Palmer Luckey's $200 Game Boy Tribute
- ModRetro Chromatic is a Game Boy Color knockoff by Palmer Luckey.
- Plays original Game Boy cartridges and includes Tetris.
- Features a 160x144 pixel, 2.56-inch IPS display.
- Priced at $200, launching later this year.
- Luckey aims to create the world's best Game Boy tribute.
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Retro Palmer Luckey Wants to Sell You the World's Best Tribute to Game Boy for $200
The Oculus cofounder's drone company is now making knockoff Game Boys.
By Ethan Gach
Published Tuesday 12:57 PM
We may earn a commission from links on this page
Chromatic Game Boy handhelds are displayed in a line.
The ModRetro Chromatic is the latest attempt to cash in on retro nostalgia.
It's a slick-looking Game Boy Color knockoff that competes with the bespoke and perennially out-of-stock Analogue Pocket by playing all of your original Game Boy cartridges.
The main difference is that the ModRetro Chromatic is being sold and marketed by Oculus Rift cofounder and diehard Donald Trump booster Palmer Luckey.
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The ModRetro Chromatic comes in a variety of colors and launches later this year for $200.
While it plays old Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges via an FPGA circuit, it also comes with a new version of Tetris preinstalled.
It has a port for an original Link Cable to play multiplayer as well as a USB-C port and headphone jack.
Each handheld runs off three AA batteries and appears designed to mimic the form factor of Nintendo's devices as much as possible.
The real selling point of the ModRetro Chromatic is its precision.
The color temps are actually right, the clock rate isn't slightly off, the pixel structure isn't totally wrong in a way that ruins subpixel aware sprites, etc., Luckey told The Verge when comparing his handheld to the $220 Analogue Pocket.
That's due to a custom 160x144 pixel, 2.56-inch pixel-perfect IPS display.
The ModRetro will seemingly be built to order with GameStop also getting a certain amount of inventory.
None of it makes any business sense at all, he told The Verge.
I don't see this as a way to make money; I see it as the way to make the world's best tribute to the Game Boy, something that I'll be proud of for a very long time.
Luckey previously worked for Meta, which bought Oculus back in 2014 for $2 billion before getting fired in 2016 amid his vocal support for Trump.
He now runs Anduril Industries, a defense contractor that supplies killer drones and spy towers to the US government.
He's currently set to throw a $100,000-a-head fundraiser for the ex-President who was recently convicted on 34 felony counts in a New York hush money trial in California later this week.
Despite my work in virtual reality and defense technology, my roots are in retro gaming, Luckey said in a press release.
The Chromatic brings back the simplicity and joy of classic gaming.
It's unclear if Trump, who was also recently accused of using the n-word while hosting The Apprentice, will be one of the first to receive the ModRetro Chromatic when it launches later this year.
