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?
02:28:15 · Casey Neistat
[02:28:15] S6: Yeah. You know, like, one interesting challenge, and I'm not the right person to speak to this, so I'm not the technical guy, but to make the screen match the old Game Boy screen was an exhaustive process. So when you buy one of those handheld emulators that looks like a Game Boy, the Chinese made ones, they have fairly high high pixel density screens on them. So in order for them to get the look of an old Game Boy, you're using multiple pixels to emulate a single pixel. So it's inaccurate. And real psychopaths I'm not one of them, but I appreciate it. Real psychopaths on Twitter have done, like, this super zoom into a pixel, and you realize that Mario is, like, jumping a half a pixel too low or a half a pixel too high within the frame because of the limitation of the screen. And Torin and and Palmer's, like, religious obsession with matching that screen was one of the hardest things to overcome. So it was actually harder to build something that matched the quality of a product that's twenty years old than it would be to actually get the latest and greatest screen and just plug it in there.
02:29:18 · John Coogan
[02:29:18] S1: Yeah. I remember Palmer saying something about, like, a couple of the companies, the screen is actually rotated 90 degrees. So instead of the scan lines coming down this way, they go across this way, and then they just transform it at the last second. But it's like this bizarre bizarre thing that you would never really notice of, but it's this craftsmanship that actually you feel, I feel like. And it feels like something that's just like been lost in this like everything's disposable, everything's junk, everything's a knock off culture. And it feels like I I don't know like it just feels like it's worth it to have stuff that exhibits craft and taste. And even if I don't, even if I'm not the one that can tell that Mario's one pixel too low when I do the jump like, the fact that the craftsman worked on the product means something. I I it's hard to put an exact, like, quantitative value on it, but it you feel it. Right?
02:30:09 · Casey Neistat, John Coogan
[02:30:09] S6: That that is the gamble that is the company. Yeah. Palmer said that in in my video where he's like, you know, maybe nobody cares about this, but but weirdos like you and me, but that's enough. And I think it's like there is an argument that's like, well, who cares if it's off by half a pixel? And if you're one of those people, totally cool. You're well there's plenty of products in the market for you. But if you're someone who does care, if you're that weirdo that buys teenage engineering products because you just value the integrity of the product so much you wanna have it Yeah. Then, you know, there's a place in this world for companies like Mod Retro. [02:30:41] S1: Yeah. What what do you think about, like, the temptation to just make, like, one small change? Like, the Chromatic has a USB C port on it. That's a huge upgrade. But you could easily turn this into, like, well, like, you know, we have the technology to make the m 64 handheld. And then, you know, then you're in Switch territory, and all of a sudden, it's, like, a completely different product. Right? [02:31:03] S6: I they I'd look that it's ever present. And that's that's the problem with sort of limitless you know, like, when Nintendo was building this, what, four almost forty years ago, thirty five years ago now, they were so limited by what the technology enabled them to do. Yeah. Like, when you think about the Sega Game Gear, I don't know if you ever had one of those. [02:31:21] S1: Oh, yeah. [02:31:22] S6: Great product. [02:31:22] S1: Yeah.
02:31:22 · John Coogan, Casey Neistat
[02:31:22] S1: Yeah. [02:31:23] S6: This big, but it was the first one that had really great color screen on it. And it took six double a batteries instead of four, like, the Game Boy, but the battery life on it was, like, forty minutes. [02:31:33] S1: Yeah. And you remember the n 64, like, expansion pack that you put in to, like, double the memory? That was [02:31:39] S6: Yeah, dude. I remember. That would have the rumble pack that shipped to the scarf box. That was, like, the greatest innovation ever. My mind exploded when the controller shook. [02:31:46] S1: Yeah. Dude, these, like, like, these add ons because, like, they couldn't bake it all into the first product, [02:31:51] S6: and they they upsell. And that's that's indicative of the limitations of what tech can do. Totally. And when you look at, like, you know, I don't know what what Samsung announced last week two weeks ago at Unpacked, and you're looking at what the limitations are today of, like, a folding screen that's as thick as 10 sheets of paper, you realize how far we've come. But when you go in the other direction, there's kind of no limits, and you're looking to make something that was made thirty years ago. The problem is, like, where do you draw the line? And I think that's a really, it's a really interesting thing to try to overcome and confront.