Playdate press release:

Playdate is both very familiar, and totally new. It’s yellow, and fits perfectly in a pocket. It has a black-and-white screen with high reflectivity, a crystal-clear image, and no backlight. And of course, it has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-C, and a headphone jack. But it also has a crank. Yes, a crank: a cute, rotating analog controller that flips out from the side. It’s literally revolutionary.

There’s more: Playdate includes games — a full season of them. The games will be delivered over-the-air, once a week for 12 weeks, and they’ll be a surprise: when the new game light flashes, you’ll never know what you’re about to play. Panic recruited some of the world’s best game designers — some well known; others under the radar — to make games exclusively for our system. Playdate isn’t just hardware: it’s a complete experience.

Hot on the heels of the 30th anniversary of the Game Boy, this little handheld console is a sight to see.

Since bringing my Game Boy back to life, I’ve been yearning for the good ol’ dot-matrix days. But I’ve also had the feeling they‘d likely disappoint. Rose-colored glasses and all. Seeing the Playdate feels like a realization of that pining. Something new of something old:

Playdate’s 2.7-inch (68mm) screen is a unique, black-and-white, low-power LCD from Sharp, with a resolution of 400 × 240. On the surface, it might be tempting to compare the screen to, say, the Game Boy. But Playdate’s display is quite different: it has no grid lines, no blurring, is extremely sharp and clear, and has much higher resolution. It sounds odd to say, but: it’s truly a “premium” black-and-white screen.

And it wouldn’t be the same without Teenage Engineering. At initial glance, I knew something looked familiar. Sure enough, I noticed that Teenage Engineering had a hand in the design (and crank!) of the Playdate. I keep a PO-20 in my nightstand and am constantly enthralled by its ingenuity.

I encourage you to read the press release in full — ideally on an iPhone or iPad as there’s a very cool AR experience to check out. The damn thing is so cute!

I’m signed up to receive updates about the Playdate and I recommend you do too.

Zack Zwiezen, Kotaku:

According to researchers, every two minutes spent playing the game is equal to five hours of lab-based research. Because _Sea Hero Quest_has been out for a few years and downloaded and played by over three million players they’ve collected the equivalent of 1,700 years of research data on Alzheimer’s

Researchers involved with the project studied people who carried the APOE4 gene, which is thought to increase that person’s risk of developing dementia, as they played the game. They then compared these people’s results to the results of folks who played the game who don’t have that gene.

“We found that people with a high genetic risk, the APOE4 carriers, performed worse on spatial navigation tasks. They took less efficient routes to checkpoint goals,” said Professor Michael Hornberger, a member of the team.

Two minutes. 99.33% of time shaved off. Truly incredible.

Today marks 30 years since the Game Boy’s initial release in Japan. After seeing loads of Game Boy tributes for the handheld, I decided to dig up my old system for a first-hand experience down memory lane.

It was in pretty shoddy condition — unable to power on, battery corrosion inside, possible paint markings on the back, and general grime throughout. I’ve been reluctant to open it up to attempt a repair, concerned about the reliability of the plastic around the screws after 30ish years.

Well, there’s no better time than Easter — a day of resurrection — to take a crack at it. At least I could say I tried to bring this gamer boy back into the world.

Throughout the teardown, I took a few photos of some of main unit and boards, posting them to Instagram. At the compliment of friend Sam Gross, I’ve decided to post them here as well.

My photo setup is nothing fancy:

• iPhone XS
• IKEA Malm desk (white)
• generic table lamp
• Philips Hue White Extension Bulb A19 E26
• Apple Photos app auto-enhance
• Instagram editing tools
• Video: Apple’s Clips app + Instagram’s ‘Lark’ filter

The Game Boy, pre-spa treatment:

Both sides of the brain:

Motherboard (3)

Display circuit board

I didn’t take a picture, but there was considerable battery corrosion on the battery contacts. This was the likely culprit of the power issue. To clean, I popped out the battery contacts and submerged them in distilled white vinegar for about 10–15 minutes. They came out looking brand new.

Once all of the guts had been removed, I took a baby wipe to the exterior and buttons. For interior grime, I soaked a Q-tip in the white vinegar and swabbed it out.

After all plastic had been cleaned, it was time for reassembly and the moment of truth…

https://youtu.be/3-OMIiliYXU

Happy 30th, Game Boy.

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Retr0bright Update

A restoration is not complete without attention paid to the appearance. The more I looked at the end result of my Game Boy restoration, the more I was bothered by the yellowing of the casing.

The yellowing of ‘80s and ‘90s electronics plastics is caused by a combination bromine — afire retardant — and exposure to UV light. The plastic is known as acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS.

The method to reverse the effect of bromine is referred to as retr0bright and includes a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, xanthan gum, glycerin, and “oxy” laundry booster. Being the lazy sap I am, I decided to opt in for a discovered alternative: Salon Care by Sally Beauty.

Wearing latex gloves, painted a generous amount of the Salon Care on to the disassembled casing of the Game Boy, wrapped it in Stretch-Tite plastic wrap, and placed the piece outside in direct sunlight.

Essential: The Salon Care coated plastic should be exposed to UV light for 4–6 hours total. However, it is critical to massage the plastic wrap + Salon Care every 45–60 minutes or so. This helps avoid air bubbles which can contribute to blotchiness in the end result. (This is where I goofed.) Likewise, you should rinse the plastic and re-apply the Salon Care every 90–120 minutes as it begins to evaporate after lengthy exposure. (Another goof of mine. I had to redo the process the next day as the Salon Care seemed to lose its effect after about 2 hours.)

After the process was complete — which is to say the color reversal was at a point that was good enough for me — I rinsed and thoroughly dried the plastic and reassembled the Game Boy and photographed a side-by-side before and after:

If you look closely, you will notice some of the blotchiness I mentioned above.

Overall, I’m quite satisfied with the end result. This restored Game Boy teleports me back to Christmas 1989, unwrapping my first console ever, and playing Super Mario Land for hours on end.

Shahid Kamal Ahmad on the Remaster Podcast, looking back on Reggie Fils-Aimé‘s legacy:

This is a real problem with video games, right. You go into video games as a new person who hasn’t played video games. You play a modern AAA game, and first of all, you have tutorials that are extremely patronizing for the really experienced player. But still bewildering for new players. How do you get those players in? Nintendo knew how.

Nintendo knew that they had to make the controls more accessible, and Reggie knew [those controls] were coming with the Wii. He knew that would be suitable for people who were intimidated by the controller. Personally, I thought that was an absolute genius move.

I’ve had issues with controllers for a long time. Not personally, but in terms of accessibility. There’s been this steady increase in the complexity of a controller. It hasn’t become easier to use; it’s become more complicated to use. Yes, it’s got more features — now you have touchpads; now you have analog buttons; now you have analog sticks; now you have two or three or four more buttons on the thing; now you have pro controllers and elite controllers, £120 controllers. What Nintendo recognized was, “oh, we can do something that does away with all of that and introduce an entirely different type of technology that ‘hey! It’s actually not that expensive to manufacture.’” It was utter genius.

Keying in on the phrase, “I’ve had issues with controllers for a long time”: You and me both, Shahid. You and me both.

Chris Plante, Polygon:

But the answer is simpler when it comes to the real money maker for Microsoft: Xbox as a streaming platform available on every app store. Microsoft could bring its streaming service to any smart TV and streaming device without all this backroom dealmaking necessary for Switch, and reach a considerably bigger audience.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see all of the above. Going off the others’ reporting, it seems Microsoft is certainly trying to bring Xbox Game Pass to Switch, but the real game changer will be if — like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon — Xbox becomes an app pre-installed on your next TV.

Leave it to Plante to identify the obvious. I’m over here kicking myself that I didn’t think of an Xbox app pre-installed on TV in ‘Activision, Microsoft, and Platforms’. Especially after CES and the growing number of pre-installed services on smart TVs.

If we do see a pre-installed Xbox app, has Microsoft already positioned themselves as the dominant controller manufacturer? In addition to their standard wireless controller, they offer the Elite and classic “Duke” designs as well as the Adaptive Controller, a huge service to those in need of accessibility features.

I personally can not stand the Xbox controller and much prefer Nintendo’s Pro Controller or the PS4 DualShock 4. But if neither of those two options open themselves to an Xbox app — the former due to hardware limitations / lack of foresight, the latter due to some bizarre proprietary lock-in strategy — as an Xbox owner, Microsoft is already poised to be my go-to controller. And with an already broad selection of controllers tailored for the Xbox experience, it makes them the clear winner.