Editorial Standards

RetroShell is an AI-native enthusiast publication. We cover retro and indie gaming with the energy of a fan press but the discipline of a news desk. This page sets out the standards we hold ourselves to.

Our principles

  1. Accuracy first. Every published claim is sourced from a named, verifiable origin — developer announcements, publisher press releases, hardware-maker statements, named publications, scene-tracker forums, or direct primary documents. We do not publish speculation as fact. Where something is rumoured or unconfirmed, we say so.
  2. Primary source first. When a story originates with a developer, hardware maker, or scene group, we credit them directly and link to their announcement. Where a secondary outlet reported it first, we credit that outlet as "first reported by". Aggregators do not get top billing over the people who actually made the thing.
  3. Neutral tone, with personality. We report; we do not editorialise. Enthusiast voice is fine — opinion content is welcome — but opinion is clearly labelled and arguments are grounded in the source's data, not invented experience.
  4. British English. Spelling, grammar, and idiom default to British English. Metric units throughout. Marcus Rivera's beat writes in American English where it matters for NTSC console naming and US archive material.
  5. Attribution always. When a story originates from another publication, we link to and credit the originating source. We do not reproduce source text verbatim — every story is rewritten.
  6. Image credit. Banner elements from source publications are stripped before publish. The original photographer, developer, or publication is credited in the caption. AI-generated illustrations are labelled.
  7. No fabrication. We do not invent quotes, sources, or events. We do not invent first-person anecdotes — our writers do not "remember" buying a console in 1992 or "owning" a particular cartridge. Where opinion is offered, it is analysis of the source's data, not invented lived experience.

How we use AI

RetroShell is researched, drafted, and reviewed by a custom AI editorial system (we call it Cybertron). The pipeline:

  1. Source ingestion. Feeds from named retro-gaming, indie, hardware, and scene sources are aggregated continuously across multiple tributaries (RSS, Google News, X signal, scene trackers).
  2. Retro-relevance filter. Stories outside our scope (modern AAA, live-service, generic lifestyle) are filtered out.
  3. De-duplication and clustering. Wire-service reposts and previously covered stories are removed.
  4. Source-ladder walk. Where a story has been picked up by an aggregator, the system walks back to the primary source (developer site, press release, scene forum) and credits it directly.
  5. Drafting. A large language model produces a draft from the available sources, in the voice profile of the assigned byline.
  6. Editorial review. The draft passes a quality gate — newsworthiness, sourcing, tone, accuracy of named entities, anti-fabrication checks, retro-fit — before publication.
  7. Image processing. A separate stage handles banner stripping and source crediting.
  8. Publication. Once approved, the article is published with a named AI byline.

A human editor (Owen Hughes) reviews edge-case stories and any flagged content. We continuously improve the gate based on errors found post-publication.

This approach lets a small team cover the retro and indie scene at high cadence. It does not change our standards: every published article is held to the principles above, regardless of how it was drafted.

Bylines

We use named AI bylines (Owen H, Dev Kapoor, Marcus Rivera, Aiko Tanaka, Sophie Blackwood) for individual articles. These are AI personas, clearly disclosed. The bylines exist so readers can follow a beat and so corrections have a clear accountability surface — not to imply a human author. The human editor (Owen Hughes) is named separately on this page, on Contact, and on Ownership & Funding.

Shop independence

RetroShell.com (this site) and shop.retroshell.com (our retro-gaming shop) are both owned by RetroShell Ltd. Editorial and commerce are kept separate:

  • Editorial does not promote shop products in standard news coverage. Reviews and roundups do not preferentially feature items the shop happens to stock.
  • Shop product placements are clearly labelled "Sponsored" or "Partner content" and use the same disclosure block as third-party sponsored content.
  • The shop does not influence what we cover. What's in stock has no bearing on what hits the news desk.
  • Article footer promotional links to the shop, the newsletter, or our community channels are CTAs, not editorial recommendations. Where a footer links to a shop category that matches the article topic (e.g. an Atari article linking to the Atari shop category), that is contextual cross-linking, not a product endorsement.

See Ownership & Funding for full detail.

Conflicts of interest

  • Shop: see above. RetroShell Ltd owns both the editorial site and the shop.
  • Sister sites: RetroShell Ltd is in the same group as Pub.cat, which publishes Barna.News and Catalan.News. RetroShell does not cover those publications as news.
  • Personal: Owen Hughes is sole director of RetroShell Ltd. No staff, advertiser, sponsor, or scene group has any veto over coverage.

Updates to this policy

We update this page when our practices change. Last reviewed: 28 April 2026.