P8SCII


You may have heard of something called "ASCII" (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). It is an ordered sequence of numbers to represent individual characters in computers. The characters could be letters, numbers, punctuation marks, symbols, etc. In ASCII, each character is assigned a unique numeric value or "character code". For example, the ASCII code for the uppercase letter 'A' is 65, while the code for the lowercase letter 'a' is 97.

PICO-8 has its own sequence of characters in its own order. We call these "P8SCII" for fun. Below is the full list of P8SCII characters from 0 to 255, separated into their groups.

You can use chr() and ord() to switch between the P8SCII characters and their ordinal number values.


(0-15)  Control Codes

From numbers 0 to 16, the P8SCII "characters" are actually control codes rather than symbols. These are advanced options that you can use inside of print() to change certain settings. See more about how to use these in the Special Control Commands page.


"Ord" = Ordinal Number Value

Ord Code Control
0 \0 terminate printing
1 \* repeat next character this number of times.
2 \# draw solid background with this color number.
3 \- shift cursor horizontally by a value minus 16 pixels
4 \| shift cursor vertically by a value minus 16 pixels
5 \+ shift cursor by two values minus 16 pixels on X and Y axes.
6 \^ special commands (see here)
Ord Code Control
7 \a audio commands (more below)
8 \b backspace
9 \t tab
10 \n newline
11 \v decorate previous character (more below)
12 \f set foreground colour (text color)
13 \r carriage return (move cursor to start of same line)
14 \014 switch to custom font (memory 0x5600)
15 \015 switch to default font


(16 - 31) Symbols

"Ord" = Ordinal Number Value | "Chr" = Character

Ord Chr
16 ▮
17 ■
18 □
19 ⁙
20 ⁘
21 ‖
22 ◀
23 ▶
Ord Chr
24 「
25 」
26 ¥
27 •
28 、
29 。
30 ゛
31 ゜


(32 - 127) ASCII Numbers, Letters, and Punctuation

"Ord" = Ordinal Number Value | "Chr" = Character


These all correspond to the standard ASCII numbers and characters. Note that the uppercase letters (A-Z) are actually puny font in PICO-8, while the lowercase letters (a-z) are printed as the normal PICO-8 font which looks like all caps.

Ord Chr
32 (space)
33 !
34 "
35 #
36 $
37 %
38 &
39 '
40 (
41 )
42 *
43 +
44 ,
45 -
46 .
47 /
48 0
49 1
50 2
51 3
52 4
53 5
54 6
55 7
56 8
57 9
58 :
59 ;
60 <
61 =
62 >
63 ?
64 @
Ord Chr
65 A
66 B
67 C
68 D
69 E
70 F
71 G
72 H
73 I
74 J
75 K
76 L
77 M
78 N
79 O
80 P
81 Q
82 R
83 S
84 T
85 U
86 V
87 W
88 X
89 Y
90 Z
91 [
92 \
93 ]
94 ^
95 _
96 `
Ord Chr
97 a
98 b
99 c
100 d
101 e
102 f
103 g
104 h
105 i
106 j
107 k
108 l
109 m
110 n
111 o
112 p
113 q
114 r
115 s
116 t
117 u
118 v
119 w
120 x
121 y
122 z
123 {
124 |
125 }
126 ~
127 ○


(128 - 153) PICO-8 Glyphs

 

These are special characters unique to PICO-8. You can manually type these glyphs into PICO-8 by holding Shift while pressing a certain letter. Here are the glyphs with the corresponding letter to use with Shift. The arrow and button keys are even recognized in btn() and btnp() functions.

"Ord" = Ordinal Number Value | "Chr" = Character

Ord Chr Key Press
128 █ shift + A
129 ▒ shift + B
130 ? shift + C
131 ⬇️ shift + D
132 ░ shift + E
133 ✽ shift + F
134 ● shift + G
135 ♥ shift + H
136 ☉ shift + I
137 웃 shift + J
138 ⌂ shift + K
139 ⬅️ shift + L
140 ? shift + M
Ord Chr Key Press
141 ♪ shift + N
142 🅾️ shift + O
143 ◆ shift + P
144 … shift + Q
145 ➡️ shift + R
146 ★ shift + S
147 ⧗ shift + T
148 ⬆️ shift + U
149 ˇ shift + V
150 ∧ shift + W
151 ❎ shift + X
152 ▤ shift + Y
153 ▥ shift + Z


(154 - 203) Japanese Hiragana

"Ord" = Ordinal Number Value | "Chr" = Character

Ord Chr
154 あ
155 い
156 う
157 え
158 お
159 か
160 き
161 く
162 け
163 こ
164 さ
165 し
166 す
167 せ
168 そ
169 た
170 ち
171 つ
172 て
173 と
174 な
175 に
176 ぬ
177 ね
178 の
Ord Chr
179 は
180 ひ
181 ふ
182 へ
183 ほ
184 ま
185 み
186 む
187 め
188 も
189 や
190 ゆ
191 よ
192 ら
193 り
194 る
195 れ
196 ろ
197 わ
198 を
199 ん
200 っ
201 ゃ
202 ゅ
203 ょ


(204 - 253) Japanese Katakana

"Ord" = Ordinal Number Value | "Chr" = Character

Ord Chr
204 ア
205 イ
206 ウ
207 エ
208 オ
209 カ
210 キ
211 ク
212 ケ
213 コ
214 サ
215 シ
216 ス
217 セ
218 ソ
219 タ
220 チ
221 ツ
222 テ
223 ト
224 ナ
225 ニ
226 ヌ
227 ネ
228 ノ
Ord Chr
229 ハ
230 ヒ
231 フ
232 ヘ
233 ホ
234 マ
235 ミ
236 ム
237 メ
238 モ
239 ヤ
240 ユ
241 ヨ
242 ラ
243 リ
244 ル
245 レ
246 ロ
247 ワ
248 ヲ
249 ン
250 ッ
251 ャ
252 ュ
253 ョ


(254 - 255) Arcs

"Ord" = Ordinal Number Value | "Chr" = Character


Ord Chr
254 ◜
255 ◝

Images in this Guide by NerdyTeachers is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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11 Aug 2026

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