It's like browsing "Featured Carts" in SPLORE... But they are ranked by STARs!
Controls
- ⬅️➡️: previous / next page
- ⬆️⬇️: previous / next cart
- 🅾️: filter by game genre or by year
- ❎: run cart
After you are done with the cart, enter the pause menu and select the last option:
back to ★SPLORE
About
STAR SPLORE aims to help you discover some of the best PICO-8 carts ever made.
- That's why only featured carts are included.
- That's also why carts are ranked by stars, the BBS version of "likes".
As imperfect as these metrics may be, they are the ones we have.
Note: when carts are tied for stars, newer carts rank higher.
Interface
Note: when loading carts from the BBS, STAR SPLORE ignores the version number after the ID to get the latest version of the cart.
Filters
Filters by game genre and by year are provided to improve cart discoverability.
Game genres are obtained from @NerdyTeachers' excelent Curated PICO-8 Games.
Note: STAR SPLORE was actually inspired by @NerdyTeachers' 200 Best PICO-8 Games list.
Updates
New carts won't show up until STAR SPLORE is updated.
STAR SPLORE itself is a regular PICO-8 cart after all. It can't fetch newer carts from the BBS automatically.
The date you see on the top right of the screen is STAR SPLORE's current version. This is the date when cart information was extrated from the BBS and genre information was extracted from @NerdyTeachers' curated list.
Offline
STAR SPLORE can also run carts offline, as long as they are in the same folder. Just make sure you don't rename cart files after downloading them from the BBS.
Note that running multicarts offline can be tricky, no matter how you launch them. Please refer to this excelente article from @NerdyTeachers for more information on the subject. Just expand section 3, "For Multicart Games".
Scraper
On STAR SPLORE's GitHub repository you will find the scraper used to extract information from the BBS.
HTML
You can browse every information and link collected for every scraped cart in this HTML page (download it and open in your browser).
Download
The scraper also creates a file with URLs for all featured carts scraped. You can use that file to download all those carts at once using Wget. Please note that downloading carts from the BBS is perfectly legit according to Lexaloffle's terms of use.
Dumping these 500 carts together with STAR SPLORE in an handheld is a great way to browse and discover some great PICO-8 games on the go, even when you are offline.
Outlines
I managed to squeeze in a couple outlines to celebrate the launch of PICO-8 0.2.7 earlier this month.
I also used rrectfill() on the page counter!
Changelog
- Version 2025-09-16: added filters (by game genre and by year), also adjusted cart names to better fit the interface.
- Version 2025-08-28: celebrating 500 featured carts!
- Version 2025-08-16: initial version.
STAR SPLORE working flawlessly on my original RG35XX with MyMinUI custom firmware!
No wi-fi? No problem. Still can play all featured carts, ranked by stars!
Combat Chopper is now the 500th Featured Cart!
I updated STAR SPLORE to celebrate this... Now you can run Combat Chopper from STAR SPLORE!
This update also changes how version is determined. Originally, STAR SPLORE's version was the publish date of the latest featured cart scraped, which at the time was 2025-08-16, the publish date of the "-3" version of PICO Space.
But Combat Chopper is a cart from 2022 that just got promoted to "Featured Cart" this week, so the "publish date of the latest featured cart scraped" actually didn't change!
Therefore, I changed STAR SPLORE's version to be the date when the scraper extracts cart information from the BBS.
I thought this was pretty cool a while back when I first saw it, and then I just realized you had to scrape data off the BBS and put it into the cart, making this even more valuable!
I guess I had assumed there was a way to access featured carts and star amounts with code. That would be a really nice addition actually, I hope @zep can manage that at some point (maybe it might happen along with the fabled score-sub update...).
Wow, thanks for the compliment, @Munchkin!
I don't know about the "fabled score-sub update" (do you have a link?)), but I'd be really glad to see a "rank by stars" category in SPLORE one day...
@andrejtrindade "scoresub" is a feature that zep has been teasing for years which would allow pico8 carts to save and access high-scores / data associated with users to the bbs. The only official thing about the feature I can find on this website is in the FAQ under the question about pico8's status, but it's been mentioned several times in his social media posts. It's become a meme in the community for taking so long lol. (It'll likely be one of the final pico8 features).
Anyway, I was thinking that other bbs access abilities would go nicely with score sub. Not likely to happen but I can dream!
Nice curated list. If possible, could we get the top featured carts sorted by year? Something similar to https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=167739#p would be helpful.
> Nice curated list.
Thanks, @Verb. Of course, Featured Carts are curated by the BBS, not by me. I just scrape the info and rank them by stars.
> If possible, could we get the top featured carts sorted by year?
Great suggestion!
Please understand, though, that there is no ordering happening in the cart itself. The scraper does the ordering, so that the cart has as little code as possible.
This is necessary because the metadata for all 500 Featured Carts take a lot of space. STAR SPLORE currently uses 90% of the compressed size limit, and I'm saving what's left for future Featured Carts.
So, in order to acomodate your request, here is an alternative version of STAR SPLORE! Carts are ranked by year, then by stars, then by publish date (all of them in descending order).
EDIT 2025-09-16 begins here...
I managed to add "filter by year" (and also "filter by game genre"!) in the latest version of STAR SPLORE, so an alternative fork cart was no longer needed. I removed the embedding, but left the rest of the post unchanged. Thanks again for the suggestion, @Verb!
EDIT 2025-09-16 ends here!
I'll update this post whenever I run the scraper again, so this alternative version of STAR SPLORE will always have the same Featured Carts as the main version.
> Something similar to https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=167739#p would be helpful.
Thanks for the link! I didn't know about the t and tr parameters on the query string, they surely might come in handy in the future!
Just bought pico8 a few days ago to use splore on my trimUI brick, and outside of browsing new and featured, its kinda useless if you want to sort by popularity, so i really appreciate it.
I do have a feature reguest, ive been trying to browse genres in splore and even if you're searching for platformer, or puzzle, its not all that good.
But i saw you mentioned NerdyTeachers and under their curated list you can browse by category as well. So do you think its possible to add a genre selection?
Wouldn't really have to change anything regarding your sorting or anything else, just adding the ability to select a genre and filter out all other games, and if you pick 'ALL' you'd get the same results you do currently.
I'm glad you liked STAR SPLORE, @Jey! And the Trim UI brick looks like a great handheld...
About game genres, though, I'm sorry, but I won't be abre to add such feature.
You see, the BBS doesn't have genres. The author can add tags, which are not predefined... For example, Acid Rain has a "puzzle" tag (among others), while Solitomb has no tags at all.
So how come both games show up when you search puzzles in NerdyTeachers' Curated PICO-8 Games? Well, this classification was added manually, game by game, to NerdyTeachers' database.
By the way, BBS Featured Carts and NerdyTeachers' list are different curations. For example, Solitomb shows up in both, but Acid Rain is not a Featured Cart in the BBS.
Anyway, STAR SPLORE's scraper only extracts information from the BBS.
Of course, a scraper could be built to scrape NerdyTeacher's curated list and feed metadata to a "NerdyTeachers version" of STAR SPLORE...
Unfortunately, NerdyTeachers' curated list apparently hasn't been updated since last year, so I don't know if anyone will have the motivation to built a scraper for a curated list that is not currently being maintained.
EDIT 2025-09-16 begins here...
While using STAR SPLORE myself, I coudn't stop thinking how @Jey's suggestions would be useful. So I added "filter by game genre" (and also "filter by year") in the latest version of STAR SPLORE! I'll explain how I managed to do that in a new post in this thread. Thanks again for the suggestion, @Jey!
> Wouldn't really have to change anything regarding your sorting or anything else, just adding the ability to select a genre and filter out all other games, and if you pick 'ALL' you'd get the same results you do currently.
Well, @Jey, this doesn't change sorting, but introduces filtering. Implementing that would also mean adding code...
It all comes back to that compressed site limit. In fact, even adding genre metadata to each one of those 500 games would likely cross that limit already!
I prefer to save what's left for future Featured Carts, you know?
EDIT 2025-09-16 begins here...
Well, @Jey, I managed to include your "filter by game genre" (and also "filter by year") in the latest version of STAR SPLORE. Again, thanks for the suggestion!
I like this concept a lot, but don't like the online portion of this at all. One of the things I've been attempting to do is something akin to this project specifically (but with my own sensibilities and for my own personal use and evil purposes) the same thing but locally stored carts. I've been around the internet WAY too long to watch another project anchor itself to a house of cards.
In other words, is there any possibility for an 'offline' version of this? I currently have a curated folder of approximately 300 games I think, most being single cart affairs, and it's less than 30 megabytes. That said, I assume there could be some 'icky situations' with some developers including their works in a compilation package like this, even if it's not being presented for profit.
I'm just saying...they're featured now, but they're featured because they're just plain good, beyond the life of pico8 and this website, and so some historical cart pack that floats around might be an artifact that keeps pico8 alive long after we've left behind this earthly plane and the internet is supplanted by whatever the next thing is.
Hey, @hseiken, I'm glad you liked the concept!
> In other words, is there any possibility for an 'offline' version of this?
Well, I'm pleased to inform you that STAR SPLORE also works offline! I'll quote some parts of the original post below...
Offline STAR SPLORE can also run carts offline, as long as they are in the same folder. Just make sure you don't rename cart files after downloading them from the BBS. |
Download The scraper also creates a file with URLs for all featured carts scraped. You can use that file to download all those carts at once using Wget. Please note that downloading carts from the BBS is perfectly legit according to Lexaloffle's terms of use. |
On the original post, the previous parapraphs have links to the URLs file and to Wget.
While downloading the carts with Wget is certainly more user friendly, if you are willing to install python you can download the scraper from STAR SPLORE's GitHub repository and run it yourself... The last script downloads all the featured carts at once!
Dumping these 500 carts together with STAR SPLORE in an handheld is a great way to browse and discover some great PICO-8 games on the go, even when you are offline. |
That's what I did on my handheld...
Enjoy PICO-8 offline!
Right so that solves ONE concern...
The other is...an archive that is passed around...or is that something you wish to not be officially endorsing?
That's all. I see tons of 'oh just hook up to x repository that doesn't exist anymore!' situations so a snapshot, so to speak, put somewhere is the better option than just hoping folks follow a script then later down the road, 20 years from now, some random dude uploads to a forum "oh yeah, I still got this thing I did a script for"...that's chance...vs. if someone does it today....less chance.
Anyway, thanks for the reply and looking through your list, MOSTLY it seems we have similar tastes. :)
edit: and in reading that, it's wishy washy how I'm wording it so lemme rephrase it:
Any chance on a zip file of carts that is something someone can pass around on sites like Internet ARchive?
Your work here is limiting in terms of wide appeal and further more is still tied to the internet this way even if it's to build a local version.
I guess that's my point.
IS THERE GOING TO BE AN ARCHIVED VERSION WITH THE CARTS FOR FUTURE PEOPLE TO BUMP INTO THAT WILL WORK IN 2089?
And I don't mean includes pico8 but just the files/folders all set up to just RUN from command. TO me, that kind of packaging transcends SOME of the internet limits and if the goal is 'spread pico8's best', might as well make it a little more permanent i say.
Okay end of also-rambling edit.
> TO me, that kind of packaging transcends SOME of the internet limits and if the goal is 'spread pico8's best', might as well make it a little more permanent i say.
'spread pico8's best' is certainly the goal, @hseiken! And I do sympathize with your preservation concerns.
However, I don't think I have the right to package carts. I actually looked into Lexaloffle's terms of use when I was building STAR SPLORE... Here is the first paragraph:
By uploading cartridges to the BBS, you are granting Lexaloffle the right to freely use and distribute them for as long as they remain in the cartverse. For example, PICO-8 cartridges will become visible to PICO-8 users and downloadable via SPLORE. All other rights remain with the author by default.
It is clear to me that Lexaloffle has the right to distribute any uploaded carts. And I, as a user, have the right to download those carts. Providing a list of URLs or a script for other users to download them from Lexaloffle seems fair use to me.
But I don't have the right to distribute those carts directly to other people, so I decided not to host any carts on STAR SPLORE's GitHub repository.
I just released a new version of STAR SPLORE.
- You can now filter games by year. Thanks for the suggestion, @Verb!
- You can now filter games by game genre. Thanks for the suggestion, @Jey!
Unfortunately, half the carts are not classified in @NerdyTeachers' Curated PICO-8 Games, which is where game genres are being extracted from. I may try to see what I can do about that in the future - no promises, though...
I have also ajusted the scripts to scrape better cart names.
- Cart name is now obtained from the thread title.
- Version information is removed, so "Dino Sort v1.1" becomes just "Dino Sort".
- Jam information is removed, so "Charge! (LD39)" becomes just "Charge!".
- Long subtitles are removed, so "PICO-BALL: a Sports Game Starring Jelpi" becomes just "PICO-BALL".
- Extra information is also removed, so "Birds With Guns (100 000th post!)" becomes just "Birds With Guns".
I believe this makes the interface a lot cleaner, while the filters improve disoverability.
Have fun!
> I mean, what even IS PinballVania? I don't know!
Haven't played it yet. Part of my motivation for this project is exactly discovering great carts...
NerdyTeachers tagged PinballVania as "action" and "arcade", so that's what you will see in STAR SPLORE.
They didn't take a chance with Feed the Ducks, though...
@andrejtrindade ive only tried it briefly but this is awesome! really appreciate what you're doing with star splore
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