It’s not often we have to get our detective hats on here at Retro Dodo, but there are times when we need to report news that is sometimes a little mysterious.
It seems to have been a week of true crime in the gaming world, what with a Blue-Eyes White Dragon being stolen from a shop in Tokyo. And now the news that pallets of PlayDate consoles have gone missing… well, it’s all getting a little like an episode of Poirot around here.
To lose a couple of handhelds in transport might be easier to understand, but losing $400,000 worth of consoles is alarming and very strange, to say the least!
The news was revealed at the GDC; the same event that gave us a long-lost Tetris game would unfortunately be a bit of a lost cause for PlayDate, with Cabel Sasser, the co-founder of the company explaining that two pallets of handhelds had vanished into thin air.
The plot thickens, however, as according to Game File there were initially four pallets of PlayDate consoles that had gone missing, though two have since turned up at a building site near the factory where they were shipped from. FedEX shows that the same person signed for both deliveries to say that they had been delivered, though I wouldn’t call two pallets in a building site and $400,000 in the wind a successful delivery.
A Panic For PlayDate
Some of the missing PlayDate consoles have been registered to people in the North Las Vegas area, meaning that the shipment might not be MIA after all. It’s all looking a little suspicious, and Sasser is undoubtedly anxious to know more about how and why this has happened.
It sounds to me as though there has been some foul play, and depending on how the news pans out, we might not actually get to know more about this if it ends up going to court. Who signed for these deliveries, and where on earth are they now?
Panic, the company behind the PlayDate handheld that published one of our favourite titles ‘Untitled Goose Game’, has been looking to make more money off the PlayDate and to finally make it a profitable venture for the business. A setback like this is going to really hamper that goal, and we can only hope that Sasser and Co can get to the bottom of this mess quickly and get back on track.
I’ve always loved this little hand-crank console; it’s a quirky piece but so much more than a gimmick, bringing a unique style of play and some incredibly well-thought-out titles to the handheld scene. Let’s hope that Panic can put this behind them and keep going from strength to strength, and as always, we’ll update you with more information as and when it becomes available.
