PICO-8 is a fantasy console: a machine that never physically existed, whose specifications were invented from scratch and deliberately limited. Created in 2015 by Lexaloffle Games (Joseph "zep" White), it is the best known of its kind: a 128 × 128 pixel screen, a fixed 16-colour palette, four sound channels and a 32 KB cartridge. Those limits are not a flaw, they are the whole point of the machine: they force authors to keep things essential and give every PICO-8 game its family resemblance.
PICO-8 is also a complete creation workshop: the code editor (in Lua), the sprite editor, the map editor and the music tracker all live inside the console itself. Cartridges are published by their authors on the official BBS as .p8.png images — a nice-looking cartridge picture that actually contains the game — and there are now tens of thousands of them. The original version of Celeste, written in four days on PICO-8 back in 2015, remains the best example of what the machine can do.
| Type | Fantasy console |
| Author | Lexaloffle Games (Joseph White) |
| Availability | 2015 |
| Resolution | 128 × 128 pixels |
| Palette | 16 fixed colours |
| Cartridge | 32 KB |
| Sound | 4 channels |
| Language | Lua |
| Controller | Mandatory |
📷 Screenshot coming soon:
system-pico8.png
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro retro8 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro fake08 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| pico8 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
The default emulator is Libretro retro8, available on every board; fake08 is the second choice and is often more compatible with recent cartridges, so both are worth trying. Netplay and RetroAchievements are not available on this system. CRT output is supported by retro8 and by the official software, but not by fake08.
PICO-8 is commercial software. Recalbox does not ship it and cannot ship it. The two libretro cores retro8 and fake08 are free reimplementations, included with Recalbox: they let you play community cartridges without buying anything. The third emulator in the list,
pico8, runs the real PICO-8 software, which you must buy from the Lexaloffle website and install yourself — see the Use the standalone emulator guide.
No BIOS is required for this system.
Put your cartridges in:
/recalbox/share/roms/pico8/
Accepted extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Libretro retro8 | .p8 .png .zip .7z |
| Libretro fake08 | .p8 .png .zip .7z |
| pico8 | .p8 .png |
Cartridges downloaded from the Lexaloffle BBS are .p8.png files: copy them as they are, without renaming or converting them. The .p8 format is the same cartridge in text form, directly readable and editable in any text editor.
Not every cartridge behaves identically on the three emulators: the free cores do not implement every function of the latest PICO-8 releases. If a game refuses to start, switch emulator from the game menu before concluding that the cartridge is broken.