Top 5 Pico-8 Games (I've Played So Far)

Avarian subjective top 5 Pico-8 games of various genres, released in last few years. Start your chunky pixel journey here!
Play the games:
Poom - freds72.itch.io/poom
R-Type - www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=4...
Mot’s Grand Prix - www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=9...
Freezing Knights - www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=1...
Shadows of Dunwich - www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=6...
00:00 Top 5 Pico-8 Games
00:28 Poom
01:36 R-Type
02:48 Mot's Grand Prix
03:50 Freezing Knights
04:49 Shadows of Dunwich
06:33 Outro
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Music: Kevin MacLeod - Welcome to the Show
Kevin MacLeod - Voxel Revolution /// incompetech.com / CC-BY 4.0

[@thejoyofsticks]

Great intro to the Pico8 gamespace! Cheers, bud. I’ve always thought that the best creativity is borne out of limitation. It’s great seeing games with an Atari Lynx aesthetic yet with a bit more grunt under the hood. Love it. Shadows of Dunwich is a great example. It seems like there is quite a lot of maths/physics etc going on that would be difficult to achieve on 80s hardware. That Doom clone is clearly a labour of love. The way the character’s sidestep slides is so authentic! 😂

[@LastofAvari]

Thanks, Marc! Pico-8 is an interesting virtual platform indeed, even though I think it could use a slightly higher screen resolution and a better colour palette. This Top-5 video performed abnormally well. I gotta make another one of these sooner than later.

[@JimPlaysGames]

Really impressive games made with the limitations of the Pico-8 and a great video showing them off!

[@LastofAvari]

Thanks, Jim! If I do another Pico-8 top 5 video it will probably be about strategy games, cause Pico-8 has few ones worth mentioning (including REAL-TIME, which to me is pure magic).

[@scorpiomelancholia1559]

Missed opportunity to call that r-type game p-type As in pico type 😂

[@aicapitan3279]

thats stupid

[@scorpiomelancholia1559]

@@aicapitan3279 true 😂

[@LastofAvari]

Why don't we call it RAWR:3-type while we at it. That's not very clever either, but it's cute at least :)

[@aicapitan3279]

now thats clever! bravo!@@LastofAvari

[@Loggins1969]

That R-Type is impressive

[@LastofAvari]

It is pretty good.

[@sburk.87]

Awesome games! Need to fire up PICO-8 pretty soon! 😂

[@LastofAvari]

They really are. Thanks for the comment! 🕹️

[@AnnoyedPancake-mf8bd]

Trust me, try birds with guns. It's super addicting with super high replayability

[@LastofAvari]

I tried it before and it was very good indeed! Here's the video - kzbin.info/www/bejne/fmq4gmt5p7qFo7c

[@EliezerDeMB2]

Poom pra mim é o auge do potencial do pico 8

[@LastofAvari]

I agree.

[@marvinbavarian3236]

Need to add this system on retroarch 😅

[@LastofAvari]

Indeed!

[@Loggins1969]

What is the resolution on Pico8

[@LastofAvari]

128x128. It's less then a Gameboy, but more colours. A bit too low if you ask me.

[@Loggins1969]

@@LastofAvari Resolution is stamp sized, but nice colors!

[@brianbergmusic5288]

I enjoy oldschool action games -- good sprite art, to me, leaves the imagination to wander with curiosity. That being said, wouldn't the point of a fantasy console be to do something innovative/different with your granddad's tech? I find it disappointing that the first two games in this list already exist in an OG state and I would, therefore, prefer to play the original titles. Maye Pico-8 is best suited for an educational tool instead of a new toy? Maybe it's better for solo-developers who simply do not have enough time to make polished 16-bit sprite art (which can be *very* time consuming if you allow perfectionism or complex animation). I'm all for the Pico-8 and wish for it to succeed. I like how it's a framework that can run on just about anything. I'm nostalgic for that era and do believe in artistic constraints. I'm honestly rooting for it.

[@LastofAvari]

There are hundreds of Pico-8 games of varied quality and a lot of them are not demakes, so there's some original content too. As far as Pico-8 "hardware" restrictions go - they are very arbitrary, but you gotta ask Zep the Pico-8 creator about them. I personally think the 64K code size limitation is completely nonsensical + the color palette with 0 pure/prime colors kinda sucks, but what ya gonna do, right? Anyway, even with all this nonsense, some really clever people can do fascinating things.

[@KillahMate]

@@LastofAvari I think that many Pico-8 developers who feel this way may upgrade to Lexaloffle's recently released Picotron, which is kind of the Amiga 500 to Pico-8's Gameboy Color, with a higher resolution and a larger + user-defined palette, and is planning to support a new cartridge type with unlimited size (among many other things).

[@DonOmar00]

Can u emulate this 8 pico on Android phone?

[@LastofAvari]

There's this app, but it's outdated, so newer games may not work - play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ylstudios.p8player&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1