There’s a version of this whole project that’s really just one idea: take a toy, built entirely around the limits of plastic injection molding and a unit cost, and build the actual ultimate version of it. No half-measures, no assumption that “toy-grade” was ever the ceiling. It’s a passion project first, and a product second.
The cartridge makes that concrete faster than anything else. Open one up and it’s a genuinely interesting little machine, but every part of it also shows exactly where the original had to compromise for industrial production and cost. That’s not a criticism of the original design. It’s just what a toy priced for a shelf looks like from the inside.
What’s actually interesting is treating that as a real design exercise: optimize everything as if cost weren’t the constraint, and see what’s actually possible. There’s real production to think about eventually, that part doesn’t go away, but modern tools make this less theoretical than it would have been even a decade ago. CNC machining, iterating through 3D-printed prototypes as we go, and metal 3D-printed parts specifically, geometry that would be genuinely impossible to machine any other way. That access changes the whole mindset. This stops being a toy remake and starts being a properly technical little object.
The same fascination shows up on the player side too, especially the optics: not just replacing the original lens, but actually improving on it.
There’s a real parallel here to the retromod movement in cars: taking the shape and character of something old and building an entirely new, modern machine underneath it. Not a restoration, not a replica. Something new, wearing an old silhouette on purpose.