Sure thing. Here’s a messy, human-like rewrite for you:
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So, check this out—I stumbled across this YouTube creator who somehow snagged an early Steam Deck prototype. Yeah, an engineering sample, number 34. I mean, seriously, how do you even get your hands on something like that? Anyway, this guy on X, who goes by SadlyItsDadley—honestly, what’s with these names?—decides to lend it to Jon Bringus from Bringus Studios. Apparently, Dadley thought Jon was the guy to, you know, document this piece of gaming history.
So, Jon gets it and immediately starts taking it apart. On YouTube, of course—because where else would you do this? He finds this piece of paper inside marked “POC2-34 Control 163,” which sounds super official. It’s like, “Yeah, this is the real deal.” Then he starts messing around with it, running games and stuff, just showing off what Valve’s been up to before launching the whole Steam Deck thing for real.
There’s even a video if you’re curious. Or bored. Or curious and bored?
Now, the look of this thing—let’s chat about that for a sec—it’s not what we’re used to seeing. Like, the touchpads are these big circles. Weird, right? Not the slick rectangular ones we see today. And those joysticks? Tiny compared to the current ones. The whole thing just feels different, like it’s trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. The tech specs are pretty wild too—an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD, plus some Intel Wi-Fi gadget. Oh, and it supposedly has discrete GPU support, but Jon didn’t get to test that. Life’s full of letdowns.
Jon being all careful—props to him—cloned the SSD to keep the original files safe. He finds an early SteamOS version with three accounts, but of course, he can’t access the one marked ‘34’. Makes you wonder what secrets it’s hiding, right? Oh, and that version of SteamOS? Built on September 30, 2020. So, this was way before the Steam Deck hit the shelves, giving us a peek into that wild ride of development they went through.
Anyway, let’s pause there for a sec. Can’t ignore how Valve shook things up with the Steam Deck. Nintendo might’ve set the stage with the Switch, no doubt about it, but Valve, man—they turned heads and got all these big PC hardware players thinking. Now everyone wants a piece of the portable gaming pie. Look at Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw, and who knows what else is in the works.
By the way, if you’re into keeping up with this sort of stuff, follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News. Just click the button. Or don’t—it’s really up to you.
And that’s a wrap for now. Go out there and game on, or something!
