poking around into raw memory, it's wasted potential in my opinion.

You can write apps in c or lua, so raw memory shouldn't be a problem

I'm banking on many, many Gameboy games being ported to the playdate. That's sort of my dream when buying one.

I remember someone was already working on a GameBoy emulator for it.

The Playdate isn't a great gameboy emulator device with its 1-bit vs 2-bit(gameboy) screen, there are so many better devices in the market that is better suited for that.

Lack of Start and Select buttons might be a problem. There are ways around that (crank, accelerometer, etc.), but it's not ideal.

In that case, check out the PS Vita.

If there's one thing that I've learned from all of this, it's that I never realized so many people wanted fishing games.

These look really neat, and simple (and innocent) enough for my young kids to use.

It’s a shame they’ll be snapped up by people three times their age and used for twenty minutes before becoming a shelf ornament.

I can’t tell if the simple stripped-back style would actually appeal to kids or whether it only really works for people nostalgic for simpler times.

I doubt kids will find this appealing unless the parent's have already shielded them from the world of ipads/minecraft/roblox. It harkens back to the days of craning your neck to play an original gameboy with the table lamp in the corner of the room.

I ordered one because I'd like to build a simple game for it, my dev career started in z80 assembly building monochrome games for the TI-83+, so 100% nostalgia for me.

>> It harkens back to the days of craning your neck to play an original gameboy with the table lamp in the corner of the room.

Even at the time, the screen on the GameBoy was such garbage. The lack of a light didn't help either. But even with a backlight, all LCD screens were bad. I remember how washed out the Lynx and GameGear screens were.

The replacement screens you can get for them now are amazing.

I've found kids complain about crappy old-fashioned options for games/movies/et c., until that's all they have available. After a day or two those "bad" options become totally fine and they're excited about them and excitedly tell you how great they are.

I grew up mostly on the NES and earlier systems, and IMO from approximately the Super Nintendo on, game system generations have all delivered about the same amount of happiness (though some individual systems were major duds, of course). It's just a matter of what you're used to. Admittedly, the frustration level of average games on the NES and other earlier systems kept them from being quite the joy-generating devices that later ones would be.

It's clearly a retro throwback for an older generation who grew up with more primitive handhelds. And/or a tinkerer's toy, to see what kind of things can be done with a crank input.

If you want a cheap, simple distraction for your kid, there's a ton of used Nintendo DS units out there with an expansive library of games.

Let's be frank, it was designed primarily for the latter audience. If it had been designed for kids, it would have been an app for their phone at a fraction of the price, possibly with an included dev environment. Pico-8 really kinda nailed that.

FWIW, my kids would play it for twenty minutes and then put it on the shelf.

Kids these days have access to far higher fidelity, and engaging, experiences. The novelty of a small, quirky, severely limited little device would be passing.

A bit like poking at a Tamagotchi after playing The Sims, Nintendogs and Pokemon Go for years.

Whoops, getting a broken certificate...

> api.uat.loopring.pro

Works for me. Do you have an extension breaking things, maybe?

"UAT" sticks out like a sore thumb there ...

Why's that?

When a piece of production software is misbehaving and the string "UAT" - User Acceptance Testing - appears somewhere it suggests something got misconfigured (that prod is referring to uat somehow)

Looks like an extension doing something (impersonating?) Loopring, as the domain loopring.pro apparently comes from Ukraine according to whois data. Loopring itself doesn't seem to refer to that domain at all, hence the distrust.

Just like how the Steam Deck was a hype product, the PlayDate is yet another hype product which basically will be used as brilliant paper weight after just 1 hour of playtime.

The Steam Deck works really well, I've had no issue with it whatsoever. I fail to see how it's comparable to a niche product like the PlayDate.

The steam deck seems to mosty live up to expecatations so far, doesn't it?

Even if it is the cases that most people will stop after 1h of use, it's interesting to see new players and see innovation in the videogame consoles space. Maybe this one is not the successful one after the release, but at least it's proposing something new (the shape, the crank, the games), and maybe this one or next iterations are a success.

Remember that it is not mandatory to buy it. You may not like it but some other may do.

This is a really poorly informed take. Playdate is and always will be niche. If you buy it not knowing what you get yourself into then yes, instant paperweight. The Steamdeck however is in a completely different league. It's a portable Linux computer that has a validated graphics and driver stack for games and the support of the largest games distribution channel. Even if you stop playing games on it you are left with a very capable platform to do anything else you might want on a handheld computer.

actually it comes with a stand to make it a desk clock and pen holder

That’s sold separately and coming soon.

aw dang, I thought it was included

The Steam Deck delivers as promised, the biggest question mark with the SD is how Valve will support it over time. Previous Valve hardware has been abandoned pretty quickly since Valve as a company appears to have the attention span of a 5yo

> how Valve will support it over time

It's a PC so there's no need for "support" from the manufacturers... at least on windows.

With Linux the manufacturers have to update the drivers. Maybe one day Linux will get a stable driver API?

They do that and fix their GUI stack (nope, Wayland ain't doing it) and we might finally actually be a decade out from The Year of the Linux Desktop.

It's funny because any other time you'd be right, except now. The Steam Deck came with no Windows support and they've gradually been offering drivers for Windows (see Linus Tech Tips video about missing video, audio support on Windows).

For once Windows users spent a few days in the shoes of a Linux user.

What do you mean they abandon hardware quickly? They still support the Link, Controller, and Index. The Link hardware still gets software updates, and the idea lives on through the Link application. Same with the Controller: it's discontinued, but the steam input framework it uses still gets updates, and now can be used by all modern controllers.

You could argue they quickly abandoned Steam Machines, but they didn't actually make any, they were just branded PCs (so they didn't need active support from Valve), and barely any sold. They still support the SteamOS some ran on, because the Steam Deck also runs SteamOS.

I was thinking of getting a steam deck, is it no good? (I have not followed the hype so my mind is open)

I have one and it is good. The amount of use you get out of it really depends on where and how you plan to use it, but it absolutely is what it was intended to be: a portable device to play Steam games.

It’s too light to be used as a paper weight.

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