Watch On
Playdate received an oddity called Blippo Plus earlier this year. It turns the handheld console into a strange little television, so that twisting the crank feels akin to switching channels on an old analog TV dial. Sometimes you’ll find a cryptic animation, or else a live action musical performance. Some channels show a mysteriously static logo, whereas others might feature a full-blown variety show. It all plays out in real time, so you can’t rewind and fast forward it. You just have to watch it like ye olde TV.
It’s kinda like public access television, except weirder. I guess that was the mood Tim and Eric was going for, but Playdate leans more in the direction of dreamy weirdness, which is helped in no small part by the Playdate’s 1-bit display.
The broadcasts in Blippo Plus emanate from Planet Blip, meaning a lot of it may seem inscrutable to viewers not au fait with the orthodoxies of alien popular culture. Part of the fun of Blippo Plus is making connections across the disparate channels, and beginning to understand the arcane ways of aliens, though it’s also chock full of references to real life broadcasting history. For the hypnagogic heads among us, the vibe is reminiscent of the old ‘n’ noisy James Ferraro albums (though it’s actually YACHT doing the soundtrack).
This weird game made for a weird console is on its way to PC, and as you might expect from software making the jump from a crank-controlled 1-bit device to big screens, it’s probably going to be a different experience. For starters, it’s in color, which lets the studio lean heavier into woozy CRT stylings. There’s also a program guide, which I don’t think is in the Playdate version, though channels still air whether you’re watching or not.
Blippo Plus is a collaboration between Telefantasy Studios—a California-based studio dedicated to “the spirit of late-night cable television”—and Noble Robot, which is working on the ’00s desktop sim Dreamsettler. Playdate veteran Dustin Mierau is also involved. Naturally, Blippo Plus is published by Playdate creator Panic, who also published Untitled Goose Game and Thank Goodness You’re Here! It hits Steam and Nintendo Switch on September 24.