Comes from things like: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
More here: https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
Lots of activity in this space recently, there are more at https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
Not an exhaustive list but check this out: https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
A related topic (that the title initially made me think of) is fantasy consoles like the PICO-8, although those appear to commonly use high-level programming languages like Lua.
There are all sorts of open-source alternatives!
Here's a list: https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
My personal favorite is the TIC-80: https://tic.computer/
And if you're looking for a straight clone of the PICO-8, check out PicoLove: https://github.com/picolove/picolove
You can have a look there: https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
I hypothesize "fantasy consoles"* are potentially fertile ground for young developers. They impose a lot of restrictions, but to someone starting out that means fairly low limits to understanding the basics of the environment (as opposed to something like UE4). They're also cheap or free. And some of them (like PICO-8) host user-created games.
PixelVision8:
Found it via this list https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy.
here are some other fantasy consoles:
https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
Oh damn, such a rabbit hole :-p. Also found this list [1].
A couple on the list run BASIC! E.g. [2].
I just learned there's this thing "Windows 10 IoT", [3] a Win10 version for low power devices like the raspberri pi.
Would be interesting to try to run B8 in there!
1: https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
2: https://store.steampowered.com/app/767240/BASIC8/
3: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/Downloads