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August 14, 2024 1:43 PM

This will inevitably get flagged as pizza blue, but now you can swap out the purple cover on your Playdate handheld for one that looks like a pizza box.

From Panic, the software developers who found the perfect excuse to purchase a .date domain name, comes a product that naturally required purchasing a .pizza domain name.

posted by emelenjr (12 comments total)

I haven't found myself using my Playdate anywhere near as much as I'd hoped; there's nothing really wrong with the thing, and a few of the games are quite enchanting, I just keep not remembering to pick it up. To some extent, it's that there are a lot of games that aren't enchanting. There are a lot of games that are just "kinda cool."

While most developers on the platform do a pretty good job of hewing to the Panic/Classic Mac Era vibe of weirdness and charm, some seem to be making pretty naked barely-a-game cash-grabs. I'm not above splashing out a couple bucks for a barely-a-game if it has something neat to offer, but some of them just... don't.

It's such a cool little piece of hardware, and while I know some folks have had issues with the notoriously uneven Teenage Engineering build quality, I seem to have gotten lucky with a good one. And TE hardware is just so damned cool! Panic, of course, is just weird enough—kinda in that Portland way, but also in very much their own way—that I appreciate what they're doing here. I'm tempted to spring for one of these just in the name of supporting a good business, even if my neglected Playdate doesn't strictly need an alternate cover.
posted by majick at 2:07 PM on August 14 [4 favorites]

If you want to support Panic!, you could buy Thank Goodness You're Here, which has just released, and is funny and excellent, if short.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:10 PM on August 14 [2 favorites]

If you want to support Panic!, you could buy Thank Goodness You're Here, which has just released, and is funny and excellent, if short.

It is funny and... good. It's at the upper end of OK as a game, a loosely-connected series of button-mashy minigames, really, like a 1970s England WarioWare. It's entirely on rails, but nevertheless a cute, pleasantly absurdist, sensible-chuckle sort of distraction.

I think my perspective might be skewed because I picked it up intentionally as a psychological palate-cleanser after finishing the absolutely, unreasonably excellent 1000xResist. In that respect I have to admit it did its job perfectly.
posted by mhoye at 2:30 PM on August 14

First I have heard of Playdate. I don't need that. I really don't need that. I should not buy that. How much do you like yours? : /
posted by Glinn at 3:53 PM on August 14

Boogie Loops?!
posted by Glinn at 3:55 PM on August 14

I have one but I very rarely use it. Some of the games are neat but the screen is small and it's not backlit so it's not always something I want to fuss with when I have other gaming options.
posted by ElKevbo at 4:02 PM on August 14

I have one and never touch it anymore. A lot of this is because my current unit is a replacement after I managed to break the plastic tab on the crank on my last one while playing Crankin's Time-Travel Adventure. Panic was great and sent a replacement unit under warranty, but I no longer trust the crank to hold up under even moderate stress and so I don't play it at all.
posted by chrominance at 4:44 PM on August 14

I like mine a lot, but I’ll go from playing it quite a bit to forgetting it exists for a while.

I love the pizza cover, but USD$29 plus USD$31.25 shipping to Canada plus exchange rate is too much for me, even if it is cool.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:24 PM on August 14

I absolutely adore my Playdate. Saturday Edition, Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, Eyeland, Mars After Midnight, and OOM are my personal favorites, but it seems like everyone has totally different favorites. Plus, because there's an entirely free and open SDK, I've been able to make some little things for it too. The Pulp no-code editor is also surprisingly powerful. (One of my favorite Playdate games, Eyeland, was made with it.)

I got my money's worth from the season one games alone and there's tons more in their official Catalog games store, but the bench of indie games/toys/apps on Itch.io is really deep, getting close to 1,000 games, the majority of them free.
posted by waxpancake at 6:51 PM on August 14 [1 favorite]

Another for the I have one and love it and hardly ever touch it club. There are some really fun and unique games for it, but it's so easy to just forget it. I 1000% would use it more if that awesome clock radio charging stand ever becomes available, because having it on and charged and ready to play on a counter would just put it front of mind so much more often. I would definitely be buying more playdate games if that stand was keeping it ready to go.

I also would love a season 2 and would pay $60 for it easy. I thought the season model was really interesting and fun and it certainly kept me way more engaged with the device when the releases were coming automatically. I understand at this point, with so many cool devs making stuff, it's hard to choose winners and losers, but dang that was a neat idea and I'm sad it was apparently a one-shot.
posted by ulotrichous at 7:25 AM on August 15

having it on and charged and ready to play

This is about 75% of my non-usage problem. Every time I remember I have a Playdate, the battery is flat. Every time I charge my Playdate, I forget I left it charging, unplug it, and it's flat again by the time I have a chance to pick it up.
posted by majick at 10:56 AM on August 15 [2 favorites]

+1 for the I have one and love it and hardly ever touch it club, too. There's also something about the PlayDate's sound that puts my teeth on edge. I'm also still salty that the order I put in early on launch day ended up being delayed over a year because Panic fucked up their provisioning with Shopify. Consequently, all Canadian orders from the first few hours were pushed to the back of the queue.

I'm sure I would like Thank Goodness You're Here if I could get out of the first room
posted by scruss at 12:50 PM on August 16