Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Playdate
A new handheld gaming system from Panic
Playdate is a pocket-sized handheld gaming system featuring a black and white screen and a distinctive crank controller. The yellow device comes preloaded with games from independent creators across adventure, puzzle… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Playdate launched in 2019; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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Playdate▲135Handheld video game set with speaker dock, low-code platform
2021 · play.date · its alternatives →
- 2AR
Software and hardware projects for fun from a guy who loves retro computing
2019 · internalregister.github.io · its alternatives →
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Adventures in hardware hacking, low-level software, FPGAs, and more!
2019 · craigjb.com · its alternatives →
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Analogue Pocket ▲182A modern hand-held for playing old GameBoy gamees
2019 · analogue.co · its alternatives →
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Playdate▲67A clean and easy way to track upcoming video game releases
2022 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Palmer Luckey's new startup, a modern Game Boy console
2024 · modretro.com · its alternatives →
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Read Kagi News on Playdate. Contribute to remysucre/cranky-news development by creating an account on GitHub.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10GB
Hey HN, Over the past ~1.5 years, I built an open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld that can play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges. To my knowledge, there isn't an existing open-source FPGA emulator that can play physical cartridges like this. One of my main goals was to do all of the pieces myself, and be able to understand every component of it, so I designed my own PCB, wrote the firmware, wrote a Game Boy and Game Boy Advance emulator for the FPGA (using the Chisel HDL), and designed a 3D-printed case. I detailed the design and development process in the…
2025 · eli.lipsitz.net · its alternatives →
- 11AR
My background project for the last two years has been re-implementing my 2004 C++ shoot'em up game in TypeScript + WebGL, and it's finally done (just in time for the 20th anniversary!) Play the game online: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/darklaga.html Technical article about the remake: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/remake.html I have tested Firefox, Chrome and Edge on desktop and mobile (no access to a device capable of running Safari). It's amazing how much difference 20 years makes: the hardware is so much more powerful, the web…
2024 · nicollet.net · its alternatives →
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Play Date▲69The best way to keep up with game releases you care about
2018 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Panic Hazard▲63All new fun arcade game with story and survival mode!
2016 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
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Peter Panic!▲56WarioWare + Rhythm Heaven-style mini-games on the iOS
2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Dividr▲64Use 3D touch to avoid obstacles and get a high score.
2016 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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A while back I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator (which is considered the Hello, World! of emulators and is more accurately a virtual machine since historically CHIP-8 was an interpreted language running on top of the COSMAC VIP to make game programming easier). But a few months ago I got really interested in embedded software, so decided it would be neat to port my emulator to a STM32 MCU and design a console around it as a learning experience, since CHIP-8 never existed as a physical system. I didn't know much about embedded software when I began, and even less about electronics, but I managed to…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →