I’m still on my Pico 8 kick. It kills me how many hilarious demakes there are for this little fantasy console. You can play all of these right in your browser – you even get touchscreen controls if you’re on a phone or tablet but certain ones like Linecraft and Pico Zombie Garden aren’t really playable without a mouse.

A pixelated character named Lonk navigates a grassy path near a river, approaching a building entrance in a retro video game landscape.

The Story of Zeldo

Pretty self explanatory. It’s definitely not Zelda, but it kinda is.

A pixel art landscape reminiscent of a certain sandbox video game with blocky mountains, trees, and a blue sky.

Linecraft

2.5-D Minecraft with OG Doom style controls. You can’t look up or down if you’re playing with a d-pad, so it’s better in a browser than an emu console. And they’re definitely not blocks; they’re lines.

A pixel art-style video game scene depicts a character in a forest with hearts representing health and an inventory displaying a pickaxe.

Terra

Terraria is already a demake of Minecraft in a lot of ways. Well this is a demake of that.

A pixellated forest landscape with trees, some grass, a character standing in the middle and various HUD items like health and inventory

Pico Zombie Garden

8-bit Plants vs Zombies

A low poly spaceship flies over a green terrain with two large structures in a retro-style game, displaying a shield bar indicator.

PicoFox

StarFox 64 absolutely slapped. The SNES version felt kinda clunky and hard to control. This is harder and clunkier.

A screenshot of what totally looks like old school Donkey Kong but it’s definitely not that

Dinky Kong

Honestly this somehow seems more advanced than the original Donkey Kong in certain ways. It’s pretty close but more pixely and more neon flashing lights.

A character that looks suspiciously like Luigi from SMB but he’s smoking a cigarette and contemplating life while he nears the end of level flagpole

Ennuigi

OMG this one is my favorite! It’s like Super Mario Bros, but you’re Luigi Ennuigi and you just walk around smoking cigarettes and getting introspective and sentimental. It’s kind of depressing.

I’m sure there are plenty of other sick demakes; these are just the ones I’ve stumbled upon so far. Pico 8 has been around for over a decade at this point and there’s no shortage of awesome community made cartridges. I love this kind of wacky stuff.