Vine’s creator working on bizarre new NFT console Supdrive

Dom Hofmann, a founder of both Vine and Byte, has announced a firmware console called Supdrive. Using NFTs as game cartridges, each title will be unique to each player.

This whole NFT trend is getting pretty out of hand now.

Dom Hofmann, the founder of TikTok’s 2012 ancestor Vine, has recently announced plans to develop a firmware console which will take classic-style arcade games – like Pacman or Space Invaders – and use NFTs as a virtual cartridge to play them.

If you were previously confused about the nuances of blockchain, crypto, and the rapidly developing world of NFTs, things are about to get a whole lot more convoluted in the near future.

Supdrive is the latest evolution in an already off-the-wall craze, that may be an indicator as to where NFTs are headed in the near future.

What is the Supdrive and why does it exist?

First and foremost, Supdrive will not be a physical console to prop up alongside your PS5 or Xbox Series X, which is probably a good thing considering how bloody giant those things are.

Instead, it will exist in the abstract digital realm, which may be alienating to anyone over 35 who isn’t familiar with cloud services and game streaming. Hoffman describes it as an ‘off-chain fantasy game console,’ which gets us no closer to figuring out what he really means, but we’ll do our best to pin it down in layman’s terms.

Picture a PC gaming library like Steam, a place where digital games are distributed, played, and created. In essence, Supdrive will follow this same formula.

The confusing aspect is gleaning exactly how two copies of the same game will have different features. There will be fixed game sizes, of course, but each version will be unique.

Think different colour palettes, difficulty settings, special abilities, maybe a floating Nicholas Cage mod for your Pacman ghosts… that sort of thing.

https://twitter.com/dhof/status/1428093313412915203

Many are comparing Supdrive to another blockchain project called Art Blocks, where creators develop programs that procedurally generate art.

Stored on a blockchain system, programs always create the same art for a given seed (a unique combination code for each user). However, changing the seed is what procedurally alters the way each version of the art ends up looking. Those into Minecraft will likely catch our drift.

People then buy an NFT for an Art Block project which contains a seed, allowing them to generate a unique artwork. Supdrive works in the exact same way.

When it comes to pricing, a release date, or unique console features, we’re just as in the dark as you probably feel right now. I’d suggest keeping an eye on Hofmann’s Discord channel here for the details.

What we can say for sure is that Supdrive games will be strictly arcade style until the firmware is upgraded. Perhaps we’ll one day get a Supdrive 64 or Sup-MegaDrive.