Pico-8: Enabling more than 16 colors on the screen

This is the reason I love Pico-8, and have never really been into other "fantasy consoles". Pico-8 embraces the spirit of the old 8-bit systems (not just the aesthetic) where there are "hardware" secrets that you can discover and abuse. The limitations mimic that of old systems: there are several ways to access memory, multiple ways to do the same things - with tradeoffs to each. If you want to do something crazy, you have to really know the machine and think outside the box.

It's all artificial constraints (though you can easily make good games with resorting to tricks) - but these kinds of old-school easter-eggs make Pico-8 just, joyful!

See also, for more of your Pico-8 needs:

2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20740711

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174427

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14128946

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046487

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13667272

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13598182

(...2017 was a big year)

2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13100468

2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11185855

2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10317026

2020 bonus thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22342295

Others?

Pico-8 was included in the recent Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality (https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality) from itch.io. That bundle was huge and very popular, so you may own it without realizing.

Whoa. Pico-8 looks rad.

Any success stories in using Pico-8 for teaching / pupil engagement would be gratefully received.

Kids love this stuff, and as fully featured as Scratch is, its always good to have alternatives.

I have used pico8 for a while. And even written a few really bad example games with it.

I read and re-read the post in the wiki and it is just complex. Super complex.

There needs to be some really dumbed down examples. Hopefully that will happen over time.

Pico8 rocks. If you are wanting to write a game it is a great way to get started.

Any progress on an open source implementation?

Lovely stuff. Echos of Amiga halfbrite mode.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Halfbrite_mode

Very different than how console games worked.

On the old consoles, say the SNES you had up to 16 palettes each with 16 colors to use for sprites or backgrounds - although for sprites one color would be transparent.