Recalbox Aims to Save Vintage Gaming with ModderBrothers, an Open Source Approach to Hardware Mods

Vintage computing firm Recalbox is launching a new brand for hardware accessories and add-ons, ModderBrothers — and has pledged to make its designs, ranging from gadgets for instantly loading games to devices for connecting vintage hardware to modern displays, available under open source licenses.

"ModderBrothers was born from the passion of Recalbox developers for retro machines, computers or consoles," claims Recalbox's Matthieu Proucelle. "There are a lot of enthusiasts like us in the world, who have developed great mods during the last 30 years. But we quickly came up against the realities of the field: modders do this for a while, then the projects fall by the wayside…

"So if you miss the boat, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible to get the mod of your dreams. Many [makers] don't put the schematics in public, not allowing others to take over, which sends their work to oblivion."

By contrast, Recalbox plans to make its entire ModderBrothers range available as open hardware under licenses which would allow others to continue production should they themselves decide to get out of the game. In some cases, that's a requirement of pre-existing licenses: some of the ModderBrothers devices are based on existing open source projects, like Sebastian Staacks RP2040-based Game Boy Interceptor — a device we covered late last year. The pledge also covers, however, ModderBrothers' in-house hardware designs, Recalbox promises.

Among the original ModderBrothers designs are video output modification boards for the Atari 2600 and the Mattel Intellivision family, a 16-game cartridge for the Atari 2600 based on a period-appropriate EEPROM, another for the ColecoVision, a 48kB RAM expansion and joystick adapter for the Philips VG-5000, an internal 32kB RAM expansion for the Sinclair ZX81, and a multi-BIOS adapter for the same machine. Recalbox is also offering versions of Staacks' Game Boy Interceptor, SukkoPera's Retro Works' OpenFlops floppy drive emulator, and Kim Jorgensen's Kung-Fu Flash cartridge for the Commodore 64.

"With its experience in design and production of electronic hardware, the team wants to ensure the production and availability of its mods over time, but also to offer existing mods in free license, some of which are today hardly accessible or abandoned by their authors," Proucelle affirms of all the above designs. "All our mods, whether they are our original mods or improved existing mods, will be available under an open hardware license."

Recalbox is funding its first ModderBrothers mass production run via Kickstarter, with physical rewards starting at €15 (around $16.50) for an Intellivision/Atari 2600-compatible composite video output mod kit. Schematics for its hardware, are to be uploaded to GitLab — though at the time of writing the repositories were empty, save for a placeholder readme file.