I released a tiny tool for the PICO-8 fantasy console!

Yesterday, I decided to create a desktop clock for the PICO-8 fantasy console in the vein of the JavaScript nixie clock I’ve hacked on last year. So I quickly hacked a bit of code together and since it seems to work, I have now released it on the PICO-8 BBS. You can run it on the web there and it also makes the cart available in PICO-8’s built-in cart browser Splore. You can, of course, also download the cart right here:

The software’s code is available on GitHub and I would be happy if people tested it, especially people from some other time zones. The whole thing is rather easy to use:

This desktop clock shows the time in a pleasant, retro-futuristic way. It shows your current system time and the corresponding offset to UTC, as well as the current date. If you press the UP button, you can toggle between daylight saving time (DST) or normal time.

Pressing X will bring up stopwatch mode. You can start and stop the stopwatch by pressing X. Pressing X again will resume where the stopwatch left off. Pressing O resets the stopwatch. You can return to the simpler clock-only view by pressing LEFT.

The visuals are based on a nixie clock I own that uses old Soviet IN-16 tubes.

Clock Mode:

Stopwatch Mode:

I’m quite happy with it for now, although there are some things I want to change and bugs I need to squash. But that will come later. For now it does what I want and looks quite nice as well.

My first ever cart release! I am quite excited about this.