PvP-AI, a recreation of a 1990s 8-bit shoot-'em-up, now runs on the Commander X16 emulator with AI assistance. The game uses smart senses—structured text summaries of touch and EMF inputs—instead of raw pixels or audio, letting ChatGPT (gpt-4o) focus on strategy. By converting gameplay to turn-based and adding persistent notes, the LLM adapts across sessions, even exploiting the built-in AI's weaknesses.

The Commander X16's hardware limitations—like a 4 frames/s refresh due to VERA module issues—posed challenges. The developer bypassed these by piggybacking on an emulator pull request and reducing API calls to every alternate frame. This setup allowed three sequential games where ChatGPT evolved from luck-based wins to tactical dominance, analyzing opponent behavior and arena dynamics.

Technical details reveal a PHP interface layer bridging the ChatGPT API and emulator via VIA2 sockets. The project, hosted on GitHub, demonstrates how retro systems can be reimagined with modern AI tools. Future work includes integrating vision and hearing simulations into the smart senses framework.

This experiment highlights LLM integration with retro games as a viable research path. By abstracting perception tasks, developers can leverage AI for strategic gameplay in constrained environments—a nod to the original 1990 project's ambition and today's retro-computing revival.