LavaEmu v0.2.0

LavaEmu plays 文曲星 (Wenquxing) LAVA games on the Playdate. It comes with twenty-four English fan translations.

New in v0.2.0

• Nine more games (24 in all): Magic Tower, Legend of the Brave, Rush Out the Tunnel, Tetris, Diamond Blocks, Phantom Fighter, Magic Blocks, Billiards Master and Power Ski.
• Key hints follow the keys the game is reading: Yes/No prompts put Yes and No on the D-pad (fixed for Frog Monopoly's "Change the players?"), Ⓐ answers Yes, and the hint timing scales with the game's pace.
• In Phantom Fighter and Billiards Master, Ⓐ fires or charges only during play and is Enter in the menus.
• The on-screen keyboard opens by itself on text fields and slides in and out (press any button to hurry it).
• Black border by default; Chinese titles in the game list no longer clip.

Download LavaEmu.pdx.zip, then sideload it at play.date/account/sideload or unzip it into the Games folder of the Playdate's data disk.

Unofficial fan translations. These games were made by Chinese hobbyist developers in 2003–2007 for the Wenquxing electronic dictionaries. The English translations are unofficial fan work, not made or endorsed by the original authors or by any rights holder. Some authors asked, in the copyright notes of the time, that their games not be modified without permission. We read those notes as aimed at the scene back then and at rival devices, and offer these translations in that spirit, 20 years on, with full credit. If you are one of the authors and would like your game removed, please open an issue and we will take it down.

Games

English	Original	Kind
Frog Monopoly	蛙蛙大富翁	Richman-style board game
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney	逆转裁判	fan port of The First Turnabout
New Heroes' Altar	新英雄坛说	single-player MUD-style wuxia RPG
Heroes of Mount Shu	蜀山群侠传	xianxia RPG
Sky & Land	幕天席地	action RPG
Sky & Land II: The Sealing Stone	幕天席地2：封印之石	action RPG
Mario Pipes	水管马里奥	Mario Bros.-style platformer
The Millionaire of 3 Kingdoms	富甲天下	Three Kingdoms board game
Three Kingdoms	三国志	strategy
The Story of the Snowman	雪人传奇	Snow Bros.-style platformer
WarCraft	WarCraft (魔兽争霸)	turn-based Warcraft III-style strategy
Pocket Monsters Grey	口袋 (灰度版)	Pokémon Gold/Silver demo
High School Legend	中学传奇	RPG demo
Jianghu	江湖	wuxia RPG
Worms	百战天虫	LavaX artillery game
Magic Tower	魔塔	Tower of the Sorcerer-style puzzle RPG
Legend of the Brave	勇者传说	one-screen puzzle platformer
Rush Out the Tunnel	Rush Out the Tunnel	one-button cave flyer (originally in English)
Tetris	俄罗斯方块	falling blocks, six modes
Diamond Blocks	钻石方块	Columns-style match three
Phantom Fighter	幻影战机	side-scrolling shoot-'em-up
Magic Blocks	魔法方块	Columns-style puzzle
Billiards Master	撞球高手	pool against the clock
Power Ski	动力滑雪	downhill race with stunts

Controls

• D-pad = arrows, Ⓐ = Enter, Ⓑ = Esc.
• Hold Ⓑ + D-pad for each game's four most-used keys (shown above the screen).
• Undock the crank for the game's key palette: turn to pick, Ⓐ to press. The last item opens a full keyboard.
• Menu → options: save states (3 slots), machine pace, border, flicker grey, performance overlay.

Notes

• The VM matches our reference VM (lavaemu, ported from the MIT GVmakerSE/MyGVM) frame for frame on every game's test routes. The first fifteen ran their openings at 30 fps on a Rev B Playdate; the nine new ones have been tried on one.
• The games were tested on emulators only, not on original Wenquxing hardware.
• Trademarks (Phoenix Wright and Ace Attorney: Capcom; Mario: Nintendo; Pokémon: Nintendo/Creatures/GAME FREAK; Worms: Team17; Warcraft: Blizzard; Tetris: The Tetris Company) belong to their owners. Neither the fan games nor these translations are affiliated with them.
• Credits for every game, the VM and the font are in the README and on the credits screen.

Made with AI: written by Claude (Anthropic) with gopherbone, who tested it on a real Playdate.

LavaEmu v0.1.0

LavaEmu plays 文曲星 (Wenquxing) LAVA games on the Playdate. It comes with fifteen English fan translations.

Download LavaEmu.pdx.zip, then sideload it at play.date/account/sideload or unzip it into the Games folder of the Playdate's data disk.

Unofficial fan translations. These games were made by Chinese hobbyist developers in 2003–2007 for the Wenquxing electronic dictionaries. The English translations are unofficial fan work, not made or endorsed by the original authors or by any rights holder. Some authors asked, in the copyright notes of the time, that their games not be modified without permission. We read those notes as aimed at the scene back then and at rival devices, and offer these translations in that spirit, 20 years on, with full credit. If you are one of the authors and would like your game removed, please open an issue and we will take it down.

Games

English	Original	Kind
Frog Monopoly	蛙蛙大富翁	Richman-style board game
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney	逆转裁判	fan port of The First Turnabout
New Heroes' Altar	新英雄坛说	single-player MUD-style wuxia RPG
Heroes of Mount Shu	蜀山群侠传	xianxia RPG
Sky & Land	幕天席地	action RPG
Sky & Land II: The Sealing Stone	幕天席地2：封印之石	action RPG
Mario Pipes	水管马里奥	Mario Bros.-style platformer
The Millionaire of 3 Kingdoms	富甲天下	Three Kingdoms board game
Three Kingdoms	三国志	strategy
The Story of the Snowman	雪人传奇	Snow Bros.-style platformer
WarCraft	WarCraft (魔兽争霸)	turn-based Warcraft III-style strategy
Pocket Monsters Grey	口袋 (灰度版)	Pokémon Gold/Silver demo
High School Legend	中学传奇	RPG demo
Jianghu	江湖	wuxia RPG
Worms	百战天虫	LavaX artillery game

Controls

• D-pad = arrows, Ⓐ = Enter, Ⓑ = Esc.
• Hold Ⓑ + D-pad for each game's four most-used keys (shown above the screen).
• Undock the crank for the game's key palette: turn to pick, Ⓐ to press. The last item opens a full keyboard.
• Menu → options: save states (3 slots), machine pace, border, flicker grey, performance overlay.

Notes

• The VM matches our reference VM (lavaemu, ported from the MIT GVmakerSE/MyGVM) frame for frame on every game's test routes. Every game ran its opening at 30 fps on a Rev B Playdate.
• The games were tested on emulators only, not on original Wenquxing hardware.
• Trademarks (Phoenix Wright and Ace Attorney: Capcom; Mario: Nintendo; Pokémon: Nintendo/Creatures/GAME FREAK; Worms: Team17; Warcraft: Blizzard) belong to their owners. Neither the fan games nor these translations are affiliated with them.
• Credits for every game, the VM and the font are in the README and on the credits screen.

Made with AI: written by Claude (Anthropic) with gopherbone, who tested it on a real Playdate.