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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.