Before he brought VR headsets out of the dark ages with Oculus, before he founded defense contractor Anduril, Palmer Luckey was a Nintendo Game Boy modder.
It’s true. There’s photographic evidence — and today he’s revealing his own take on the best Nintendo Game Boy you can buy for $199.
Sending this holiday, ModRetro Chromatic sounds amazing: magnesium alloy case, sapphire crystal cover glass, PBT buttons, pixel-perfect IPS screen with the same size, resolution and pixel structure as the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, color-matched on the Game Boy’s color screen — and with “over a thousand” nits of brightness so you can play in sunlight.
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Not only does it have an FPGA inside (like the vaunted Analogue Pocket) to play real Game Boy and Game Boy Color carts as if you were playing them on the Nintendo original, but Luckey also says it will ship with an original copy of tetris like the 1989 original known in most countries. It’s new, fully licensed tetris a game internally developed by Luckey’s team that features “reimagined versions of the iconic Tetris theme song” and true Link Cable multiplayer.
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Because yes, the Chromatic has a connection cable port, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack and USB-C for lag-free video output. It lasts 24 hours on three standard AA batteries, Lucky tells me. While it will likely ship with alkaline, there will also be an optional Li-ion pack – and he tells me you can even recharge your NiMH AA batteries via USB-C!
Speaker audio is mono, like the original Game Boys, with a “custom ultra-loud speaker module,” and ModRetro has also teamed up with Koss to supply color-matched retro Porta Pro headphones.
Speaking of customization, Luckey tells me the design is all in-house, including the custom screen — which is so bright because it’s based on displays used in aviation. He says ModRetro doesn’t do anything as exotic as making its own chips, but overall the team has done their best instead of making sound business decisions. “None of this makes any business sense.”
Compared to Analogue Pocket, Luckey says, “we’re actually authentic”:
Color temperatures are actually correct, clock rates aren’t slightly off, pixel structure isn’t completely wrong in a way that ruins subpixel sprites, etc.
He sent me this image to illustrate:
The handheld isn’t the only thing the ModRetro team will be selling: you can also buy original “Chromatic” cartridges with new games. Luckey promises a lot there: “all-physical re-releases and remasters of classic Game Boy titles, all-new IP from amazing independent developers, first-time releases of Game Boy games that were canceled before release, and even some titles that were canceled before the public even knew about them.
The Chromatic handheld doesn’t use ROM, by the way, even in a roundabout way like the Analogue Pocket. It’s just a cartridge, Luckey says, unless you provide your own flash cart.
Luckey says he’s not sure how long he’ll fund the hardware production, hinting that quantities will be limited — though GameStop will also carry an undisclosed number of them. “I’ll do as much as I need to fulfill the pre-orders,” he tells me. “But this thing is too crazy to do forever.”
“I don’t see this as a way to make money, I see it as a way to do the best tribute in the world to the Game Boy, something I’ll be proud of for a very long time.”
You know me: I get one.
