Earlier this 12 months, Panic, the corporate behind the whimsical Playdate gaming handheld, revealed {that a} cargo containing greater than a thousand of the gadgets had been stolen. A number of months and quite a lot of sleuthing later, the rogue shipments have been found after seemingly being dumped on the pavement exterior a random restaurant in North Las Vegas.
“Did you hear the story about how $400k price of Playdates have been misdelivered by FedEx to a building web site close to our warehouse?” the Playdate account tweeted right this moment. “After which somebody simply… stole them? Severely. Effectively, guess what received swiftly dumped at a random restaurant this morning? Welcome again stolen Playdates!”
Pictures from the placement confirmed dozens of bins filled with Playdates exterior of what seems to be like an unfinished steakhouse in a vacant lot that’s nonetheless beneath building. A number of the bins have been simply hanging out on the street like whoever was ditching them determined midway by stacking them alongside the wall that they didn’t really give a fuck.
The Playdate is a $200 handheld with a crank that performs indie video games designed for it its distinctive display screen and inputs. A type of is Mars After Midnight, a sci-fi journey by Papers, Please designer Lucas Pope about operating a late-night assist group for aliens. It’s the sort of bespoke retro oddity that shouldn’t even exis,t which is a part of why Panic determined to make it within the first place.
Cabel Sasser, Panic’s co-founder, advised attendees at GDC earlier this 12 months that they solely found shipments have been lacking after he realized the stock numbers weren’t including up. FexEx claimed on the time that the $400,000 price of lacking Playdates had been delivered although there was no hint of them. Different shipments had gone lacking at a close-by building web site, which have been later recovered. Apparently the identical individual had been concerned in each incidents. “It’s a little bit of a real crime drama,” Sasser mentioned on the time.
“Extra particulars—and certain an excellent Playdate Podcast episode—sooner or later,” the Playdate account tweeted right this moment. “For now, this was our greatest attainable consequence, the results of numerous time and detective work. (Which, okay superb, we loved.) The true query is, can we promote these as a restricted version? Playdate Sizzling™.”
