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LavaEmu v0.1.0

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@gopherbone gopherbone released this 06 Oct 00:06
· 10 commits to main since this release

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.