PICO-8 OT: The game console that doesn't actually exist!

Video Games
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PICO-8 is a fantasy console!

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What does that mean? It’s not a real console, but it’s a platform built around the limitations of a retro console or computer.

Features

  • Display - 128x128 16 colours
  • Cart Size - 32k
  • Sound - 4 channel chip blerps
  • Code - P8 Lua
  • CPU - 4M vm insts/sec
  • Sprites - 256 8x8 sprites
  • Map - 128x32 tiles

What games are there?

There’s hundreds of games people have made, big, medium and small. Probably one of the most famous PICO-8 games of all time is Celeste.

The original version of Celeste was released as a game for PICO-8. The image file above is a PICO-8 “cartridge” and actually contains the code for Celeste. It can be downloaded and run directly from that image!

Where can you get it?

PICO-8 is available here for $14.99:

Games are available for download here, and you can try them in-browser without paying for PICO-8.

You can also find games within PICO-8’s “splore” command.

Also itch.io has a lot of games for sale.

There’s also a PICO-8 emulator called FAKE-08 for several platforms.

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Fun fact: I was the first person to register on the Pico 8 site after it went live. So I’m the oldest still active pico8 user after zep and his test accounts. :nerd_face:

It’s a great platform and thanks to my time on pico8 I still code in Lua today, including my GOTY 2023

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I enjoyed the P8 version of Celeste. Possibly more than the final game actually lol.

It would be cool if someone made up a little physical console.

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The RGB30 is the console people seem to use for PICO8.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/comments/16qm6ok/rgb30_is_totally_worth_it_for_pico8/

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Damn, pretty expensive

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Really?

Mine cost $79.99 so roughly the price of Switch 2 game. :sweat_smile:

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Lovely looking console.

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It’s not quite ergonomic enough, sadly