A Pico-8 coder named ‘thisismypassword’ has managed to create a Channel F emulator in Pico-8. It required the Channel F BIOS files, and Cart ROMs of the games you wish to play, but it does come pre-installed with e5frog’s excellent homebrew version of Pac-Man.

A Channel F Emulator running on Pico-8 running in a web browser

Some of you may be thinking “What’s a Channel F?” and / or “What’s a Pico-8?”

Pico-8 is a ‘fantasy console’ – in simple terms, it’s a emulator of a console that doesn’t exist, with limitations to what the console can do. Games can be played in a standalone app, or via a web browser.

Fairchild’s Channel F (photo Evan Amos)

Channel F was launched by Fairchild in 1976 and was the first home console which features changeable programmable ROM Cartridges. It was sold under different names in different countries, including Adman Grandstand (UK), SABA Videoplay (Germany) and Barco Challenger (Italy).

You can test out the emulator on this page here: https://f8p8emu.netlify.com