The Sega Pico, sold as the Kids Computer Pico, is an educational console launched by Sega in Japan in June 1993, then in North America and Europe the following year. It targets children aged three to seven and looks like a chunky plastic book: there is no built-in screen, the machine plugs into the family television.
Its originality lies in its media. The cartridges, called Storyware, are genuine illustrated booklets whose every page carries a sensor: turning the page switches the screen and the activity. The console ships with a stylus wired to a touch tablet built into the case, with which the child draws, colours and points at on-screen elements.
Under the hood, the Pico reuses the Mega Drive architecture: a Motorola 68000, the home console's video processor and a sound chip supplemented by a voice playback channel, heavily used for narration. That kinship is why a Mega Drive emulator can handle it.
Its catalogue, mostly Japanese, exceeds three hundred titles and leans heavily on children's licences: Disney, Sanrio, Doraemon, Sonic and Thomas & Friends. Sega reports around 3.4 million consoles sold, and gave it a successor with the Advanced Pico Beena in 2005.
| Manufacturer | Sega |
| Year | 1993 |
| Type | Console |
| Media | Storyware book cartridge |
| Controller | Mandatory |
| Mouse | Optional |
Only one emulator is provided for this system, and it is available on every board: Libretro picodrive, the core specialized in Mega Drive hardware, whose architecture the Pico shares. Its compatibility and speed are both declared as high.
Netplay, softpatching and RetroAchievements are not available on this system, and neither is CRT output. A controller is mandatory; the mouse is declared as an optional device, standing in for the stylus in the drawing and pointing activities. Keyboard and light gun are not supported.
Pico games were designed around a physical booklet whose pages you turned, and a stylus resting on a tablet. Emulated, they remain playable, but the experience necessarily differs from the original hardware.
No BIOS is required for this system.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/pico/
Supported extensions: .pco, .gen, .md, .zip, .7z
The .pco extension is the one used by Pico dumps. The .gen and .md extensions, inherited from the Mega Drive, are also accepted by the core. The .zip and .7z archives are read directly, with no need to extract them first.
No game ships with Recalbox for this system: the folder is empty on first boot, and no game downloader is offered for the Pico.