Modern 8-bit Computers - Commander X16, Raspberry Pi, Pico 8, and more

[Judge Dredd]

What are your thoughts on modern 8-bit computers like the Commander X16, fantasy consoles like the Pico 8, and adjacent single board computers like the Raspberry Pi? Which do you like? Are they a viable platform for games? Have you made or played anything for them?


Every so often I'll end up down a rabbit hole of old computers. There's a romantic idea that everyone knows the hardware in and out, and programming on "bare metal" instead of dozens of layers of impenetrable bullshit. I see these videos, get inspired, and then do nothing.

Old computers are collectors objects for aging nerds. To fix this problem, said aging nerds have started various projects to make a cheap, available 8-bit computer from modern parts. The most famous is the Commander X16, made by the YouTuber 8bitGuy, that has had troubled development. There are many others.

One of the most famous is the Pico 8. A "fantasy console" you can program with strict limitations. A couple of games have made a splash like the Pico 8 port of Doom which is very impressive, but also has no effect on people who complain that the new Robocop and Starfield games have "outdated graphics". The Pico 8 has no physical console as far as I know, it exists purely in software.
I occationally hear about a console called the Famicube, but that seems to be an art and design project instead of something that actually exists. The art is neat though, and I recommend checking it out.

https://androidarts.com/palette/Famicube.htm

Which brings us all the way back to emulation. The whole "bare metal" idea gets thrown out when the most practical way of doing this is via emulation. They end up right back at the original point they were trying to escape in the first place, likely why the Pico 8 is the most successful one in terms of having games on it. But if you're just going to emulate a console, why not emulate an actual 8-bit console?

I enjoy making games using GB Studio. It's software that allows you to make GameBoy games using modern tools and scripting, while still within the harsh limited provided by the hardware. It's fun, even if no one plays the finished results. There's a similar tool for MegaDrive/Genesis that I've not tried. They supposedly work on real hardware too, but I've not tried that. I'm told by other devs it's quite a trip when you do.


Which brings us back around to the availability of said hardware and the cycle begins anew.


Oh, and I put this in games instead of tech because no one is using these machines for real tech things like web browsing or word processing. It's all games and game development.

Edit: Fixed typo.

 

[Byte Doctor]

I find them very interesting myself. I wonder if a lot of the people who make these boards are doing it for some learning experience. Since, it is way more easy to work with a 8-bit cpu than it is to work with a modern day x64 based cpu. As, for games it can be a good way to learn how to develop games from that time period and how to really understand the core game design fundamentals.

 

[Drkinferno72]

I'm more open to having a raspberry pi fallout terminal


The rest are just capitalizing on gen x and boomer nostalgia

 

[Toolbox]

The rest are just capitalizing on gen x and boomer nostalgia

I do see a legitimate reason in making more 8 bit hardware so ancient computers can still be kept kicking, I don't think it's all just for the fun of it.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I wonder if a lot of the people who make these boards are doing it for some learning experience.

I see that as one of the problems. So many of them get a big community, they make some tech demos and ports of old games ...and then nothing. Some games are great as a technical showcase, or as a novice devs first project, but I've yet to see anything on those consoles I'd seriously consider sitting down and playing for fun.

As something made for fun, it's harmless enough, but they seem to fail in their stated goal. Instead these seem like a new toy for collectors to collect, play around with for a couple of days, then throw on the shelf next to their Vic20s.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Which brings us all the way back to emulation. The whole "bare metal" idea gets thrown out when the most practical way of doing this is via emulation. They end up right back at the original point they were trying to escape in the first place, likely why the Pico 8 is the most successful one in terms of having games on it. But if you're just going to emulate a console, why not emulate an actual 8-bit console?

I think FPGAs represent the third path;

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/199-analogue-pocket-promises-fpga-accuracy-for-portable-retro-gaming/

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/analogue-pocket-review-the-greatest-game-boy-ever-made/

https://www.analogue.co/pocket

 

[Pissmaster]

They're neat, but I'm already so overwhelmed with electronics that I don't really have space in my life for any new 8-bit computers. A few years ago I had an idea to write my own NES game, which sent me down a rabbit hole of learning all about it, and, frankly, 6502 assembly programming seems like a hell of a difficult thing to learn for a hobby I can't really monetize. But its been fascinating learning about all the little tricks and roundabout ways developers got stuff to run on such primitive hardware at the time.

If you wanna go down that NES rabbit hole, here are some resources:
https://nerdy-nights.nes.science/ - most popular programming tutorial I found
https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Nesdev_Wiki - wiki for NES developers
https://nescartdb.com/ - database for every single NES & Famicom cartridge
https://mesen.ca/ - Mesen, my preferred emulator that lets you tweak and explore just about everything in a game (source code is available)
https://archive.org/details/color-dreams-source-code-collection - Source code for a few Color Dreams games (unlicensed NES games from the 90s)
https://www.youtube.com/@RGMechEx - Retro Game Mechanics Explained
https://www.youtube.com/@DisplacedGamers - Displaced Gamers (more in depth code analysis)

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

That Famicube looks really neat. I watch a couple channels for retro PC stuff, like PC88 Paradise, and that's enough for me, too many games as it is.

A few years ago I had an idea to write my own NES game, which sent me down a rabbit hole of learning all about it, and, frankly, 6502 assembly programming seems like a hell of a difficult thing to learn for a hobby I can't really monetize.

You'd be better off going with GB Studio to make 8-bit games if you just want the creative outlet of making an 8-bit game playable on actual Nintendo hardware. Seems relatively profitable for a hobby, collectors seem to eat up limited run stuff.

 

[Back me up!]

They're neat, but I'm already so overwhelmed with electronics that I don't really have space in my life for any new 8-bit computers. A few years ago I had an idea to write my own NES game, which sent me down a rabbit hole of learning all about it, and, frankly, 6502 assembly programming seems like a hell of a difficult thing to learn for a hobby I can't really monetize. But its been fascinating learning about all the little tricks and roundabout ways developers got stuff to run on such primitive hardware at the time.

If you wanna go down that NES rabbit hole, here are some resources:
https://nerdy-nights.nes.science/ - most popular programming tutorial I found
https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Nesdev_Wiki - wiki for NES developers
https://nescartdb.com/ - database for every single NES & Famicom cartridge
https://mesen.ca/ - Mesen, my preferred emulator that lets you tweak and explore just about everything in a game (source code is available)
https://archive.org/details/color-dreams-source-code-collection - Source code for a few Color Dreams games (unlicensed NES games from the 90s)
https://www.youtube.com/@RGMechEx - Retro Game Mechanics Explained
https://www.youtube.com/@DisplacedGamers - Displaced Gamers (more in depth code analysis)

Its kind of amazing when you diving into the programming you really start seeing the genius of the the insanity that people were able pull off.

The developer of Micro Mages put out a really good presentation on how they maximized sprite that is very clear and simple to understand for any one curious. Really helps show how developers in the 80s were able to pull off games with such lower memory/storage.

 

[Fcret]

I'm more open to having a raspberry pi fallout terminal


The rest are just capitalizing on gen x and boomer nostalgia

I think 8 and 16-bit toy computers are kind of ideal for teaching computer architecture and assembly programming. I did the CompEng and CompSci tracks in university - in CompEng we used the 68HC11 (a platform which wasn't even produced anymore and was prohibitively expensive in kit form for students) and a fake 8-bit ISA used via simulator for CompSci (which was later replaced with some kind of MIPS).

Modern ARM and x86 are kind of too complex out of the box to really teach the concepts. A system that boots you into real mode (or its equivalent) with easily understandable I/O would be kind of ideal for teaching.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I think 8 and 16-bit toy computers are kind of ideal for teaching computer architecture and assembly programming.

8-bit guy dropped an update video on the X16, and he mentions how he wants the final version to target children's education.

I saw a review of the X16 today, and the reviewer complains that the X16 has a manual when (in his opinion) they should focus on the wiki. I disagree with that reviewer because a wiki is a good reference if you know what you're doing and want information on a specific thing, but it's not good for an absolute beginner.

Whatever criticisms people have of 8-bit guy, or the Commander X16 project itself, I think he at least has the right idea. He doesn't want this becoming just another disposable collectors item for older gen-xers to throw onto a shelf and forget about after a few YouTube videos. If he succeeds will be another story, but he's at least aware of the problem.

He's also including development tools in ROM, so you have better text and sprite editors that still run on "bare metal".

6502 assembly programming seems like a hell of a difficult thing to learn for a hobby I can't really monetize.

Like @SSj_Ness said, you can, as there is a market for homebrew GameBoy and Nintendo games. A channel called RetroBreak reviews some of them. Though I'd argue you shouldn't be doing it for the money anyway.

 

[Coolio55]

I am very interested in this sector. As someone who's increasingly upset at the growing bloat in software, these sort of machines are designed to cater to me.
I'm uninterested in the current growth of technology; I'd just like a formal "platform" for technically unremarkable games so that they can easily be played on everything.

Pico-8 isn't "8-bit" in any vague sense of the word. It uses 32-bit words for 16/16 fixed point numbers. It's graphics are 4-bit. It's all programmed in LUA.
I'd liken it to running a midi through gxscc but that's an emulator for an actual Konami sound chip for the MSX and thus has more claim to "8-bit" than Pico-8.

Arne is a faggot and while his famicube project is interesting he manages to hamstring it in various ways to make it completely unfeasable. The most glaring aspect is the floppy disks. They had already physically stopped producing the things at this point but they're also unreliable pieces of shit that don't hold very much. These are obviously standard 3.5 inchers and are thus superior but the crappy capacity of the FDS disks was one of the reasons that Nintendo switched back to carts.

I'm currently looking at the ZX Next, MEGA65 and X16 communities with great interest.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Pico-8 isn't "8-bit" in any vague sense of the word.

Maybe not, but it captures the spirit of what a lot of these new 8 bit computers are trying to do far better than any of the new computers so far. A strict set of limits that are feasible for one person to understand, while giving enough wiggle room for people to be creative.

Arne is a faggot and while his famicube project is interesting he manages to hamstring it in various ways to make it completely unfeasable.

I don't think it's ever going to be a real thing, and as far as I know he's never taken any steps to make it so. He could have something if he started with an "emulator" kind of like a Pico 8. The Famicube palate seem to be popular enough with hobby projects. And like Pico 8, it fits a nice middle ground between the primitive nature of 8-bit consoles, and the high bar of 16-bit consoles.

I don't like the obsession with 2 button controllers though. Something I think the X16 gets right by allowing people to use SNES controllers.