P8

Generated by scripts/gen-format-pages.py from docs/data/format-metadata/, FILE_FORMATS.csv and docs/formats-master.csv. Do not edit by hand: change the source, then run the script.

PICO-8 Cartridge Preview.

At a glance

How much Poka reads

B3 Core. Only the main content type or types are decoded (for example geometry but not materials, layers or annotations, or only one version family). The list of gaps is substantial.

Confidence: medium (the reviewer read the code). Basis: Reviewed 2026-10-26: read parsers/poka-pico8/src/main.rs (175 lines) and plugin.json. No unit tests or tests/samples.rs, and the corpus has no .p8 and .p8-cart sample. Covers .p8 and .p8-cart. The whole cartridge is shown as text, under a header with the version, title and author (from the first Lua comments), the sections with their line counts and the first 8 lines of Lua. Judgement: B3: the Lua code, the main content, is shown; the graphics, map and sound are shown only as hex text.

What Poka does not read

• Sprites (gfx), the label image and the map are not drawn
• Sound effects and music are not decoded or played
• Sprite flags are not decoded
• The Lua code is shown as plain text without highlighting
• .p8.png cartridges are not read here
• Files over 8 MiB are cut (flagged)

Libraries

Libraries Poka uses or has assessed for this format, with the status, licence and language the registry records.

• picotool (candidate; MIT; Python; https://github.com/dansanderson/picotool) — Reads and writes .p8 and .p8.png; includes Lua parser and modules for gfx, map, sound and music. No Rust parser found.
• parsepico (candidate; MIT; Go; https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/drpaneas/parsepico@v1.0.3) — CLI that reads gfx and map from .p8 and writes PNGs; code and audio parsing are listed as TODO.

Sources

• parsers/poka-pico8/src/main.rs
• parsers/poka-pico8/plugin.json