Think of them as the Deck’s strapline

Owners of Valve’s handheld PCSteam Deckhave been fiddling about with creating and sharing their own ten-second animations for the machine’s new custom boot video feature, implemented in a client update last week. Some pay homage to Valve and Steam, while others nod towards games in general, or even classic telly and film. I’ve had a rummage around to help give you some ideas, and found the batch below.

I’ve always been a fan of handhelds. One of my favourite custom boots so far is this “handheld history” montage byKnightMD:

Here’s the epic#SteamDeckcustom boot video I made from scratch, using Valve-made music from Portal 2. I called it “Handheld History”. There’s a version with the Vita too but I prefer this one with the DS.pic.twitter.com/R8biuJFDgD

so, steam deck lets you do custom boot intros now, and umpic.twitter.com/KkkrmeGvFJ

Dev Enrique Colinet’s Steam Deck beenpersonalisedin fetching Gordon Freeman orange, which I guess also makes it look a little like one flavour of Nintendo’s box-shaped sixth-gen console:

Other Deck owners have turned to the gogglebox for inspiration, even repurposing Futurama’s intro for their custom boot video. Shut up and take my money, as Fry might say:

Look at this custom boot animation I just downloaded for the Steam Deck!pic.twitter.com/4MWzsbKEfG

TwittererEverdraedmay have won the custom boot video crown for their take on an old gag from The Simpsons, though. I respect the effort taken to edit sound clips of Gabe for this:

ummm…you probably should ignore my steam deck boot vidpic.twitter.com/eVFfpwzdrJ

Those are all cool ways to start up your handheld, but Valve found themselves in a spot recently for another Deck-related video. The company uploaded a promo video last week toannouncethat reserving a Steam Deck was a thing of the past, along with the availability of the Deck’s dock at last. Pretty quickly, it was noticed that the Steam Deck featured in the video had the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu on it. Valvetook the video downand reuploaded it without the emulator in view. Oops.

You can find some of these Steam Deck custom boot videos and a whole bunch more to download at SteamDeckRepohere. Now I just need to actually own a Steam Deck and I’m all set.