The modern Game Boy with ties to a military weapons contractor

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.

The first edition of the Chromatic comes with a new official version of Tetris.

A bulletproof time capsule

Nintendo is famed for the longevity of its ’80s and ’90s machines, with many of them surviving decades of use and abuse to still function today, and that’s clearly something Modretro has taken to heart. With a magnesium alloy shell and sapphire glass on the lens, the Chromatic is the most solid-feeling modern handheld I’ve used, and I fully expect it to be in one piece in 30 years.

The unexpected choice to use old-school AA batteries rather than an integrated rechargeable is part of this push for heirloom quality; built-in batteries die over time and can be tough to replace, whereas most old Game Boys are just a fresh set of AAs away from play. Estimated play time on a set of three AAs is six hours, though I’ve managed a little bit longer on a set of Pale Blue rechargeables. Modretro also plans to sell a custom battery back you can install in the batteries’ place, chargeable through the Chromatic’s USB-C port.

This is an element of the past that should probably stay there, but it persists for a reason.

The build overall is a mix of inspirations from Nintendo’s two earliest handhelds, with some original elements. The bright, funky colour schemes evoke the original Game Boy more than the Color, as do the large satisfying buttons and ca-thunky power switch. But like the Color there’s an IR blaster and Link Cable port for multiplayer, which works between Chromatics or with real Game Boys, plus a 3.5mm headphone jack and a pair of attachment points for dangling charms.

The most impressive part of the whole hardware package though is the display. Every other modern Game Boy imitation or replacement screen for Nintendo’s old devices has a higher resolution than the Game Boy Color, largely because developers have to settle with what manufacturers are making. The Chromatic has a beautiful and bright backlit display, so it’s much easier to see what you’re playing than it was back in the ’90s, but what sets it apart is that it’s exactly 160x144 pixels, for a perfect replication of the original graphics.

Modern platforms and digital games are undoubtedly far more convenient, but there’s something so lovely about tangible cartridges and the tactile feeling of clicking them into a machine. The Chromatic scores very highly when it comes to replicating that feeling, but it’s also spectacular in terms of running the games.

An FPGA means generally very accurate play because it’s mimicking the old device at a circuit level, and combined with that 1:1 ratio backlit screen, a loud speaker and great controls, you end up with an authentic version of your own games, freed from the technical limitations of 1998.

The Chromatic is an ideal monster-catching machine, assuming the battery in your cartridge still works or you’ve replaced it.Credit: Tim Biggs

Something old, something new

I revisited some of the greatest games of the era on this machine, including Pokemon Crystal, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Wario Land 3, with every one looking and feeling its best. If you pop in an original Game Boy game, say, Tetris or Donkey Kong or Super Mario Land, you get an elevated version of what you’d get on a Game Boy Color, which is to say they’re crudely colourised with your choice of a dozen or so palettes.

Modretro is also working with developers and rights holders to produce brand-new cartridges. It currently includes a new licensed Tetris, an excellent version complete with a deft remix of the iconic Game Boy theme. There are new indies, such as the Pokemon-meets-Final-Fantasy Dragonyhm and the monochrome survival horror Traumatarium Penitent, plus reissues of old games, among them Toki Tori and Baby T-Rex. These are well-made cartridges that use stable modern chips for saving progress, not the volatile battery-powered memory as in original Game Boy games, and some come with themed charms for dangling. They cost up to $75 each, which is quite steep.

Game Boy is a very popular platform for current game developers looking to make something inspired by the classics.

The Chromatic has a light options menu that lets you adjust brightness and tweak some settings, but otherwise it’s rather bare bones. You can connect it to a PC to update the firmware (Modretro tells me there’s a fix coming for the only FPGA error I found; a problem with the gyroscope controls in Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble). There’s no way to play on a TV or attach an external controller, but you can get the video to a PC via USB-C for capture or streaming.

The obvious thing missing, which virtually every other Game Boy clone has, is the ability to play games from SD card storage rather than a cartridge. This allows for playing illegal pirated games, but it also means you can play new games from independent developers publishing their games online, costing $2-$10 rather than $75. There are also plenty of fan-made fixes for old games that address problems or properly colourise original Game Boy games. You can use expensive developer cartridges designed for Game Boy Color to play that stuff (I tested an Everdrive-GB X7 on the Chromatic and it works great), but this is one of a few points where Modretro’s focus on faithfulness weakens it compared to some other options.

For an extra $30 you could get an Analogue Pocket, another FPGA machine that can play games from cartridges or SD card covering dozens of classic devices. And for a lot less, there are heaps of Linux- and Android-based machines from China that are shaped like your favourite old consoles and will play anything you want. Those are lower quality across the board and you can’t use your own cartridges, but the devices start at about $60.

Even if the Chromatic is incredible, its target market would seem rather narrow. This is a machine purely for Game Boy Color devotees, who have or are willing to acquire games on cartridge, and who don’t mind paying extra for supreme build quality and a focus on accuracy.

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