Why Playdate, PICO-8, and Infinite Mac are the best of the past and future
“We want it to really confuse people, but also really make people happy”
An exploration of retro-inspired projects that intentionally mix old and new ideas. From Panic's Playdate handheld with its black-and-white screen and crank, to Joseph White's PICO-8 fantasy console that emulates a machine that never existed, to Mihai Parparita's Infinite Mac that makes vintage Macs usable in a browser with modern conveniences, these projects cherry-pick the best of different eras. The author argues that such anachronistic design can be more inspiring than pure nostalgia, offering a way to reimagine technology without being stuck in the past.
I love that these projects, and others like them, ignore all those rules.
- Waterluvian
Playdate feels like a Louis Vuitton bag in that you buy it not because you need a bag but because you want a fancy luxury good that feels good for you to own. I’m not criticizing it, though. I celebrate that we have options. When I got my kid a Scratch + JS game dev handheld I found a dozen options with varying pros and cons.
But the petty, small part of me has this itch where I’m unnecessarily concerned that Playdate might actually believe it’s not just a Louis Vuitton bag and that it actually is a sensibly practical purchase. I think I’m sensitive to the desire for things to be honest about what they are.
- japhib
After developing & releasing 2 commercial games, and playing around with different game engines/frameworks over the years, I’m convinced PICO-8 is absolutely the best platform for a hobbyist game dev.
Its constraints steer you clear automatically of the biggest unsung villain of hobby game development: scope creep. (Wanting to make your game multiplayer is a variant of that.)
Its inability to import external assets forces you to engage with things outside your main strength, like making art/music/sfx, and the fact that everything is so lo-fi means unskilled art/music/sfx still looks & sounds decent.
Anyways, I highly recommend pico-8 to anyone looking to get into gamedev, or anyone frustrated with the big engines (Unity/Unreal/Godot etc)
- xyzzy_plugh
This line in the closing epilogue really resonates with me:
> It’s one thing to revisit those old machines just to relive your own years of (likely imagined) glory, but yet another to see people see them as inspiration: to encounter computers that were simpler, unencumbered, unenshittified, and with software you could understand, remix, and own.
I feel as though we have strayed so far from this in modern times and yet it seems to be beyond nostalgia, but firming up to actually be ideal. The idea that your personal computing experience is truly malleable.
We're at a crossroads and where we end up a few years from now, either a personal computing dystopia or utopia, is really up in the air.
We're long overdue for an explosion of new forms of truly liberated personal computing.