Is not the Steam Deck an unbelievable piece of {hardware}? Simply have a look at it, hanging round Steam’s entrance web page in all its matte black glory, promising these with copious endurance and cash trendy PC gaming completely anyplace they dare take it. Valve’s machine is a daring and delightful factor: the current pinnacle of transportable PC play, and the start of one other era in an extended and haphazard household tree. Its roots are the chunky Recreation Boys and laptops of the ’90s, however the Steam Deck’s closest (or no less than quirkiest) ancestor is Sony’s now sixteen-year-old, however nonetheless astonishingly stylish, Vaio UX.
The chicness of Sony’s Vaios has at all times come at a value—one so excessive that not even in my dual-wielding bank card part did I dare order Sony’s palm-sized PC. However the lust by no means pale? Think about proudly owning a extremely tiny pc, one so lovely it was utilized in considered one of Daniel Craig’s James Bond motion pictures.
I’ve needed one for years, so as a substitute of shopping for some uncomfortably tight leather-based trousers and/or a dangerously quick motorcycle for my fortieth birthday, I splashed out on a Vaio UX as a substitute. To say it has lived as much as my very own decade-plus of hype is an understatement.
Measuring roughly the identical dimension and thickness as the unique Recreation Boy, these distinctive units all characteristic a slide up touchscreen with a full keyboard beneath—take that, frustratingly key-free 2022 tech. There’s Bluetooth connectivity, wi-fi, a reminiscence stick slot, entrance and rear cameras (full with a shot button charmingly positioned precisely the place you’d anticipate finding it on an actual digital camera), and handwriting recognition. Devoted mouse buttons on the left hand facet of the chassis are designed for use alongside the useful mouse nub sitting on the appropriate. It is a actually self-contained, do-it-all-PC from the glory days of Home windows XP.
The Vaio UX is the right time capsule gaming machine
The Vaio UX sequence handle to look lovely whether or not at relaxation of their modern dock bristling with further ports, or held both horizontally (normal use) or vertically (supposed to make studying internet pages simpler). So completely designed is Sony’s long-discontinued {hardware} that I see echoes of its modern form in final yr’s GPD Win 3. They’re solidly constructed, brilliantly useful, and effortlessly fashionable—they usually bloody effectively needs to be, contemplating Sony tended to promote them for an eye-watering $2,000 after they have been new.
Simply in case I have not already made it apparent: I’ve by no means desired any amalgam of metallic and plastic greater than I’ve a Vaio UX. It was Sony’s forbidden tech fruit, as impossibly unattainable to somebody like me because the Aibo (the corporate’s sequence of robotic canines) or extra just lately the PlayStation 5. I pawed on the postage stamp sized photos utilized in on-line evaluations and swiftly scrolled previous the inevitable “No one wants this, it is too costly” feedback within the writers’ summaries. I wanted it. I knew in my bones I wanted it.
However what good is outdated tech within the age of the Steam Deck and ultralight laptops? Why waste time with a machine whose single-core processor and built-in Intel graphics chip have been put collectively for the sake of “productiveness on the go?” The Vaio UX was made to hook up with a projector in a board assembly or be pulled out of a leather-based briefcase in the course of the kind of personal jet I think about CEOs are at all times on, to not play video games.
The great thing about PCs is that they are often regardless of the heck the individual utilizing them needs them to be, which in my case makes the Vaio UX the right time capsule gaming machine. No, it may possibly’t run Elden Ring, Halo Infinite, and even Stardew Valley. What it may possibly run—and run surprisingly effectively through the comforting sights and sounds of Home windows XP Skilled—are the likes of Baldur’s Gate, Wizardry 8, and Ys: The Oath in Felghana. Everything of System Shock 2’s barely awkward controls are right here for the wrangling on an actual bodily keyboard.
I may even sit within the backyard and faucet away at Age of Empires 2 or Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri utilizing the Vaio’s stylus till the battery runs out (which takes round two hours, relying on the sport).
The UX’s onerous drive house (typically hovering across the 30 to 40GB mark, relying on the mannequin) is woefully insufficient by trendy requirements—I do know I’ve put in excessive decision texture patches that’d simply swallow that up in a single go. However when video games from the Vaio UX’s period sweetly warn you about their “monumental” 600MB set up dimension, you quickly realise there’s greater than sufficient room for all the pieces you could possibly want for with loads of house left over for a couple of DOS classics, too. I am presently attempting to avoid wasting humanity towards the alien menace in X-COM: UFO Protection—it is not going effectively.
As soon as I’ve loaded up my UX with the likes of Grim Fandango or certainly every other late ’90s classics I’ve acquired scattered round my dwelling the shape issue actually does make taking part in even probably the most acquainted recreation really feel model new, as homeowners of the UX’s trendy descendants know all too effectively. There’s a little bit awkwardness to the expertise—none of those video games have been designed to be desk-free experiences performed on 4.5 inch screens in any case—however I will fortunately put up with that for the sake of respiration contemporary life into outdated information. And in addition to, tweaking the system settings precisely to your liking is half the enjoyable of a brand new set up, proper?
I see taking part in video games on the Vaio UX the identical approach I do selecting to purchase an album on vinyl, regardless that thousands and thousands of songs are a fast scroll away on-line. The act of interacting with this forever-niche department of PC {hardware}, bringing out CDs to put in, manually organising my little gaming folder, and getting all the pieces tweaked simply the way in which I like it’s a large a part of the pleasure of all of it. Perhaps moreso, even, than really getting a recreation I first performed on an enormous CRT monitor and an off-white tower working within the palm of my hand.
Vaio UXs are simply enjoyable. It is a pocket-sized PC I can play a personally curated collection of all-time classics on, a land the place spam emails can by no means attain me and each boring system replace was already sorted out completely nearly a decade in the past.
They’re a lot enjoyable I feel everybody ought to give this unlikely mixture of take-anywhere sit-down PC gaming a attempt, whether or not you are desperate to play Sekiro in a area on the Steam Deck, have a burning want to fill considered one of GPD’s handhelds with emulators, or get misty eyed on the considered all 4 of Planescape: Torment’s CDs put in on a teenage Vaio. Handheld PC gaming might by no means go actually mainstream, but when this continuously resurfacing area of interest proves something, it is that making the trouble to do issues a little bit otherwise can carry new joys out of outdated favourites.
