Five classics, one 8-bit engine

October 13, 2026

WILD 8 started as an open world at NES resolution and became a diorama on a Quest. Underneath it there is now a real engine: tile map, cliffs, 3D view, save slots, dialogue, a map page, sound. So I copied it into its own folder to play with:

create a seperate world / story in a subfolder each, of course trying to re-use the engine if possible and not copying too much per subfolder.... so yes similar to the design playbook the idea is to make more and then remove what doesnt work and deepen what does

The first batch was four small worlds the agent invented. They worked, and they were dull — the most basic levels with exactly ONE mechanic we already knew. So I took the inventing away from it:

let's have more fun with this. instead of asking for your creativity... let's just look at the top metacritic games and try to recreate them in wild-8-vr engine ... pick just one each turn so that it's not too much... these existing 4 you can pretty much scratch = delete

A dark web page titled Worlds on one engine, with five cards each showing a small 3D pixel thumbnail and a PLAY button: GALAXY, CALIBUR and LIBERTY dated 2026-10-13 and 2026-10-12 on the first row, PRO SKATER and HYRULE on the second. Each card has a verb tag such as run, guard, ring out, a SEED tag and a one-line description naming the original game and its Metacritic score — The gallery. I test on a Quest, so every world is one tap from here.

One game a turn

Hyrule came first, Ocarina of Time, Metacritic 99. It is the obvious one, since the engine was already a Zelda-like, and that was the problem. My verdict was ok I mean... it's ok, and the note that shaped everything after it:

please don't take the existing world as canon. think engine vs world. YES you can add new textuers, YES you can add new enemies, NO you dont have to use all the existing stuff.. get it? stay in the engine but dont just re arrange the existing material

So the next one was not a Zelda at all. Pro Skater is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2's Hangar: a two-minute run, a vert pipe, rails, S-K-A-T-E letters to collect and a secret tape, with a new hero on a board and new tiles. The engine had to grow seams for that — the hero's whole movement, his sprite and the top bar can now be swapped out by a world. ok now this is funny haha it's not a great game but a cool idea.

An 8-bit skater in a red cap on a grey concrete floor next to a tall ramp wall, a signpost nearby, the HUD showing a timer of 1:53, goals 1 of 6, best 7,200 and the objective pro score: 15,000 points in one run — The Hangar, from the save slot halfway through the goals.

Liberty is Grand Theft Auto IV, seen from above the way the first GTA was: traffic driving on the right, people on the pavements, cops who notice you, Roman's first four missions. ok the GTA is actually pretty cool.

A top-down 8-bit city block: a brown apartment building between blue glass towers, a man in a brown jacket and a woman in pink on the pavement beside a blue car, a road with a zebra crossing, trees and a dirt path below. The HUD shows cash 0, a health bar, fists, four empty wanted stars and CLEAN, and the objective: see Roman at his apartment — Broker, outside Roman's apartment.

Calibur is SoulCalibur, also from above. The one idea of that game was the 8-Way Run — fighters circling freely on a ring with an edge — and seen from the top, the notes say, that idea is the whole game. Ten rings over ten hazards, ten fighters with weapons drawn in code, guard, Guard Impact, throws, ring outs, best of three up a ladder to Nightmare and Inferno. It got the loudest verdict of the five: wow haha actually great.

A dark stone hall from above, with seven small 8-bit fighters standing around holding swords, a staff and a shield, the green-shirted player in the middle beside a signpost. The HUD reads THE STAGE OF HISTORY, wins 0, cleared 0 of 8, and the objective: choose a warrior in the hall and climb the ladder — The hall where you pick your fighter by walking up to them.

Galaxy is Super Mario Galaxy: small planets in the dark that you run over and come back round on the other side of, launch stars, star bits, Lumas, six galaxies, four bosses and Bowser.

An 8-bit plumber in a red cap on a blue checkered floor floating in starry space, with a princess in a pale blue dress, star-shaped creatures in green, yellow, blue and black, coins and a signpost around him. The HUD shows 3 stars, 30 star bits, 0 coins and THE COMET OBSERVATORY, and the objective: talk to the pale Luma on the observatory — The Comet Observatory, three stars in.

How a world is made

Each world is one folder with two files. NOTES.md is written first, in plain words: what the original's one idea was, what stays the engine's, what is new, and what to judge after playing — for Calibur, whether a Guard Impact can be timed by eye at sixty ticks a second. Then world.js, a single call that describes the land, the people and the quests. Everything else is shared, and without the world parameter the page is still the stock game, checked against it so the original never drifts.

worlds: five, one per turn, over two evenings
per world: a notes file and one script of 400–600 lines
shared: the WILD 8 engine and a 340-line base
dropped: the first four, made up by the agent
runs on: a browser with a keyboard, or a Quest 3 as a diorama

Still rough

All five are marked as seeds: made, not yet judged and deepened. Galaxy is the newest and has no verdict yet. The screenshots are the flat view in a desktop browser; in the headset the same worlds sit on a table in front of you. It needs a keyboard or a Quest, no touch controls.

The worldsgallery, press a card to play Play CaliburSoulCalibur, from above Play LibertyGTA IV, top-down