Mighty Pirate was established in Norwich in 1990 by solo-developer James LaGrande.
Back then, the Norfolk radical freeware scene was booming, thanks in large part to the release of the PICO-8 home console. At the market on the weekend, James could be found swapping cartridges with fellow PICO-8 enthusiasts. Later, Mighty Pirate software was distributed on the now-defunct Norfolk Bulletin Board System (NoBBS), which abruptly shut down on the 1 January 2000.
Today, James continues to make games and other applications for the PICO-8. You can check out new releases as well as a collection of old Mighty Pirate software from the early 1990s here.
All Mighty Pirate games are free, open source, and make no use of generative AI.
I've been playing around with PICO-8 to explore what it might be like to use for computer game art and philosophy. Here's my latest:
Obsessive
A tiny art-game about mental health.
Don't let your thoughts get the better of you... Or is there another way?
"This was one of the first 'art' games I made. I had been struggling with obsessive thoughts and had the idea of mixing a basic 'pong' or 'breakout'-style game with phrases that would get stuck in my head. I was playing around with the idea of a game you couldn't win. The more you try, the more you fail. I also liked the idea that, at some point, the player would just get locked out of trying again. That's done through a simple forced save state. I guess it's sort of an anti-game in that respect. It's pretty basic. I made it in about a day when I was feeling a bit low. But I think it kind of works."
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I've been playing around with PICO-8 to explore what it might be like to use for computer game art and philosophy. Here's one of my first attempts:
Should the Louvre Be Burned Down?
A tiny art-game about the avant-garde.
"I made this one after visiting the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy. They had an exhibition titled 'Should museums be burned down?' It was sort of a history of burning art. I loved the idea that a museum could still be bold enough to ask such a question. Perhaps only in France. I then learned that the exhibition was inspired by a question asked much earlier in the 1920s. L'Esprit Nouveau asked its readers in 1921: faut-il brûler le Louvre? Or, should the Louvre be burned down? So I decided to make a little art-game asking that question, and give players a chance to answer it. Yes or no. The player is free to choose. The game ends with some of the answers people gave in 1921."
-- James LaGrande
If you'd like to learn more about the history behind this game, check out this essay by Yann Rocher:
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