Oh, that's interesting. That makes the whole thing a LOT more like an 'actual computer'. Way more interesting to my mind if you include 'and it can run as a replacement OS on this very commonly available hardware, which you're used to seeing with a whole UNIX inside'.
That means anything TIC-80 can do, can also incorporate teeny hardware to host it.
I made this game last year after my first year as a parent. Its also my first ever game and the most fun bits for me were learning how to make the music and sprites. I had no prior experience with either but with tic80 you just kinda open the tab and do it.
I've played around a bit with TIC-80, but I always find myself going back to Pico-8. The larger resolution is nice, but I find in a weird way I'm able to do more with the stricter limitation of Pico-8 than the more lenient TIC-80. Take the sprites for example, Pico-8 you're locked into the same 16 colors all the time (there's actually another secret palette, but it's a bit of a hassle to use), where as TIC-80 you also have a 16-color palette, but you can change those colors to be anything you wish. I find that additional freedom to be almost paralyzing, and many aspects of the system are like that for me.
Best thing about TIC-80 for me is it's Android app. I can use it on my tablet with a keyboard to have a whole game dev environment. I don't think there is any other equivalent of this on mobile devices. I don't know if it's a usecase for anyone else, but I love it.
Worth noting (for parenthesis-lovers!) the Fennel support added by Phil Hagelberg, as demoed e.g. in one of his Lisp Game Jam writeups here: https://technomancy.us/193
I find it interesting they limit the music capabilities to something approximating an NES/gameboy rather than going with a sample/tracker-based system like on the Amiga. That was what really good games of that early era used. (There's an incessant mind bug that these retro computer things need to either use bips and boops or support full .wav playback with no inbetween.)
i spent a very happy month last year making a game with tic80. Honestly its better than pico8 for me: better aspect ratio, standard lua lib instead of a knock-off, and very stable etc
What an ignorant and unnecessarily dismissive comment. While Pico8 did kick off the popularity of "fantasy consoles", there are a number of them now, Pixel Vision 8 [1] would be another example.
https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/tree/main/build/baremetalpi