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Palmer Luckey has been working on creating the perfect Game Boy for 17 years. With this product he believes he has achieved it
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The device is not an emulator, but works with cartridges. Its price is 199 dollars
One thing that is not well known outside of the deepest world of technology is that Palmer Luckey, creator of Oculus Rift and founder of Anduril, started out as a Game Boy modder. The controversial entrepreneur claims to have been working for 17 years on the creation of the “definitive device inspired by the Game Boy” and now, finally, we have been able to see the result. Its name: ModRetro Chromatic.
Sorry? To talk about Palmer Luckey is to talk about a quite controversial person. In 2012 he managed to launch the Oculus Rift after successful crowdfunding. He put virtual reality on the map, so much so that Facebook (now Meta) ended up buying the company. Luckey was fired from Facebook after a series of somewhat controversial political donations, and he eventually ended up founding a defense company based on lethal autonomous drones called Anduril.
Well, before all that there was ModRetro.
ModRetro. That’s the name of a forum dedicated to modding Nintendo consoles. Luckey created this forum when he was just 15 years old with some friends who later joined Oculus. “It quickly became the Internet’s most active hub for hardware hackers combining old game consoles with modern technology,” he says in a statement.
It was during this era that Luckey became the “first person to LED backlight a Game Boy, the first to LED backlight a Game Boy Pocket, and the first to transplant the guts of a Game Boy Advance into an original Game Boy case.” “. In short, Luckey knows the product he is handling and has been working on it for years.
ModRetro Chromatic. Their new product has been in development for 17 years and is a premium Game Boy that looks fantastic. Luckey explains that the screen is covered in synthetic sapphire and that the screen “perfectly imitates the size, resolution, subpixel structure and color balance of the Game Boy Color to faithfully recreate the meticulous pixel-art.”
The casing is made of a magnesium-aluminum alloy. The buttons and D-Pad, for their part, are made of PBT. The console is compatible with “all Game Boy titles” and both the Link cable (unlocked memory) and the infrared sensor have been implemented. Additionally, a USB-C cable has been added for video output. The battery is less than three AA batteries with which Luckey promises 24 hours of autonomy. In his own words:
“It is the definitive form, the best way to play, the end of the line, a work of art designed to last decades and elude obsolescence.”
And the games? It would be a mistake to think that this console is an emulation platform, because it is not at all. On the contrary, the ModRetro Chromatic works with original Game Boy cartridges. Only cartridges, no ROMs or copies of the games. The console comes with a new, licensed Tetris game and, incidentally, with a most ambitious promise. We quote verbatim:
“We’ll also be releasing fully physical reissues and remasters of classic Game Boy titles, brand new IPs from incredible indie developers, first-time releases of Game Boy games that were canceled before release, and even some titles that were canceled before release. the public knew them.”
In the video above you can see the list of games that will be available at launch.
Price. As explained by Luckey and reported by The Verge, he does not know how long he will maintain financing for the hardware, which could imply that the units are limited. “I will make as many as I need to fulfill pre-orders […] But this thing is too crazy to do forever,” he says. Its price is $199 and can be purchased on the ModRetrato website. Shipments will be made at Christmas.
Image | ModRetro edited by Xataka
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