:)

I wish it was real...

Cheers,
gizmo

Looks awesome!

Kickstart this! Imagine being able to download the latest games onto it.

This is possible right? Just need to compile it for ARM or whatever is being used. It would be easier if pico 8 were open source.

I would back this up

Jauq and 5 others like this!

'specialy like the Z and X buttons instead of the usual A and B combo.

Although with technology being all advanced right now, I feel only the Pico-8 group, and RETRO fans will backup a kickstarter.

Love the idea though

Hmmmm. For some time now I was thinking about a "storefront" for Pico8 "apps". Maybe if we got tools to make a 16x16 or 32x32 icon along with the screenshot that goes into the cart png, it would be easier to show a couple of carts on a single 128x128 screen with some navigation options :)

It would actually be awesome if by simply running "store" in the console, we would be able to go to the storefront with carts categorised by "W.I.P." / "Finished". Alphabetical / Latest / Top and could download them from within Pico8 :)

I wouldn't pay a dollar for the games on here, so I don't particularly like that idea.

I would pay for a handheld that can run pico 8 though.

Heck I'd love an app really.

I think it would be better if we could just print the cartridge and place it on the handheld in order to play the game.

The cartridge image would need to have all the binary data visible in the image itself for that to work.

I didn't mean paid apps :) But a way to browse and download games from within Pico8 :)

This is beautiful ; _ ;

I'm working on a cart exploration thing similar to Voxatron's that looks something more like a typical console experience -- choose which carts you want in your collection, or check the latest bbs entries etc. I'm hoping it will work out with just the 128x128 screenshots rather than requiring an extra icon or smaller label image.

Level 17/15 ? :)
Looks great but left/right margin of the display should be the same as top margin.

@UrbanMonk: The data is visible but it is very subtle encoded into the pixel colors (zoom in). But, as you said, it would not work because information is lost after printing/scanning.

@movAX13h ah you're right. Nice.

Once we get PICO-8 for the RasPi, something like this would pretty much be a Picoboy.

It would fit nicely on Pocket C.H.I.P.
http://nextthing.co/chip.html

You could even code on it too :)

Oh yeah, I meant to mention that. I backed the C.H.I.P on kickstarter, but the Pocket C.H.I.P was too expensive :( Maybe I'll get it later.

Just thinking out loud here. I'm certainly more of a designer then a game programmer. But I do love the limitations the pico creates, however artificial they may be.

I am a bit curious if a ds version would be possible. I happen to have a DS flash card, but not much technical knowledge of the DS hardware or what it can run.

Porting it would require a few things, like a virtual keyboard, and probably a reworking of the screen buttons/resolutions. And from what I understand most DS apps prefer a limited and very solid memory space, so there would need to be a limit on carts one could make/store with that version. Still, the carts seem small enough to fit quite a lot of them in the "save data" of a standard DS game.

Then again, the architecture of the processor is probably different enough to require some severe trickery to get lua running on it. Alas, probably not worth the effort. Eh, we can dream.

lua def runs on ds, without a doubt at all. I don't know if the performance is good enough though. I seem to recall that the dev toolchain is a bit of a pain as well.

Wow, what a nice system mock-up!

Mine is just a wall of text, but you've seem to have made a 3D Model!
Hats off to you.

(Little note, I don't think the PICO-8 supports Stereo sound).

I'm actually working on modding a beaglebone black into a gameboy case. I plan on running the raspberry pi version on it if I can (among other things)

the bigest problem it's likely to have is that the screen isn't quite tall enough to do 128x128 at 2x resolution

Received a Raspberry Pi 2 recently, it's certainly too bad there is no PICO-8 build for it (yet). I tried the web version, but its expectedly slow. Might build a handheld with it anyway later.

Bit of screen overkill, could've probably gotten a screen better for PICO-8 play.

List of screens found matching PICO-8 Resolution:

Still, that's great!

EDIT: Have you tried trimming down the OS in any means(getting the fastest browser[I don't know which one], making sure only the required dependencies run in the background)?

..and here is another variation of the design.

Cheers!
gizmo

I love wide consoles.
OOOOOHH!

Now I really NEED this.

I'm loving this.

What if, instead of a storefront, we made a game that turned the cartridges into arcade cabs, PCs, consoles, etc to populate a virtual world, and you played as a character that could "buy" these things for your virtual home/setup for quick/easy access, like a subscription tag?

Combined with the kickass hardware I'm seeing here... this is considerably a higher level of "creative" than I'd ever have expected! Makes me wonder if there could be a Droid/iPod/Win10 Mobile version as well.

@TonyTheTGR Still a store front but dressed up as a meta game. Cool idea.

Sweet idea, Tony!

Also, I like how this portable doesn't scream RETRO like other pixelly systems do.

"Retro stuff, Pl0x buy us!!" says the money-grabbing portable.

You could use Intel Edison as a base, being that it uses Atom, which is x86. Then all you need is some light linux with basic window manager (I propose IceWM) that starts pico on load.

//edit dunno where I could get cheap LCDs though to use with such thing so I could try to build one.

Now that a raspberry port has been released, do you have any plans of bringing this to fruition?

Beautiful renderings!

I think you might have to increase the bezel in real life because the LCDs always have one side bigger for the connections. And I don't know if there are 128x128 displays which are that big (1.5" is the maximum I've seen).

(I am actually working on something similar but with a 320x240 display.)

Any pico8 console would have to have bluetooth so a keyboard could be hooked up for portable game dev!

@Jadei 2 usb ports would be fine for me. But bluetooth would be cool to share some tunes.

@TonyTheTGR @alexr virtual arcade as store front?

Microsoft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Room
Sony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Home
Nintendo: thought better of it

@gizmo would love to see this become a reality!

The kicker for this, in my opinion, is the lack of a 1:1 ratio display. I'm yet to find anything that is a square TFT, OLED, etc over 1.5" in size.

@audiohijack maybe a display that let's us see it pixel doubled? 256x256

PocketCHIP has a 420x272 display. The case of the Picoboy would have to cover part of the LCD if that kind of display was used. (Nintendo 2DS takes this approach - "both" screens are on the same LCD and there's a plastic bezel across the middle)

Or a (hopefully easier to source) 320x320 TFT and show the 256x256 display in the middle, with a border of 32 pixels all around? Which is kind of how the Pico-8 window looks anyway?