Blippo+ may appear bizarre (as it is), but the experimental live-action, off-cable TV FMV simulator experience is still bags of fun.
Developed by Telefantasy Studios, Dustin Mierau, and US dance pop band Yacht, it launched on the Playdate handheld in May 2025. Developer Noble Robot then completed the Steam and the Nintendo Switch versions.
THUS! Be prepared to return to the Eighties in this hoot of a romp with bad hair and shell suits.
The Bizarre Joys of Blippo+
Okay, this isn’t a traditional game. It’s a TV simulator where players can channel hop between bizarre, humorous 1980s style MTV shows.
It first launched on the Playdate handheld crank console as part of Season 2 (although you can buy the simulator game as a standalone deal for $10). It’s exactly the sort of thing the handheld was built for, eccentric little concepts for players to hurl themselves into.
With the Playdate, you can use the crank to work your way through TV stations. Think about using a radio in The Good Old Days and how you had to hunt around for a station. That’s what Blippo+ is.
As you channel hop, and move between masses of static, you come across some of the most corny, amusing, and fantastically 1980s shows imaginable. People with:
- Big hair
- Major delusions
- Terrible makeup
- Dreams of stardom
- Cheesy grins
All of it is played for laughs as this is, essentially, a mini-TV show its own right. What’s excellent about Blippo+ is how consistently bizarre it is, but also the excellent levels of performances from the many actors.
There’s a big cast here and everyone is great, cheesy to the max. Add into that a fun script and the way the devs have tied all the channels together, so players can interconnect randomly from one show to the next, is a very impressive technical feat.
On the Playdate it works like this (courtesy of YouTuber Matt’s Repository) on the Playdate. With the game cast onto a TV thing.
It’s a brilliant concept but, of course, not a traditional video game. It’s an FMV game, which were a thing in the mid-1990s on Sega’s Mega Drive (Night Trap being the most famous of those).
The Steam and Switch versions launched in September 2025, bringing a more advanced line-up of channels to watch and the advancement into colour.
This has allowed the devs to make the experience much more lifelike to the ’80s, as on the Playdate the monochrome style takes that away a bit. Although it is more fun using the handheld’s crank to shift between channels, searching around in the hope you’ll land on the next big thing.
Emphasis is on the player to channel-surf across what’s called Planet Blip, where you’ll find all the weird and wonderful characters with their ridiculous getups and delusions. You channel hop to:
- Salutation Station (SAL)
- Blippian Public Systems (BPS)
- Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR)
- Time Dilation Network (TDN)
- Mega Tips Tee Vee (MEGA)
- Auxiliary Cable Access Broadcast (ACC)
- And more!!!
Femtofax is like Ceefax and Teletext from the 1990s, the standard for displaying text with basic pixel graphics. That’s where a young Mr. Wapojif read Paul Roses’ excellent Digtiser between 1993 and 2003 (inspiring the concept for Professional Moron).
These are all as weirdly wonderful as each other. The array of oddness has led Blippo+ to be called the “strangest game of the year” in its interconnected storytelling techniques. Almost like a Christopher Nolan movie… but with ’80s hair.
How the Wonderfully Weird Blippo+ Came to Be
In 2015, the game came about when Panic Inc. (the Playdate creator) showed the band Yacht a prototype of the handheld console. They were invited to make a game for it and here we are! The result is a title shot with real analogue TV equipment, so it does look very ’80s/’90s in feel.
Blippo+ shows were clearly inspired by shows from the era. You can see in the spoof adaptations the likes of Cheers, Doctor Who, The Dick Cavett Show, US style news channels, and The Twilight Zone.
The whole vibe is also very much Max Headroom (we did a feature on the Max Headroom Broadcast Intrusion back in 2018), with that strange glossy sheen meets analogue TV static of things back then.
Blippo+ was shot over the course of a year, with post-production lasting another 12 months.
We’re pleased to see a Playdate game get a life outside of the handheld, too, meaning it brings more attention to its often surreal ideas. As if you want to be weirded out, this TV simulator thing will be right up your alley.
