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The Pico-8 is great, but https://tic80.com/ is really cool too.

TIC-80 is cool, but it's a clone of PICO-8, and like Doom clones, some of them are great, but they're still not Doom.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that TIC-80 is not as great as PICO-8 is, and I would never recommend it over PICO-8 to someone who wants to start their adventure with game development.

But it is not a clone of PICO-8. It offers a resolution that's very similar to that of the Game Boy Advance, so it serves as a nice transition stage towards GBA development. You can then enjoy your games on a console like Anbernic RG351P that's optimized for GBA games (2x integer scaling, same screen ratio). It's a specific use case, but one where TIC-80 shines.

Just for information. The Powkitty rgb30 is the current defacto pico8 handheld because of it's 1x1 ratio screen running at 720x720 pixels.

Yep. I bought a yellow one with the intention of making it a dedicated PICO-8 machine, and it is wonderful. It's not as perfect as 351p is for GBA, as 5x integer scaling leaves you with some unused screen space, but still, an absolute joy to play.

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