I recently had the good fortune to interview the two developers of CrankBoy - an emulator for the Playdate console which allows users to play original Game Boy games on there (and yes, you can use that crank to play them!)
I’ve always found the Playdate to be a super interesting console, it doesn’t compete on any level with the typical handhelds…it doesn’t even have a backlight. But it makes up for that in how utterly fresh and unique it is. Creativity is the focus for it, and the games devs themselves all seem to have true passion for their creations.
After seeing some social media posts about CrankBoy get shared about, I reached out to the devs, asking if they’d let me interview them to write up a feature article on their project, and they were so kind to say yes. If you’ve got any interest in emulation, dev work, or the crazy cute yellow handheld, then you might enjoy this one I wrote.
Here is the link to the article, please let me know what you think!
It’s a tough sell then. I did a search in the article for the word crank and got a lot of matches but it was too long for me to read. I would have preferred some short video clips to demonstrate exactly how it works.
This article isn’t about the playdate, it’s an article about an emulation software someone wrote that runs on the playdates hardware, so you won’t get a detailed explanation about the playdate as a general device there.
The playdate is a novelty device that anyone can develop Minigames for which use the crank for their gameplay. It is several years old at this point. It’s also very expensive for what it is so if you’re not a fan of just having little novel devices with not much use there is no reason to buy one. It is indeed a tough sell for most people but they have their own demographic of enthusiasts.
What an odd take to have.
I’m a little confused why you’d form a strong opinion on something you willfully refused to read. In fact, even my title for the article kinda gives it away. Or the screenshot.
Just…odd.