Pico-8 and the Funkey S were made for each other!

https://www.funkey-project.com

Any chance?

That device has an ARM CPU, so maybe the raspbian build would work (but it depends on the exact ARM version and the presence of wiringpi library).

PICO-8 is listed on their wiki as a program that could be ported, because the buttons and resolution are right, but there is no guarantee that it will happen.

The package format for third-party programs is OPK, if that’s the same as OpenDingux OPK then it’s not hard to make (by zep or the community).

Ugh the screen is awful for Pico-8. 240x240px is just below 2x scaling. And at that size you can't afford to letterbox it at 1x scaling. So you'll get super uneven pixelation. Too bad, the form factor looks so nice!

If not PICO-8 Tac08 should run on it. But progress on the emulator has stalled.

I’ve checked and they currently recommend fake08 or retro8.

I still think the GBA-SP box hardware casing with its clamshell design would be perfect for Pico-8 on the go. It's large enough to be able to see the screen clearly.

With 240x160 full-color pixels, you could have the following resolutions:

1. 128x128 centered, leaving 56-pixels blank left and right and 16-pixels blank top and bottom.

2. 256x128 (double-pixels horizontally) centered. It would cut off 8-pixels to the left and 8-pixels to the right and leave 16-pixels blank top and bottom.

3. 160x160 (dithered, choice of filters although "super 2xsai" preferred)

4. 200x160 (dithered, choice of filters although "super 2xsai" preferred)

5. 240x160 (dithered, choice of filters although "super 2xsai" preferred)

6. 256x256 (double-pixels no dither, use top key triggers for scrolling or auto-track 2-memory locations in Pico-8 for video camera x+y usable only with this unique hardware)

I still think that the layout of a game & watch with a square screen would be perfecter!

@merwok, could you please explain or point me in the direction of resources that could explain how to go about getting PICO-8 on a FunKey S?
(assume I know close to nothing about the very technical parts of it, because I certainly don't)

@Emalan-P iirc, it uses squashfs and the launcher configs are rolled into the os image; so you’d have to fork the os source, make launcher configs for pico-8, drop your raspi executable in, and compile your own update

@ridgekuhn, I am not very familiar with Linux at all, nor with forking source code and doing the other related technical tasks. Are there any good resources you could recommend that I could refer to in order to do this? Also, what would be the purpose of creating launcher configs for pico-8? Would it not be possible to just port over the program in the right format through USB?

@Emalan-P Sorry, I was thinking of the RetroFE launcher, I forgot it also has GMenu2x w a file explorer so u can browse all directories. Anyway, I just tried dropping the binaries on mine and none of seem to run, so that's probably that. :(

I am determined to find a way to make it work. I want a cute little portable pico machine. How else could it be done?

I’m afraid it would take several hours to explain operating system basics and find out how the specific OS used here is built and how to configure controls and output.

The screen isn’t right, the buttons are tiny, I think the best way here is to build a custom handheld using a raspberry pi zero, for example: https://learn.adafruit.com/pigrrl-zero

@merwok Ah, I was looking into making my own raspberry pi-based handheld at first, but then I found out that pis are basically impossible to get for a reasonable price right now. That was my first choice, and I wondered if the funkey s could be a functional alternative. But if not, then that's okay. I'll keep exploring my options (unless we eventually get pico 8 w/ editor on smartphones, which I would probably use instead). But thanks for your insight anyway!