Funding retro gaming innovation with the Modretro Chromatic
Palmer Luckey is funding a high-end re-creation of the Game Boy Color called the Modretro Chromatic, developed by his company ModRetro. The device is a modern take on classic gaming.
When Palmer Luckey announced he was funding the release of a high-end re-creation of Nintendo's Game Boy Color, the retro gaming community was nonplussed. Luckey is a divisive figure, an entrepreneur who founded Oculus VR, left Meta in controversial circumstances after his company was acquired, and then founded Anduril - which makes killer drones for the US military.
So why was he talking about Game Boys? It seems he simply wanted a new high-end device that played old games, and he tasked a company he founded called ModRetro (a core team of about 10 people, who except for its chief executive have nothing to do with Anduril) to deliver it. And despite the strangeness of its provenance, the Modretro Chromatic has turned out very well indeed.
Developed using an FPGA (a special chip that can simulate existing systems at a hardware level, and has become very popular for retro gaming), the Chromatic is a $330 alternative to the 1998 Game Boy Color and, like the original, it plays only Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges.
It's barely bigger than the original but has a niftier screen, with the perfect aesthetic for letting everyone around you know how much of a retro tragic you are.
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