What would it take to see pico8 on NES/SNES Classic Mini?

Not just for playing but also for creating. USB keyboards can now be used via a micro USB OTG adapter so you could use it as a development machine.

Of course it would be offline only, you'd have to sync with a computer to get your game off for distribution online.

I'm quite happy to start a fund to make this happen? @zep

Well, it already runs on ARM, and almost all system-on-a-chip solutions these days seem to run ARM instruction sets. If so, it would seem to be a possibility. I guess it would be predicated on those SoC platforms already having a compatible linux OS like ARMbian working on them.

I think someone noted recently though that the Raspberry Pi build relies on some Broadcom libraries, which causes it to fail to run on most (or all, I forget) other ARM-based platforms, so zep would need to address that.

But yeah, I think that'd be a great idea, just as a general principle, not necessarily just for specific platforms like the (S)NES minis.

I have a sense though that zep may be busy with some other matters in his real life. I have no idea what they might be, or if they actually exist, but he doesn't seem to be reading the forum very frequently in recent months. It's unfortunate if so, but ... real life, uh, finds a way ... of doing that.

This is a really intriguing idea!! there is something similar for other consoles called FAKE-08, which is a p8 emulator for various consoles. I suggest contacting the FAKE-08 team on Github asking if they have plans for older hardware.

If not, id love to learn something new and i might tackle the project if @zep is okay with it. ive always been fascinated in the homebrew community and would love it if more people could experience pico, even if they dont have internet.

I remember a video by someone where they made a program called NesOS, which was a GUI operating system for the NES, with on-cart memory and a text editor, so i dont think it would be too hard porting lua over, seeing as its very portible in nature. the one thing that would be hard is size constraints. while pico stays faithful to the limitations of old hardware, filesize only applies to cartridges. pico-8 itself is well over the size limits of a NES cartridge, although SNES might be easier.

If we're talking about the MINI series of consoles, i dont know much about them, but i DO know that they are easier to work with, so that might be a solution to our size limits. The other issue is that PICO-8 requires a 700MHz ish cpu, and the SNES is about 4MHz, so thats another issue. even the 64 is only around 100. gamecube is almost 500, so thats the closest we can get before exiting the retro zone.

Maybe one day we'll get more specific system req's, and then this project will seem more possible. the only console that seems realistic is the wii, which for some reason i cant get a definitive answer on the wii's clock speed. wikipedia says ~700MHz, but reddit says it has 3 cores at 1.1234124GHz per core??? what???

The wii seems realistic, but it would be a tight squeeze. going up a generation would also be pointless because FAKE08 already supports the wiiu.

If we were to tackle this project, the NES and SNES classic consoles would be the best because they seem to have chips, according to most sources, that clock in at 1.7GHz for the NES classic and the SNES classic seems to have the same chip. It says that its a Cortex-A7, and has very similar specs to the Raspberry PI 2, which should be perfect for pico! the only issue is that the classic consoles only will load roms less then 60mb, or at least thats what reddit says. good for us, pico-8 fits well into that 60mb limit! or at least without any carts... the only other hurdle i can think of is that the nes and maybe snes use assembly, which i dont know if LUA and pico-8's weird mishmash abomination of languages can be reverse reverse reverse written in.

The classic consoles seem like the only safe way into this, but maybe once we get more specific device req's, we'll be able to port poor old pico to other things that shouldnt have it. if any of you have any other ideas, then we might be able to work something out and stand more of a chance (if you two are even still on this platform).