A new niche gaming portable called the Playdate is on the horizon, it features a crank, and one of the first games it can play is Doom. The Playdate was first announced in May 2019, taking the game development world by storm thanks to its unique hardware and the gameplay opportunities it provides. Created by Panic, the company that published Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game, the unique yellow handheld looks to recapture the magic of Nintendo's Game Boy by forgoing convenience and presenting a challenge for modern developers. For example, instead of a full-color display, the unit has a monochrome Sharp Memory LCD similar to the e-paper display used in early Amazon Kindle units.
Panic says that over 250 developers now have a system in hand. In addition to third-party games, Playdate will ship with a unique season pass system where customers will receive 12 free games with the price of the console. Said games will arrive once a week for 12 weeks, automatically downloaded to the machine over Wi-Fi. Among the developers already working on launch titles for the unit are Bennett Foddy (Getting Over It), Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy), and Chuck Jordan (Sam & Max).
Today, the Playdate Twitter account posted preview GIFs of several projects in development by creators who already have the unit on hand. There's a new version of Tetris, Klondike Solitaire, and a tilt-based platformer reminiscent of Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble on the Game Boy Color. However, the most surprising and amusing game on the list is a port of the 1993 classic first-person shooter, Doom, with uses one of the Playdate's signature features - a hand-powered crank.
While it's packed with Nintendo-esque features, the Playdate has a unique control setup. In addition to a d-pad and two buttons, it also features a crank that developers can incorporate as they see fit. Most first-person shooters wouldn't work with such a setup, but Doom's lack of verticality makes it perfect for the device. The player in the sample video guides Doomguy around an early level with a pistol in hand. Pulling out the crank automatically switches weapons to the chaingun, and turning it fires the gun to slay the unfortunate imps and zombiemen in its path. It's just another in a long line of examples of clever developers porting iD Software's era-defining shooter to every piece of technology imaginable.
With at least a WarioWare-sized portion of Doom now running on the Playdate, it can officially join the echelons of ATMs, Apple Watches, and every gaming console under the sun. The crank-powered chaingun is a nice touch on top of this being one of the smallest ports of the shooter in history. Perhaps only the Game Boy Micro rendition of the game could be considered smaller, but the Playdate itself provides a unique experience that not even a Nintendo console can offer. Playdate was scheduled to release to the public in 2020, although delays due to the global pandemic could push that date back further. After all, it's hard to source all those tiny cranks in this economy.
Source: Playdate/Twitter