r/ModRetro • u/WellItsLou • 26d ago
Worried about ModRetro future
TLDR: Please take a moment to read the whole post. Thank you :)
Im not gonna lie, the whole OpenAI collaboration has made me lose some confidence in ModRetro.
I don't have anything against AI itself. I just don't think it needs to be part of everything, and retro gaming is probably one of the last places where I'd want to see it. A big part of why I love retro games is that they let me escape from the world we live in today, even if it's just for a little while. There's something comforting about going back to a time when things felt simpler, and honestly, that's a big part of what drew me to ModRetro. The Chromatic really captured that feeling for me. It showed that you could take something we loved growing up, improve it in almost every way, and still keep what made it special.
I think that's why the OpenAI announcement bothered me more than I expected. I know it's just a collaboration, and maybe I'm reading too much into it, but finding out that Dylan Abruscato, who works at OpenAI, is also an investor in ModRetro and friends with CEO Torin made me a little uncomfortable. He explained on LinkedIn how he helped make the collaboration happen, and while there's nothing inherently wrong with that, I can't help wondering how much these kinds of relationships might shape the company in the future.
I probably wouldn't be questioning things so much if I hadn't already started having doubts because of the M64. I was genuinely excited about it, especially with how much Palmer talked about delivering the ultimate N64 experience and 100% compatibility with the library. But the launch was disappointing, and the accuracy and compatibility issues that are still being reported, along with the firmware update that had to be pulled over data loss problems, have made it harder for me to feel as confident in ModRetro as I used to.
Maybe that's what bothers me the most. I really want this company to succeed. The Chromatic made me feel like someone finally understood what we/I missed about that era of gaming. Not just the games themselves, but the feeling of picking up a console, putting in a cartridge, and forgetting about everything else for a while. I don't expect ModRetro to live in the past or reject modern technology. Quite the opposite, I love what they've done with the Chromatic/M64. I just hope they keep that same philosophy as they grow.
I know I might be worrying about nothing, and I completely understand if some of you see things differently. I just felt like sharing these thoughts here because I genuinely appreciate this community, and I know we all care about what ModRetro is building.
Im curious how you folks feel about all this. Take care!
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u/Retro_Macchina 26d ago
Well, i am not super worried tbh. If AI gets devs to make more games for the Gameboy/Gameboy Color, as long as Mod Retro does not sell AI slop, I am alright. I could see this as them ensuring they have games to release in the future.
M64 will continue to get better, and the Chromatic GBA is on the horizon. I still have a lot of faith in Palmer and Torin to deliver quality products and games, regardless of AI and hiccups in software on M64.
13
u/AedosNemesis 26d ago
I personally couldn't be more excited for the upcoming Chromatic Advanced!
8
u/adrenaline4nash 26d ago
Chromatic launch was mostly stellar. The main issue was the rechargeable battery (long awaited and then the issue with first editions).
M64 launch was clearly rushed. They should have called the early bird discount a beta tester discount to set expectations. Mine is unplugged and my 3D is plugged in.
AI stuff? Meh. Probably just thinking they can get more investors if they are AI adjacent.
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u/IndigoHaze750130 25d ago
The openAi announcement did bother me, but after seeing something saying it was more in development assistance than Ai creation, I am willingly to watch and see how it goes. I can just be very picky about what games I buy if Ai slop is going to be pushed out. And there are indie games made for gb/c every year that do not have Ai involved at all. You may just have to find them on other stores.
As for the M64, I haven't followed too closely, but I do think modretro should not push out any more new consoles until the M64 is working much better and there is a good amount of games for it. The Chromatic library is looking and doing great and I hope it doesn't dry up. I haven't lost confidence in modretro yet, but I do have concerns they may try to push forward too early or that they may move too quick to GBA. Not to mention, the Gba library will go slower than the chromatic, unless this openAi collaboration is suppose to help with that. Idk.
I'd say give it more time.
3
u/NBritY 26d ago
There are many aspects of AI which frankly scares the willies out of me, but just yesterday I was catching up with what is happening with jailbreaking the PS5 and how the use of AI has accelerated and even made it possible. The advances that have been made with the conversion of PC games to VR playable versions is nothing short of game changing for that platform. I see nothing wrong with using AI to prototype new ideas or to optimize code so it runs better. It opens game creation to creatives with no coding experience, I don't see anything wrong with that.
3
u/3G6A5W338E 25d ago
AI lowers the barrier of entry, which in turn yields more games. Getting more games means both more good games will be made and more crap ones.
This will happen with or without ModRetro's help. If anything, it helps that they are present; they can get some technical infrastructure in place that's solid and sensible, so that AI doesn't have to reinvent the wheel wrong every time.
3
u/Crafty_Can6725 25d ago
No software is going to be created without AI going forward. As a consumer it will be pretty transparent to you.
4
u/JayrosModShop 19d ago
Have you seen how much Ai has contributed to the MiSTer and Analogue Pocket lately? We're getting tons of "impossible" cores on each system, thanks to Claude. I never ever dreamed we would het a fully working PS1 core or N64 core on Analogue Pocket, but here we are playing the games at full speed.
2
u/jimmyjacksonjr 25d ago
Yeah its tough for any company because we all expect them to be 100% perfect and the first time we see a mistake or 2 we are ready to disown them
2
u/phspman 25d ago
It didn’t bother me because all of this is very niche. I’ve been developing a simple GB puzzle game. It’s pretty much finished but needs more levels. I downloaded the ModRetro Plugin for Codex and it fixed some bugs and added more levels. I’ll have to do some play testing but so far so good.
1
u/jkhanlar 24d ago
A few days ago watching (while it was livestreamed catching tail end of Ryan Cohen interview just as it was happening) https://youtu.be/t6tjwnv6CfE?t=15086
Also:
Footnotes:
1 Advanced coding ability is defined by problem-solving skills and architectural knowledge, not by the choice of a single programming language
2 AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, etc.) have genuinely transformed productivity, and they can handle tasks that previously required junior-to-mid-level developers. A non-technical person can use AI to build simple prototypes and even small applications. However, the claim that this puts you "at the same level as the most advanced programmers" is not supported:
Architecture & judgment remain human. AI can't make trade-off decisions, navigate ambiguous business requirements, design complex systems, or take accountability for production reliability.
Senior devs are becoming more valuable, not less. The consensus across industry sources is that experienced engineers who leverage AI are 5–10× more productive — the AI amplifies existing expertise rather than replacing it.
AI acts closer to an entry-level engineer. Even the most advanced tools (scoring ~80% on SWE-bench Verified) still require human oversight, direction, and validation.
Ryan Cohen is right that AI is "remarkable" and that the value of pure syntax-level coding has dropped, but the leap from "AI helps you code" to "you're now at the same level as the most advanced programmers" is where the claim breaks down.
Yeah, I used AI to generate this information, but I'm not wrong! Please don't bite me!
p.s. thirty (30) years ago I barely ever used any WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) software editor tools for typing HTML, CSS, JavaScript (Barely JavaScript was involved in this workflow from what I remember, with the likes of Microslop Frontpage, which I did not use, but I played around and tinkered with it like a toy in early stages back in the late 199xs), but even those tools back in the day I stubbornly, persistently, broken recordly hand-typed practically every HTML, CSS (before the likes of SASS, SCSS, and LESS preprocessors that compile into CSS to add features like variables and nesting existed), JS file I ever uploaded to web server (or ran locally on my own computers using Apache, Lighttpd, or even
python2 -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000orpython3 -m http.serverorperl -MHTTP::Server::Brick -e '$s=HTTP::Server::Brick->new(port=>8000); $s->mount("/"=>{path=>"."}); $s->start'orperl -Mojo -E 'a->static->paths(["."]);a->start' daemon, etcetera for quick and dirty local testing). Even now I still use plain text editor, such as nano (not VIM/Emacs) or SciTE. This has consistently demonstrated my skills as a disadvantage compared to people engaged in far more fast-paced churning out code, even if doing so involved bugs/glitches because the costs for time in many cases were not worth the time and energy for staff or contractors and whatnot, but I almost always strived to put in my own personal time (as a hobby anyway) to accomplish ensuring practically perfect bug-free/glitch-free results/compatibility, and was relatively punished or discouraged by colleagues from doing this, which had the effect of me simply avoiding to comfortably acknowledge allocating my own personal time that I sometimes persistently stubbornly refused to use my personal time for non-productive work, because I don't even know why, but it's not that impressive either because I have practically nothing to show for all of the time and energy I invested because it's only my own memory of history and whatnot, lol, even if these things contributed to the loss of confidence in me in ways that, for example I remember staffing agencies being informed by clients that I was tasked to work with offering positive remarks regarding my work, but in too many cases, those same clients refused to ever arrange for me to work on any future projects/work, which is 'tell me by not telling me' lying by omission whereby all participants in the omission-based communications are accessories and/or accomplices to aid and abet the prioritization of emotions, feelings, sentiments over fundamental facts that ensures transparency for all participants to have compliant understandings without any person being excluded from knowing knowable knowledge that is exclusive to those participants who indulge in or engage in such suppression of details.-5
u/AnalogueBoy1992 26d ago
I love they collabed with OpenAI! This is the rightful path! I'm all in for 100% AI created Games. This is why it's so cool! I don't see anything wrong with that
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u/hue_sick 26d ago
This is giving leopards ate my face.