Surprised there aren't more comments about the game example. I found it so bad - takes up so much space, provides no value, color schemes all over the place, every "icon" had wildly different rotations/perspectives.
Was it a little fun? Sure? Maybe? It was cute for a moment or two. But "near production ready"?
As someone who grew up with Nesticle and ZSNES as a kid and now uses OpenEMU, the icons and visual flare are big reasons lots of people use specific emulators. ZSNES is still used by a lot of people because it's "comfy" despite the accuracy being poor.
Kids downloading emulators today and experiencing 40 year old consoles like the NES and 50 year old consoles like the Atari 2600 for the first time don't want an all text UI. They want a picture of that ancient hardware. It makes their experience feel more real. In contrast, Retroarch is that it's an emulator frontend designed that has no frills in its UI, and it's designed with a mindset that everything doesn't take up much space, everything provides value, and color schemes aren't all over the place, and there aren't really any icons. And because it's the ideal HN emulator, it's difficult to use and ugly.
Oh I’m not arguing for minimalism or all text uis - I agree with the article in the sense that modern uis are boring and we need something fresh. It just seems like a very shoddy example to run a victory lap with. Design is subjective, but I don’t think many people would see that and think “yes this looks finished / is the future”. Which seems to fly in the face of the article and the point of including it