>>11946384
The history of RetroArch's user interface is a pretty interesting one. Originally, when it was known as SSNES, it didn't truly have a GUI, as it was purely a command-line driven program (which it still is underneath). However, it DID come with a launcher using byuu's Phoenix framework (see pic related), and while it wasn't as sleek and modern as what new Qt-based emulator UIs have, it was fully mouse-and-keyboard-driven, gave you easy access to all the options, and could be used to update the cores AND the program itself (the latter being something you still cannot do with modern RetroArch). Now, the reason I say it didn't have a GUI is because Phoenix only passed command line arguments to the program before launching it, which meant that once you started a game, you couldn't change any settings without first exiting the game. They eventually deprecated it because apparently they found it hard and unwieldy to update and work with, and byuu himself had dropped all support for it, and so they didn't want to keep working with it.

It wasn't until sometime in 2013 that RetroArch got its first true built-in GUI (known as RGUI) you could pull up mid-game, but it was ugly as sin, as it was originally created for the Wii port and made to be 240p-friendly above all. This is the real reason RetroArch has been stuck with a primarily controller-driven interface - because they already had one made on the Wii, and they decided to just port that and have it be a universal GUI they could more or less copypaste for use on any platform rather than creating an entirely new one for each platform that catered to its UI and UX design.