Gotta say, stumbled upon this strange yet fascinating YouTube rabbit hole the other day. Some dude got hold of an early Steam Deck prototype—engineering sample number 34, to be weirdly specific. This YouTuber, Jon Bringus, somehow scores this from a guy named SadlyItsDadley on, uh, X (you know, the artist formerly known as Twitter, but let’s not go there). Anyway, seems like a big deal, like he says Bringus is the one to trust with preserving this quirky piece of gaming history.
So, Bringus grabs a screwdriver—or whatever—and starts unscrewing the thing on his channel. Right off the bat, there’s this odd paper inside marked “POC2-34 Control 163,” which I guess means it’s one of the super early concept units. He’s poking around, trying to run games on it, showing how Valve’s come a long way since dreaming up a portable console. You gotta wonder what those first brainstorming sessions were like—probably chaotic at best.
Now there’s this video—some rambling adventure into prototype land. But also fascinating? Yeah, that’s a word for it.
Turns out this early Deck looks different. Like big ol’ circle touchpads—who thought those were a good idea? Maybe someone did, but honestly, they just look funky. The joysticks are tiny compared to what’s eventually rolled out. And those palm rests? They got confused somewhere between comfy and experimental. Bringus checks the stats and finds it’s got an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U processor, and 8GB of RAM—nerd stuff that might mean something if you’re into that kind of detail.
He also copies the SSD—because integrity, I guess? When he boots it up, surprise surprise, there’s an ancient SteamOS with these old user accounts hanging around on it, one being ‘34’ which totally vibes with the prototype number. While he couldn’t crack open that account, he uncovers this version was cooked up back in September 2020. So here it is, a whole year and a half before the Steam Deck hit the shelves. Just imagine, this little unit had a front-row seat to the evolution of portable PC gaming—what a ride.
Valve really kicked off a mini-revolution with this thing. Nintendo laid the groundwork with their Switch in 2017—let’s be honest, it was kind of the handheld standard. But then Steam Deck comes along, and all these big-name PC hardware guys go, “Hey, we want in!” And bam, next thing you know there’s a cocktail of options like Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw (sounds fierce, right?).
Oh, and if you’re keen on staying in the loop with this tech whirligig, follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News. Not that I’m telling you what to do—but, you know, they’ve got the scoop.
That’s all, I guess. Cheers to wandering the streaming alleys of prototype gadgetry. Or something like that.
