This PICO-8 Handheld is No Fantasy

What happened

This PICO-8 Handheld is No Fantasy, according to Hackaday. The PICO-8 is what is known as a ‘fantasy console’– you can program it, and there are oodles of games, but it’s not actually the 8-bit console it pretends to be. It’s a virtual machine, one that can run on top of any modern OS.

That’s rather overkill for an 8-bit virtual machine, but it’s what he had on hand, and it makes for an easy build. The real hero of the build is the 720 by 720 pixel IPS display that matches the PICO-8’s square aspect ratio and takes up most of the real estate on the handheld.

Since it’s so easy to do these days, everything lives on a custom PCB from his sponsor that gives the handheld good mechanical stability. He’s shared the PCB and everything else he can on a google drive , though note that the fantasy console itself is not open source (published so anyone may read, use and change the code), and would need purchased to finish the project.