PICO-8 is a fantasy console: an imaginary machine, deliberately limited (128 × 128 pixels, 16 colours, 4 sound channels), for which thousands of small games — cartridges — are created and freely shared.
Your cartridges go into /recalbox/share/roms/pico8, in .p8 and .png formats (plus .zip / .7z for the Libretro cores).
| Emulator | Core | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Retro8 (Libretro) | retro8 |
Default emulator, free software, shipped with Recalbox |
| Fake-08 (Libretro) | fake08 |
Also free, better compatibility on some cartridges |
| PICO-8 (Lexaloffle) | pico8 |
The official, commercial emulator, the most faithful — install it yourself |
The first two work with nothing to install. If a cartridge refuses to run with Retro8, try Fake-08 through a configuration override — and vice versa.
PICO-8 is commercial software: Recalbox cannot ship it. If you bought it on lexaloffle.com, you can install it yourself and enjoy perfect compatibility with every cartridge.
From the Linux archive matching your machine (Raspberry Pi or Linux amd64 as appropriate), copy two files into the BIOS folder:
/recalbox/share/bios/pico-8/
├── pico8_64
└── pico8.dat
The binary must be named exactly
pico8_64in that folder: this is the name Recalbox looks for at launch. If the archive Lexaloffle provides for your machine names the binary differently (pico8), rename it.
The first time you launch a game assigned to the PICO-8 emulator, Recalbox installs the binary and makes it executable — there is nothing else to do. Then pick the PICO-8 emulator for your cartridges through a configuration override or from START > ADVANCED SETTINGS > ADVANCED EMULATOR CONFIGURATION.
The official emulator embeds SPLORE, PICO-8's built-in explorer: it lets you browse and download the cartridges published on Lexaloffle's BBS, straight from your Recalbox.
To open it, create a file named splore.p8 in /recalbox/share/roms/pico8 (it can be empty) and launch it: Recalbox starts PICO-8 in SPLORE mode. The cartridges you download land in your pico8 folder.
SPLORE requires an Internet connection and Lexaloffle's official emulator: it is not available with Retro8 or Fake-08.