PICO-8 Fruit Jam Reality Console

Retro-compute and game with PICO-8 for Fruit Jam

by John Park

published April 29, 2026, last edited May 06, 2026

posted in Gaming LCDs & Displays/ HDMI

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Project guide

Overview

PICO-8 is a delightful "fantasy console" by Lexaloffle that simulates an imaginary retro system that never existed. It is intentionally constrained to 128x128 pixels with 16 colors, 4-channel chiptune audio, 8KB RAM, 32KB storage per 'cartridge', and a Lua-based programming language.

You can run wili8jam on Fruit Jam for a lovely, tiny computing/gaming experience. This port, by freewili, puts PICO-8 cartridge running, code editing, and a REPL right on your Fruit Jam, just add monitor, keyboard, and gamepad.

You normally use PICO-8 on a computer running Linux, Mac OS, or Windows for a one-time purchase of around $15. However, there are free ports/reimplementations written from scratch that you can run on alternative systems, such as the wili8jam version used in this guide. Note that this version is in its early days and may not run all cartridges.

Parts

Angled shot of assembled mini computer PCB with plate.

Adafruit Fruit Jam - Mini RP2350 Computer

We were catching up on a recent hackaday hackchat with eben upton and learned some fun facts:...

Out of Stock

Angled shot of a Black woman's silver-blue manicured hands on a slim, black keyboard.

Mini Chiclet Keyboard - USB Wired - Black

Add a good quality, slim keyboard to your Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone Black, or other single-board-computer with this sleek black chiclet keyboard. It's a full QWERTY keyboard...

$9.95

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7" Display 1280x800 (720p) IPS + Speakers - HDMI/VGA/NTSC/PAL

Yes, this is an adorable small HDMI television with incredibly high resolution and built in 3W stereo speakers! We tried to get the smallest possible HDMI/VGA display with...

$169.95

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Angled shot of SNES game controller with USB-A cable.

USB Game Controller with SNES-like Layout

This is a generic USB game controller, which plugs into to provide a two-handed gaming experience for retro gaming, or really any game you want to use a handheld rather than...

$4.50

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1 x SD/MicroSD Memory Card

8 GB SDHC

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1 x Black Woven USB C to USB A Cable

2 meters long

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1 x 5V 1A (1000mA) USB port power supply

UL Listed

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1 x 9 VDC 1000mA regulated switching power adapter

UL listed

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1 x HDMI Cable

1 meter

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Controllers

Currently the best option for USB controllers on the wili8jam PICO-8 port for Fruit Jam are wired Xbox 360/One/Series controllers (and most Xinput controllers) and PlayStation DualSense (PS5) and DualShock (PS4).

Since you're probably a pretty DIY type of gamer, I'll point out that controllers made with GP2040-CE in Xinput mode work great!

We're working on adding the generic SNES shaped USB controllers and any Wii nunchuk adapter controller over STEMMA-QT such as the Wii Classic/NES Classic/SNES Classic controllers.

Optional

If you want to immerse yourself in even more retro goodness, consider running your Fruit Jam on a CRT TV or monitor. The Fruit Jam running PICO-8 outputs a DVI video signal at 640x480 which can convert cleanly via a HDMI to S-video or composite adapter to 480i 15KHz signal older TVs desire.

Angled shot of black, rectangle-shaped video converter.

HDMI to RCA Audio and CVBS NTSC, PAL, or S-Video Converter

Do you have a S-Video display, projector or monitor that is not compatible with your HDMI devices? Here's an adapter that will allow you to convert HDMI to S-Video, for older...

$34.95

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Page last edited May 06, 2026

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Install wili8jam on Fruit Jam

The wili8jam project lives here on the freewili GitHub page. Here's how it's described:

A PICO-8-compatible fantasy console for the Adafruit Fruit Jam (RP2350B).

Runs PICO-8 .p8 and .p8.png cartridges from an SD card with DVI video output, I2S audio, and USB keyboard/mouse/gamepad input. Includes an interactive Lua REPL and on-device code editor.

Features

PICO-8 cartridge runner -- loads .p8 and .p8.png files with full game loop (_init/_update/_draw)
100+ PICO-8 API functions -- graphics, audio, input, math, strings, tables, memory, coroutines, cartdata
8-channel audio -- 4-channel SFX engine (8 waveforms, 7 effects) + music pattern sequencer + 4-channel basic synth
PICO-8 syntax preprocessor -- !=, +=, short-form if/while, ?print, // comments, P8SCII glyphs, 0b literals
128x128 DVI display -- 4-bit indexed framebuffer with PICO-8 16-color palette, 3x scaled to 384x384
Interactive Lua 5.4 REPL -- serial terminal over USB CDC and on-screen console
On-device code editor -- syntax highlighting, copy/paste, load/save .p8 files
Cart picker UI -- browse and launch cartridges from the SD card
USB input -- keyboard, mouse, and gamepad via PIO-USB host (simultaneous with USB serial)
8 MB PSRAM heap -- Lua allocations backed by TLSF allocator on external PSRAM

Hardware


Board	Adafruit Fruit Jam (RP2350B)
CPU	Dual ARM Cortex-M33 @ 252 MHz
RAM	520 KB SRAM + 8 MB PSRAM
Storage	microSD (FAT32)
Display	DVI via HSTX (640x480@60Hz)
Audio	I2S to TLV320DAC3100 DAC
Input	USB-A host port (keyboard, mouse, gamepad)
Serial	USB-C (CDC terminal)

In order to install it, first head to the releases page linked below.

wili8jam Releases

For Generic USB Controllers

If you want to use the SNES-like USB gamepad that Adafruit and many other places sell (these are generic and often show up as "Manta controller" or "DragonRise" or generic USB gamepad with VID 081F PID E401, you can use the release linked below:

wili8jam Feature Release

UF2 Download

Click on the wili8jam.uf2 link to download the latest UF2 file to your computer.

Drag and Drop

Plug in your Fruit Jam into your computer with a USB C power and data cable.

Turn on the Fruit Jam.

Next, put the Fruit Jam into bootloader mode:

press and hold BOOTSEL/Button #1
press and release the Reset button
Finally, release BOOTSEL/Button #1

After a moment you'll see the RP2350 drive show up on your computer. Drag and drop the wili8jam.uf2 onto it.

After the file is copied over to the Fruit Jam it will restart and you're ready to hook it up and play! On the next page we'll get it going.

Page last edited May 06, 2026

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Running PICO-8 on Fruit Jam

Plug Things In

Plug in the following:

HDMI cable into Fruit Jam DVI-D Video Output port
Other end of HDMI cable to monitor or TV
3.5mm TRS audio cable into Fruit Jam Stereo Headphone port
Other end of audio cable to powered speakers or headphones
Keyboard into Fruit Jam USB 1 port
Gamepad into Fruit Jam USB 2 port
USB C power into Fruit Jam USB C Power & Data port
MicroSD card into the Fruit Jam MicroSD card slot

Turn on the Fruit Jam's power switch. The PICO-8 startup text will appear and you'll see a prompt waiting for you to type a command. Try these:

> INFO This will show you info about the wili8jam PICO-8 version as well as hardware status and data

Copy Text

WILI8JAM 0.10
PSRAM: 8192 KB
SD: SDHC
AUDIO: READY
READY.

WILI8JAM 0.10
PSRAM: 8192 KB
SD: SDHC
AUDIO: READY
READY.

> HELP This lists all of the commands you can run

Copy Text

** WILI8JAM 0.10 **

COMMANDS:
	LOAD		LOAD < CART >
	SAVE		SAVE < CART >
    RUN			RUN CART
    LS			LS [DIR]
    CD			CD < DIR >
    RM			RM < FILE >
    CLS			CLS
    EDIT		EDIT [CART]
    REBOOT		REBOOT
    INFO		INFO
    HELP		HELP [CMD]
    
HELP < CMD > FOR MORE INFO

** WILI8JAM 0.10 **

COMMANDS:
	LOAD		LOAD < CART >
	SAVE		SAVE < CART >
    RUN			RUN CART
    LS			LS [DIR]
    CD			CD < DIR >
    RM			RM < FILE >
    CLS			CLS
    EDIT		EDIT [CART]
    REBOOT		REBOOT
    INFO		INFO
    HELP		HELP [CMD]
    
HELP < CMD > FOR MORE INFO

> LS This lists the contents of the current directory, or you can use a path such as LS /CARTS to see what's in the carts folder

Copy Text

BOUNCE.P8
CAST.P8
CELESTE2.P8
COLLIDE.P8
DOTS3D.P8
DRIPPY.P8
HELLO.P8
JELPI.P8
SORT.P8
WANDER.P8
WAVES.P8
WILIWAVES.P8

BOUNCE.P8
CAST.P8
CELESTE2.P8
COLLIDE.P8
DOTS3D.P8
DRIPPY.P8
HELLO.P8
JELPI.P8
SORT.P8
WANDER.P8
WAVES.P8
WILIWAVES.P8

Load a Cartridge

> LOAD Loads a program cart into memory so you can run it. Try this:

> LOAD /HELLO.P8 or you can play it casual and simply type

> LOAD HELLO

Run the Cartridge

Once the cart is loaded you can run it:

> RUN

Escape

Press the esc key on your keyboard to switch from the running cart program to the editor. You can use the arrow keys to navigate and then edit the text.

Save

If you edit the code you can press esc again to get back to the prompt.

Then, > SAVE your code with a new file name and then LOAD and RUN it as shown here.

Controller

Here I've loaded up BOUNCE.P8 to test out single button X support.

Here's some CELESTE2:

PICO-8 Cartridges

You can find loads of games and programs for PICO-8 online. Here are some resources:

Here are some curated lists:

Note that this version is in its early days and may not run all cartridges.

SD Card

To play your downloaded games, simply drag them onto your SD card on your computer. Then pop the card into the Fruit Jam, boot it up, and load games from the /CARTS directory.

CRT Usage

If you've got an old CRT television, you can use an HDMI to analog video convert to pretty good effect. Since we're sending 640 x 480 over HDMI many converter boxes can manage the analog output at 480i.

The one I've used here is this model.

Page last edited May 06, 2026

PICO-8 Fruit Jam Reality Console

Overview

Parts

Controllers

Controllers

Optional

Install wili8jam on Fruit Jam

Features

Hardware

For Generic USB Controllers

UF2 Download

Drag and Drop

Running PICO-8 on Fruit Jam

Plug Things In

Load a Cartridge

Run the Cartridge

Escape

Save

Controller

PICO-8 Cartridges

SD Card

CRT Usage

Search

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