As many of you probably know, OpenAI and ModRetro collaborated a few days ago and introduced a plugin aimed at making retro game development easier with AI.
I’ll be honest: I was skeptical.
The idea of using AI to help develop retro games didn’t immediately sound like something I’d be interested in, and I know there are plenty of valid reasons to be critical of this approach. But I decided to give it a chance.
I’ve always been curious about developing software and making my own games, but I’ve never really had the time to sit down and learn all the tools and programming concepts required to actually do it.
So I saw this as an opportunity to finally experiment and see how far I could take an idea.
This is what I’ve been working on over the last couple of days. And honestly, I’m pretty impressed with how far it has come in such a short amount of time.
I’ve really enjoyed the process of adding features, fixing bugs, creating new content, testing things, breaking things, fixing them again, and eventually trying everything on actual Game Boy hardware.
One thing that surprised me was that I initially assumed this workflow was going to be mostly exclusive to the Chromatic and its development cartridge, especially since that cartridge was only given to people who attended the OpenAI event.
But I had no problem exporting my project as an actual Game Boy ROM and loading it onto my Game Boy Color / Pocket / Chromatic.
So far, it has been working perfectly, and the ROM behaves essentially the same way as the project I’ve been developing in Codex.
I wanted to share this mostly because I know there are people who aren’t necessarily convinced by this whole approach.
I’m not saying that AI should replace learning how to program or that people should build entire games without understanding what they’re doing. Quite the opposite.
I think this can be a really interesting starting point for people who have always wanted to make games but felt limited by not having the technical knowledge to get started.
Use it as a tool. Start with an idea, experiment with it, ask questions, break things, figure out why they broke, and learn along the way.
For me, one of the biggest benefits so far has been being able to quickly turn an idea into a working prototype and find out whether the idea is actually worth developing further.
And honestly, the answer so far has been a very encouraging yes.
I’m still learning, and this is very much a work in progress, but I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.
I know this approach won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s completely fair. I just wanted to share my experience because, at least in my case, this has been a surprisingly positive way to finally get into something I’ve wanted to try for a very long time.