Damo

@BLAZINOAH ModRetro is headed up by a literal arms dealer who turned a Game Boy into an advertisement for his military company.

As bad as Alejandro is, he's not even remotely comparable.

@NoirConceit If anyone reads this news article and still thinks this is worth supporting then there's little I can do to help that person 😅

@Captain_Retro Do you consider this post to be a positive assessment of this product's chances?

Like it or not, the SuperSega saga is of interest to many people, hence our reporting on the latest developments. Coverage does not equal endorsement, as I hoped would be obvious by the tone of this piece.

@AtomB Apologies, when visiting the store page in the UK, the price is listed as $72 due to VAT being added. I have amended the piece to the correct price.

@KingMike Star Fox is shown running in one of the photos, and I tested Kirby, SFA2 and Pilotwings. According to Epilogue, the other chips work fine.

I have updated the review with this information.

@Lone_Beagle As is noted in the review, this is for people who already have sizeable collections, and perhaps want to digitise them or preserve the saved data.

I think, at over 100 comments and counting, this thread has run its course. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

@DestructoDisk I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Unfortunately, journalism isn't just about covering the stuff that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, and AI and its abuse of copyright is becoming a hot topic in all industries, especially creative ones like the video game sector. We're far from the only site covering these topics, and I personally feel we'd be doing our audience a disservice if we just acted like these things don't matter in the wider context.

I think we still cover enough fun stuff for you to stick around, but that's just my opinion.

Time Extension is never, ever going to be one of those sites which just says "don't question, just consume", I'm afraid.

@slider1983 Ask yourself why it feels that way.

https://medium.com/@5a9awneh/the-great-ai-data-heist-nobody-wants-to-talk-about-9bde34589644

@somnambulance There's no misunderstanding, and, like so many AI users, you're skirting around the issue here - the AI models you use are trained on copyrighted human music without permission.

Even the ones which claim to ethically trained have been exposed as using content without permission or remuneration.

https://practicalaudiolab.substack.com/p/the-ethical-facade-crumbles-inside

Now, you might not care about this, and that's fine, but surely you can see why so many musicians are less than pleased that they have been unwillingly used to train their replacement?

@TV4Fun You know exactly what I meant, but I'll play along - raw materials like wood, oil, metal etc aren't human-made, but even then, your point doesn't stand because someone is paid for extracting those raw materials in the first place.

Nobody is being paid for the data that feeds AI - that's the difference.

@slider1983 "Servers contribute to damage in the environment. If we're going to stand on our soap boxes to complain about AI you would also need to complain about websites including this one that uses servers."

Data centre construction has massively accelerated since the AI boom took hold. That's a fact. And AI-focused data centres consume more water and generate more heat. We've had the internet for decades and it's only since AI took off that their rapid expansion, energy demands and environmental impact have become an issue.

Give this a read: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg2ldpl9leo

"That is a good point. It's pretty much the same thing. It's a correlation of different sources"

I don't even know where to begin on this one. I'm not sure you even understand what you're saying, or if you know enough about how generative AI works.

More reading for you: https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-stop-pretending-ai-is-intelligent-heres-how-254090

@kiba999 No other method of mass production uses human-made content as its raw material. And if AI companies were forced to pay for the data they use for training, then the entire industry would go under. Many of these companies aren't making a profit yet despite not paying a single penny for the data they have taken without permission.

And AI doesn't empower people. It removes power, as detailed here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260417-ai-chatbots-could-be-making-you-stupider

"rather than attempt to maintain a form of individualism that doesn't exist and never existed"

I can tell you have zero appreciation for human-made art. That's a real shame.

@TV4Fun The story is that Miller used Gen AI. He confirmed this on the Reddit thread in question, hence the responses being included from that thread - those individuals were literally reacting to Miller's comments.

@TV4Fun Reporting an event and quoting multiple sources is literally my job as a journalist. To compare that to a machine which hoovers up millions of images, sounds, voices and passages of text without credit or permission to then create slop which directly competes with human art is, quite frankly, laughable.

@Martin_H The creative industries provide the raw data that AI is trained on.

@LorentzFactor

AI does not "learn" like a human, and this has been proven multiple times by in-depth studies:

https://the-decoder.com/researchers-extract-up-to-96-of-harry-potter-word-for-word-from-leading-ai-models/

https://copyrightalliance.org/ai-training-is-not-human-learning/

You've also danced around the part where AI is created by billion dollar companies to pump out derivative work at an enormous scale for profit.

@willstancilfan So you've really taken the "Yet you participate in society" route here? Hilarious.

No, I don't agree with the current push by tech firms to use AI for everything (Cloudflare just sacked a bunch of its staff for this very reason), and it's even more disappointing when you consider Cloudflare's boss was pushing for a way of renumerating creators when AI scrapes their data.

(Yes, we use Cloudflare for some images, but we're actually hosted by https://www.44bytes.net/)

The reality is every single tech firm on the planet is using AI in some way, shape or form - I don't have to be OK with that, just as I'm sure many people don't agree 100% with what their respective government is doing at the moment. That's why it's vital to make sure you voice your opinion whenever possible.

@willstancilfan The new version uses torrents: https://minerva-archive.org/faq/

@TV4Fun What data are these AI tools trained on, again? And were the artists involved compensated when their work was scraped without permission?

@willstancilfan That's exactly what myrient is now, since the original host (who could no longer afford to run the site) announced it was closing.

And again, sharing a ROM online is not the same as ingesting that ROM (along with millions of others) and then automatically producing a derivative work which then competes with actual, talented developers.

@willstancilfan One is stealing content to produce copies for profit, the other is making sure games remain playable for decades to come (without charging for it).

Like so many AI-defenders, you fail to grasp the debate here.

@TV4Fun AI models have been tested and can reproduce, word for word, entire books. No human is capable of doing that. That's not the same as being 'inspired' like a human writer or artist is; AI cannot do anything without the data it has consumed. It lacks imagination; it is merely mashing together thousands of human-made images to produce a copy, which is why a lot of AI art is instantly recognisable.

"Why is this only an argument against AI and not any of the thousands of other things we have used computers for over the last 70+ years?"

Those things are bad, too - the issue here is that AI has massively accelerated the construction of huge data centres, and increased the consumption of water – not to mention the sound pollution which has been reported in communities living near these buildings.

Like so many pro-AI people, you seem to completely ignore the theft angle in your replies. Do you think it's right that massive companies like Meta, Google and Microsoft have scraped data without permission so they can sell it back to people as 'tools' which produce low-quality slop? And line their pockets in the process?

Just as my line of debate hasn't convinced you, your argument has failed dismally to change my mind.

@Dustybin1 The whole 'automation' argument (a favoured point by pro-AI people) misses the point that without the endless amount of stolen training data available online, AI would be useless.

The car made the horse redundant, but it didn't steal anything from the horse - that was an evolution.

AI is merely theft on a grand scale, lining the pockets of massive tech companies that have cunningly avoided paying for the data used to train these (often laughably incorrect) models. The end goal seems to be to replace the most costly aspect of business - people - with AI. There's no 'enrichment' or 'enpowerment' of society here; people cost money, take sick days, go on holiday, have benefits and rights... these are all things that most CEOs would happily do without if they could (and they already are).

Perhaps you need to read up a bit on some of these issues, then you might actually care.

@Dustybin1 GenAI is trained on human-made art without permission or remuneration, and competes directly with human artists, thousands of whom are now losing out on work thanks to people using AI. The issues here are pretty obvious. Perhaps if you were one of the human artists who had unwillingly trained their replacement, you might be more sensitive to the issue?

This is before we even touch upon the environmental issues related to AI, and the drive to build massive, harmful data centres near people's homes.

@slider1983 If it were so clear, why is Twitter full of people thinking they're original advertisements?

@slider1983 I've removed your comment because the 'funny' tweet you posted isn't remotely funny.

Also, these aren't intended to 'create nostalgia' - if they're not the original ads, then all they're doing is creating misinformation instead.

@Exerion76 As noted in the piece, this is still very early in development and we could see new features added as it evolves.

@slider1983 As is stated in the piece itself, the reason we stopped covering ModRetro is that they literally put the name of an arms company on one of their systems. That's what caused us to stop covering the company - something many other sites have also done.

Comments on this piece are closed. I think everybody has said their piece now.

@X68000 Sure! You can find where we've mentioned this below:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/03/saudi-investment-firm-acquires-a-significant-number-of-capcom-shares
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/11/saudi-arabias-pif-further-reduces-its-stake-in-nintendo
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/06/saudi-arabias-public-investment-fund-acquires-usd1-billion-stake-in-embracer-group
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/02/saudi-arabias-pif-is-reportedly-now-nintendos-biggest-outside-investor
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/02/saudi-arabias-qiddiya-takes-full-control-of-iconic-fighting-game-tournament-evo

This is all mentioned in the very piece you're commenting on.

Also, small shareholdings are materially different from owning the entire company, which is the case with SNK.

@X68000 SNK gets a cut of the licensing (obviously) and partly owns Plaion via its Embracer shareholding.

There's nothing wrong with arming people with this information so they can make their own purchasing choices.

@X68000 Never mentioned at all? You might want to have a little look back through our historical coverage of SNK (both on this site and the wider network). The Saudi ownership is mentioned multiple times.

And you seem to think we've taken a hard stance on this issue - we're still going to be covering SNK. We're just taking the time to make sure people are aware of what's happening behind the scenes at the company.

@oceanvoyager The key difference between Chinese-made handhelds and SNK / ModRetro is one of ownership; not every Chinese company is implicit in what that nation's government gets up to, whereas with SNK and ModRetro, the owners are directly involved.

@MoriyaMug https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/new-lease-of-life

@Ruka I already have an original AES. It's displayed in the lead image.

@sixrings At no point did we tell people not to buy ModRetro products - we said we'd no longer be covering them. You're missing a key distinction there.

@X68000 I say in the piece that we could well be accused of being hypocritical. We're not above scrutiny here; the ModRetro situation hopefully proves that. Perhaps the way we tackle SNK in the future will evolve... or perhaps the MiSK foundation will divest the company in time and fix the issue for us, as it appears to be backing out of a lot of its financial commitments at the moment.

@Edd-O Nothing in the world exists in a vacuum. There's nothing wrong with discussing how global politics impacts our everyday lives. That's healthy conversation.

@Martin_H "They" is me, as I'm one of the co-owners.

And as we have staff all over the world, we allow them to pick and choose if they work on a UK Bank Holiday (the number of UK Bank Holidays is automatically added to the yearly holiday allowance, to be taken when each staff member sees fit).

Hope that explains why I'm working (I'm off for the rest of the week from tomorrow!)

@SlangWon He earns money from his Patreon, and there are real musicians out there who would be willing to work with him despite the small amount of money involved.

Or he could even create the music himself, as developers did back in the day. Passing the task off to a computer trained without permission on human-made work doesn't seem like the right route to take, IMO.

@gojiguy I probably should have mentioned Retro Gamer. The magazine was the first to commission me to write about video games almost 20 years ago, and it's a fantastic publication.

@Agent_P I don't think anyone thinks of the top loader NES when they picture the console in their head, but point taken! (Lovely dog bone controllers with that one, too)

@Guru_Larry There's a TATE mode button below the screen, and the trailer shows it in action. We've also included a screengrab of the TATE mode being used.

@UMBTyrant Those are just reactions to the original tweet, which is a nonsensical post about the PSP that gets most of its facts wrong. They're not the focus of the article, which is clearly marked as 'random', not news. Have a great day!

@UMBTyrant The tweet has almost 500 replies and has been quote-tweeted multiple times, too.

@KGRAMR Thanks for the save!

@gingerbeardman It's the same power level as the standard Evercade, and that ran Glover ok.

@GravyThief I had to do a lot of image manipulation on those as the print was very faded!

@cawley1 I have a notepad full of those old CeX stickers. I'll find a photo and add it to the piece when I get a chance!

@RenderSpotlight Sadly that area of Birmingham has gone downhill over the past two decades. In the glory days there was was a run of shops down there, with Virgin and CeX being the crowning glory. I think Games Workshop was on that row of shops too, at one point.

@Spookles The smell was certainly something, but not unpleasant for some reason... nostalgia, perhaps?

@mashk I think I sold my first copy og Panzer Dragoon Saga to this branch when I traded up to my Dreamcast, also for a pittance

@MARl0 That's because the only media I could find is taken from the developer's Twitter, and they've only posted videos so far, all of which are utterly destroyed by Twitter's compression. Once I spot some better screens, I'll be sure to upload them!