Even the Playdate Simulator can run on Steam Deck

In yet another reminder of just how flexible Valve’s Steam Deck handheld gaming PC can be, an enterprising Redditor has gotten the Playdate Simulator running on their Steam Deck, as shared on Twitter by Valve designer Lawrence Yang.

The Playdate, if you’re not familiar, is Panic’s tiny yellow handheld with a crank, but similar to the long reservation queue for the Steam Deck, Playdate preorders are backed up for months. If you place a Playdate preorder right now, it isn’t expected to ship until 2023. If you already have a Steam Deck and want to mess around with the Playdate’s old-school vibes, though, it looks like it’s possible to do that by installing the free Playdate Simulator.

You can see a video of the simulator running on Steam Deck in u/ncarson9’s Reddit post. They launch the simulator from the Steam Deck’s menus, navigate to a game, open it up, and spend a few seconds moving around a Zelda-like forest and swinging a tiny sword.

Like many other things with the Steam Deck, getting this set up probably takes some tinkering. But it’s fun to see one of 2022’s highly coveted handhelds running on another of 2022’s highly coveted handhelds, even in this limited fashion. Is this handheld-ception?