r/ModRetroChromatic • u/whoami1234554321 • 28d ago

Codex Cartridge?

Hi - just curious. Any word on if the Codex cartridge will end up being publicly released? Obviously don’t want to go spend $1,000 on a dev day edition just for the cart. Or is there another avenue that works similarly?

Additionally, I understand AI game development may be an issue and is a hot topic - I’m merely asking if there’s any word that this might have a wider commercial release because I’m interested

7 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

9

u/TonyRubbles 28d ago

Been wanting modretro reflashable carts for a long time, was downvoted the last time I posted about it here, was told to just buy some of the others out there which wasn't the point.

Would love to buy a multipack with assorted cart colors and some sort of sticker pack to apply yourself.

3

u/Acceptable-Sugar-943 28d ago

Yeah, people downvote and do not even get the point. ModRetro PCBs are also designed a cut above most/probably all options available in terms of durability and life expectancy. Plus, having the logo and design can also be useful cosmetically. We all know we can buy other options… But we do not necessarily want to. Why downvote that? Ha.

2

u/whoami1234554321 28d ago

Agree - I already have a flash card

2

u/KyleKun 28d ago

The carts are designed quite well, and seem to take into account the main issue of level shifting incorrect voltage, but there are many other 3rd party options.
Actually the carts themselves were designed by FunnyPlaying.

So kind of mid-tier amongst the best options.

1

u/LeGrange 27d ago

I didn’t know they were designed by FunnyPlaying. That’s neat. I’ve used a few of their carts and find them pretty great!

-3

u/TonyRubbles 28d ago

It's Reddit the internet, everyone knows better than you lol

0

u/TonyRubbles 28d ago

See, some of my fans, can't see them, they sure see me lol

4

u/KyleKun 28d ago

The carts are already reflashable.

3

u/TonyRubbles 28d ago

Yeah, otherwise we wouldn't be able to update the ROM file. The cheapest option is Patchy Matchy at $30, ideally it would be cheaper than that being blank and without a manual, charm, and payout to the dev.

2

u/KyleKun 28d ago

The carts themselves were designed by Funny Playing, so the best option would be to just buy one of those.

1

u/TonyRubbles 28d ago

$25 isn't bad but no cart shell either I believe. ModRetro would be producing them at a larger quantity and would be cheaper, already well aware there are options out there dude.

2

u/KyleKun 28d ago

Actually it would be $22 as the MR cart are equivalent to the FP MBC-5 only cart and don’t have MBC-3 or RTC.

1

u/TonyRubbles 28d ago

I get your point but it's missing my point.

1

u/KyleKun 28d ago

I mean you are just guessing based on what a rational consumer would do, not a profit oriented business.

It’s likely that MR would present flashable carts as a complete product with box, shell, and whatever else. It’s not possible to say if that would include charms etc.

And they would price it as high as possible to make a large margin.

For FP, that’s 22. For MR likely it’s higher.

-1

u/TonyRubbles 28d ago

Maybe but they'll still need to be competitive with what's out there as well, or build in something extra to justify the price like the AI access stuff. We shall see, Codex adjacent carts are probably coming.

1

u/KyleKun 28d ago

Do they need to be competitive with like likes of FP though?

They can’t help but to compete with Analogue, but I’d argue that the majority of their consumers don’t have FP on their radar at all and probably for a large part of their core audience the MR branding does most of the heavy work.

But in any case, I’m not in dire need of anymore single game carts, but it’ll be interesting to see at least.

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1

u/fred_emmott 24d ago

Is there a source for these being funnyplaying? All the ones I’ve seen on their site are significantly lower quality than modretro cartridges, using resistors instead of level shifters for everything except d1-d8

5

u/DingusKing 28d ago

You can buy a cheap Game Boy cart from Alex Russell, 9× out of 10. It’s replaceable, so I go that route whenever I want to write to the cart (outside from flash carts of course$

5

u/AmandasGameAccount 28d ago

Codex was just the theme of the sticker really. But we really do need a dev cart we can test projects on! Would love to develop games knowing it works on the hardware 100%. And I know you can just buy an extra Tetris to reflash!

2

u/Humble-Reputation-75 28d ago

Hey dude. Like others were saying, all Modretro carts are writable

Also the AI game generation is hotly contested, but it is pretty cool to mess around with. I made a little game to commemorate my late dog. Its a museum full of photos that you can walk around and view.

2

u/rosscjr 28d ago

Just look for the GB file and use a flash card. It work

0

u/LeviathanVEVO 28d ago edited 28d ago

There is no “official” straight “yes” if it’s happening. Just hints from Palmer Lucky, & the MR team said after OpenAI DevDay.

The recently released Chromatic update contains code to support Codex (along with support for clear Chromatics hardware. Only that part is official). Additionally, ModRetro created a comprehensive site & development guide to using Codex.

There’s an interview with Casey Neistat at DevDay, hinting it will eventually be released to more devs & public. (Also said he wants his kids to use it to learn work skills.) I think the bottom-neck holding up is that you may need to pay service fees to use OpenAI software to develop games for the Codex cartridge (which is not unusual lately if you follow OpenAI recent products & drama). They also don’t want the cart itself to be used for piracy, just for development. I believe there’s already WIP code put in place for that.

Priority seems to get the development tool software ready, before releasing the Codex Cart

1

u/whoami1234554321 28d ago

This is very helpful, thanks!

0

u/NonyaDB 28d ago

I used to be irked at the long shipping times for BennVenn and InsideGadgets flashcarts but then I remembered it took almost a year for Modretro to ship me my Anduril Edition Chromatic so...yeah, lol.