02:22:04 · John Coogan, Casey Neistat
[02:22:04] S1: Yeah. [02:22:04] S6: So I I love that stuff. And Mod Retros, when I first learned about it, when I first learned about Chromatic, their Game Boy, I thought it was really stupid. I didn't understand because you can get those, like, Chinese ones off of Amazon for $50. Yeah. And a friend of mine was like, no. This is great. They're doing great things. Do you wanna talk to Palmer about it? And I'm a huge Palmer Luckey fan. And I was like, I'd love to. And I don't know that I've ever been evangelized so much in my life. Like, by the end of that call, he didn't just convince me, but I was like I felt like an idiot for not seeing Yeah. What ModRetro was. And then as I got to know Torin, who who is the the CEO of ModRetro and understand the vision for the company, was just so, like, overwhelmed. Was like, this is the most, like, beautiful vision ever. I don't understand the business of it. It makes no sense to me. But the fact that these guys have the guts to do this, like, can I be a part of it? And I think I pitched back to them what I understood the company was, and they're like, that's it. That's what we wanna say. And I was like, alright. Give me a job, and my job will be to figure out how to communicate that, and we'll make videos and stuff. And they're like, sure, but we're not gonna pay you. And I was like, great. I'll take a business card. [02:23:19] S1: That's not
02:23:19 · John Coogan, Casey Neistat, Vineeta Agarwala
[02:23:19] S1: That's not [02:23:19] S6: a business card. Prices. It's been great working with I've also I'm an investor in ModRetro. I have a vested interest in them succeeding, but, I mean, that's not the that's not where the passion to be a part of what they're up to comes from for me. [02:23:33] S1: Yeah. So many places we could go with this. This is fantastic. What yeah. Do you think that there's a world I mean, I I love the handheld gaming stuff. I my my experience having kids was I stopped playing console games. The n 64 was actually my first console ever. And but once I [02:23:52] S6: started What was your game? Kids [02:23:54] S1: Super Mario 64 for sure. Golden Eye was big. Big head [02:23:58] S7: Golden Eye. [02:23:58] S1: Golden Gun. You gotta do that. And then a couple other Donkey Kong and was never really into the Mario Kart racers but then Smash Brothers kinda took over and that was the real competition with everyone eventually.
02:23:58 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[02:23:58] S1: Golden Gun. You gotta do that. And then a couple other Donkey Kong and was never really into the Mario Kart racers but then Smash Brothers kinda took over and that was the real competition with everyone eventually. [02:24:11] S0: I think what I think what's exciting to me is like building new new consumer hardware that will still turn on and work and bring joy twenty years from now. I had I had the the game I have like my Game Boy Pikachu edition from growing up. And I When Mod Retro came out, I went and found it and I turned it on and it worked. Yeah. And that was like such an amazing moment for me because like when like I haven't I've got old iPhones lying around. I've never been like not one, I've never been like, oh I should could turn that on. It's gonna be fun. Yeah. Right? Because it's like it's not evergreen. It was of the moment and you just move on. And so I think if mod retro can do anything which is like make consumer hardware which is so disposable today across all these different categories and make it so that you're gonna get your mod retro or your m 64, you know, this year and then you're gonna turn it on in thirty years and like, you know, bridge generations.
02:24:11 · Jordi Hays, Casey Neistat, Alex Hawkinson
[02:24:11] S0: I think what I think what's exciting to me is like building new new consumer hardware that will still turn on and work and bring joy twenty years from now. I had I had the the game I have like my Game Boy Pikachu edition from growing up. And I When Mod Retro came out, I went and found it and I turned it on and it worked. Yeah. And that was like such an amazing moment for me because like when like I haven't I've got old iPhones lying around. I've never been like not one, I've never been like, oh I should could turn that on. It's gonna be fun. Yeah. Right? Because it's like it's not evergreen. It was of the moment and you just move on. And so I think if mod retro can do anything which is like make consumer hardware which is so disposable today across all these different categories and make it so that you're gonna get your mod retro or your m 64, you know, this year and then you're gonna turn it on in thirty years and like, you know, bridge generations. [02:25:06] S6: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's I think there's there's it's easy to sort of shit on, planned obsolescence because it is real. I think of that like we woke up my house woke up this morning at 07:30AM because the refrigerator repairman finally showed up and was banging on our door at at 07:30 in the morning. The dog was freaking out because our two year old refrigerator doesn't work. And this is a refrigerator that has WiFi. [02:25:33] S2: There we go. [02:25:34] S0: Let's give it up for WiFi. Everybody always Everything.
02:25:37 · Casey Neistat
[02:25:37] S6: It doesn't work. It doesn't work. That's your choice. Think about that, it's like that refrigerator that we had as kids with the one big heavy aluminum door, like, just worked. It worked forever. But in order to keep selling shit, you have to keep coming out with new things. And I think that's the negative of planned obsolescence. But I think when it comes to consumer technology, there is an argument for having to keep up with the rate of innovation. You know, like, the new phones that come out, every time you get a new phone, it does do something that your other phone didn't. So there's a maybe a reason for that. But I think with that sort of tidal wave of innovation that feels faster now than it ever felt when I was young, I think we we lose some great things. Yeah. And, you know, my understanding of mod retro, at least what I want it to be, and I think what what what Palmer and and what Torin also want it to be is, like, let's identify consumer electronics that people just love, like, had an unbelievable relationship with. They really like, the love I had for my Game Boy, I don't know that there was another thing that I owned through my adolescence that I treasured more than my Game Boy. And let's bring them back, and let's do them justice. Let's build them so they last forever. I think Palmer's quote when I was interviewing was, we don't wanna build another Game Boy. We wanna build the last Game Boy, like, the last one that ever needs to be built. And that's the vision with m 64 as well. Like, you can get emulators. They're kind of they kinda work, but let's let's build the thing that that, you know, you and I had, John, when when we were kids, and let's have it last forever. And I, you know, I just think there's so so much romance in that. When you start digging deep, you can start to see products everywhere. And, you know, ModRetro's tiny. There's a couple people working out of a small office, but, like, the list of of products that that we wanna build, the list of ideas that we have is is endless. And that's like a that's a really exciting thing to take on.
02:27:35 · Jordi Hays
[02:27:35] S0: It's also such an interesting company because you're trying to recreate things of the past that were good products and you wanna improve on them but you need to stay true to the original product. Otherwise, you know, what are you I mean, it's not to say that that Mod Retro couldn't one day create, you know, novel totally novel products but Mhmm. It is like an interesting constraint and challenge and you actually have to it's it's really it's in some ways it's easy because you know exactly what you need to build but in other ways it's harder because you're taking a product that was almost in its original form and still, like, you need to make it it needs it should be better. Otherwise, you know, what are you doing?