M64 vs A3D Launch Amnesia
I'm not going to defend the launch of the M64. In my opinion, the product wasn't finished and they should have waited. I'll give them some credit though for being mostly transparent about what was and wasn't working and giving us a roadmap of sorts literally built into the settings menu of the console.
That said, I feel like people are severely glossing over some of the details of the A3D launch, the most egregious in my mind being the 13 months that people waited for the product after paying for it. As an added benefit, after sitting on my money for 13 months they announced and quickly shipped limited edition colors that shipped immediately as a sort of middle finger to the patience of their earlier supporters.
ModRetro did no such thing; after paying for my system, I just had to wait a couple weeks to receive it. Sure, they could have just done preorders and sat with my money while they ironed out some of the kinks but they chose not to and instead made updating relatively painless (wifi) and gave us a roadmap for what's coming. I'll take that any day. As of today, I think the A3D is the more full-featured system, but ModRetro seems like the better company. Time will tell if that proves true or not.