I’m disillusioned with modern handheld gaming. Where once I could take my Game Boy Advance on holiday for a week and be confident that two AA batteries would see me through hours of good-time gaming, now I’ll be lucky to get three hours out of my Steam Deck or Switch.

If you need to lug around cables and battery packs or keep your device plugged in to play for any length of time, then it ceases to be portable. What if I don’t get a table seat on the train, the only seats with a socket (shared between me and the stranger next to me)? What if I’m in the car, so don’t want to drain the vehicle’s battery, potentially leaving us stranded? What if the socket in my seat on the aeroplane doesn’t work, as has been the case on every single long distance flight I’ve ever been on?

Modern consoles are magnificent, testaments to technology. How can I play Baldur’s Gate 3 on a Steam Deck, a console I can hold in my own hands? But I’ve been taking trips down memory lane recently, digging out my 3DS to play SoulSilver again. The battery in that thing will never die, I swear. And some of the games are masterpieces. They’re very different to Larian’s beautiful RPG or Cyberpunk 2077, sure, but they’re brilliant in their own right.

There’s something to be said for making games within your means and within the means of the console you’re developing them for. Think of how creative developers had to be to make the Game Boy play music at all, let alone the iconic tunes of Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon. Think of how much lateral thinking went into making both clouds and rocks out of the same asset in Mario, so that the game could use as little memory as possible.

The Playdate is a throwback to these limitations and to the creativity it breeds. Adding that crank handle to proceedings gives devs a unique form of expression, something which has allowed them to create truly distinct experiences on the teeny handheld.

via Panic

I know I’m late to the party, but a few things have got me thinking about the Playdate this week. Firstly, I was playing Papers, Please and ended up down a rabbit hole that resulted in finding a whole new dystopian game by Lucas Pope that I’d never heard of before. But that Wikipedia mining session also reminded me that he’s currently developing a game for the Playdate. I went back and read my colleague Eric Switzer’s preview of it, and it sounds baffling, wild, and right up my street. An anger management group for aliens? And you’re the doorman-cum-snack bar attendant? And you have tentacles for arms? And you say there’s a crank involved? Sign me right up.

Just days after thinking about the Playdate and Mars After Midnight, console developer Panic announced a Playdate Update Showcase for February 28. This week. And what’s being shown? You guessed it. Mars After Midnight. What are the chances?

The Playdate looks perfect for me. It always has. But back when I was a freelancer, struggling to make rent with meagre paycheques for long investigations, it was an instant no as soon as it was announced. There’s no way I could sell enough reports on its niche games to make back the 250 quid I’d spend on it. Sadly, that was how I had to think of games back then.

A sizeable chunk of tax and postage is added to the Playdate cost just as you’re about to hit the ‘buy now’ button, which is pretty sly.

Now I’ve got a staff role, money is less of an issue. I still can’t go off and buy PS5s willy nilly, but I could probably afford a Playdate if I held back on the luxuries this month. The problem is, I’m still not sure it would be worth it. I’ve got a wedding to pay for, and as eye-watering as it is that brownies for all my guests cost the same as The Little Console Who Could, dessert is non-negotiable. They’d better be the best brownies I’ve ever tasted.

In any given month, I could spend the money on a Playdate and have a wonderful time. But how long would that wonderful time last? I hate to boil things down to ‘value for money’. It’s such a horrible, uncreative, joyless way of thinking. But adult life is about making those financial decisions. And, despite the fact that all existing games come free if you shell out for the console, I’m simply not sure I can justify the expense to myself. It’s just too niche for that high a price. It costs nearly as much as a Steam Deck, for goodness sake, and that can play most of my existing library of games sort of on the go.

I understand that smaller companies like Panic need to make money on tech that I’ll wager is incredibly expensive to make. I assume it also has to subsidise the development of the games in its seasons as well. (I suspect that Season 2, likely led by Mars After Midnight as the marquee attraction, will cost extra). I already know I’m going to watch the showcase this week and have to resist temptation all over again. But I can’t give in. I think the Playdate is just a little bit too expensive, even for enthusiasts who love the weird little games that would excel on the platform, and that may ultimately be its undoing.

Next: I Wish Elden Ring Was For Me