our complete test of the new console, in video!

If you regularly frequent Gameblog, you have probably noticed the announcement of PlayDate in 2019. A portable console with a crank, and which gives pride of place to indie developers.

Initiated by the publisher Panic, the PlayDate has finally arrived in our hands! We were thus able to turn the crank for almost two weeks, and experience (fast-tracked) the concept of a season of games. Indeed, here, no traditional library, but 24 games about which we don’t know much (and that’s part of the concept) and which will be delivered at the rate of 2 per week, without knowing which ones are coming. In our case, it was 2 games every 2 days, and we admit that the experience was quite pleasant.

With such a machine, and its unique proposal, we therefore decided to concoct a small video test for you, rather than giving you a long text. We therefore invited Mr. Pillon Thomas, who had been particularly hyped by the machine, in order to offer you a constructive exchange between several points of view.

And me during that time, I was turning the crank

We will take advantage of this short text to remind you of the technical details of the machine.

In its minimalist chassis (76 x 74 x 9mm), the PlayDate therefore embeds a Cortex M7 chip clocked at 180Mhz. Storage is entrusted to 4GB of flash memory, while the machine benefits from 16MB of RAM and 32KB of L1 Cache (yes, it’s totally ridiculous compared to any modern machine, including a low-end smartphone) . Connectivity level we are entitled to a USB-C port useful for recharging the machine and connecting it to your computer (to manage the games on the storage, or to use it as a devkit). Wireless has not been forgotten with Wi-Fi 802.11bgn 2.4Ghz as well as a Bluetooth module (which for the moment is used to connect the machine to the portable speaker / dock, sold separately).

A 400×240 pixel black and white screen gives us very contrasting images, while the machine also has a mono speaker, a 3.5mm jack and a microphone. Finally, the inputs will be entrusted to several buttons (A, B, Standby, Menu, and a D-pad), a crank, and a 3-axis accelerometer.