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Stellar hardware from a controversial figure.
If Lockheed Martin made a Game Boy, would you buy one?
In the 1990s, I was among the kids who thought military aircraft were devastatingly cool. By then, Tom Cruise and Top Gun had long established the F-14 Tomcat and a pair of aviator shades as a fantasy for young men; I personally preferred the Lockheed F-117A, the high-tech angular “Stealth Fighter” that could invisibly sneak past enemy radar, and was partial to the legendary Lockheed SR-71 that flew so fast it could outrun missiles.
At the time, I probably would have snapped up a jet-black Lockheed Game Boy without a second thought. But I’m old enough now to realize that cool aerodynamics are just the tip of a deadlier geopolitical iceberg. Lockheed makes weapons, and I don’t have a say in who gets to buy them or who they’re used against. I don’t have a say in whether that tech should exist at all.
I’ve been thinking about Lockheed Martin as I review a much simpler gadget: the ModRetro Chromatic. The Chromatic is a high-end remake of Nintendo’s Game Boy, and it might be the best version of a Game Boy ever made. But it’s connected to a company much like Lockheed: Anduril, the defense contractor that makes weaponized drones, networked surveillance systems, and other military tech.
Both Anduril and ModRetro are founded by Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus Rift VR headset. Luckey is now an almost unbelievable character, a devout anime and video game lover who reportedly stores his vast collection of games in a decommissioned US nuclear missile silo — one of several silos he says he owns.
He plays with a lavish collection of military hardware including helicopters and a Mark V Special Operations Craft used by Navy SEALs. He once made the cover of Time Magazine as a floating barefoot “visionary” with an Oculus headset atop his head, though these days he’s more likely to make headlines propagandizing for his version of the defense industry. He was the face of VR before Facebook kicked him out. (Luckey was an early Trump booster and took flak for funding a single Hillary Clinton-trolling billboard; Mark Zuckerberg denied he was fired for his political views at the time; some Meta execs have since apologized for his ouster.)
Many tech companies are involved with military projects in some shape or form. Google and Amazon have a contract with Israel for a “Project Nimbus” that Google knew could have enabled human rights violations against Palestinians, and Google has fired many workers for protesting that deal. Microsoft is currently working towards outfitting over 100,000 soldiers with a militarized version of its HoloLens headset. Meta is now letting defense contractors use its Llama AI model. I think it’s fair to say few of us boycott these companies or even think about these things when we use their products.
But where each of these companies can plausibly say “It’s just business” as they defend their cloud server contracts or when their CEOs kiss the ring, and it’s very hard to escape Big Tech’s orbit, this is a fun but unnecessary product from a man with a specific point of view on weapons, war, and politics. Luckey has twice hosted fundraisers for Donald Trump (in 2020 and 2024) at his own house. He publicly expresses the fervent (and self-serving) belief that tech companies should get in bed with the military.
For Luckey, it’s not just business, it’s personal. And we’ve heard loud and clear that it’s personal for many of our readers, too. I’ve been testing the ModRetro Chromatic for over a month, and it’s very good. I believe it’s the best, most luxurious way to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. But if the goal is to restore and preserve our childhood nostalgia, the Luckey connection throws a wrench in the works. What you’re about to read is a real review of an excellent product, one I genuinely enjoyed using — but one that left me feeling somewhat tortured in the process.
ModRetro also advertises the Chromatic as “indestructible,” and if that sounds like marketing bluster, you’re at least half right. I dropped the Chromatic twice onto concrete, from 4.5 feet, and it came away with only minor dents, and I was impressed. But ModRetro also has a picture of the thing getting run over by a car. When I ran it over with my car, the screen shattered. The frame is now badly bent.
I was also a tad disappointed to find the Chromatic’s USB-C port isn’t as potent as promised. While the company advertised USB-C video output and even told me you could charge rechargeable AAs using the do-it-all port, it turns out the Chromatic can only present itself as a webcam for desktop-style video recording, and NiMH AA charging didn’t make the cut. ModRetro CEO Torin Herndon, who was an engineer at Anduril from 2017 to 2021, tells me the company is beginning production on an optional rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack, but won’t talk price, capacity, or runtime just yet.
That said, I actually find I prefer AAs. At 50 percent brightness — far higher than I needed on the plane — I saw over eight hours from a set of Ikea-branded Panasonic Eneloop rechargeables, or closer to seven hours from Amazon Basics alkalines. That same brand of alkalines gave me over 12 hours at the second-lowest brightness setting, the dimmest I’d want to use in the daytime, and just under five hours at max brightness and max volume. And again, you can simply plug the Chromatic into a USB port if you’re ever running low on charge, then drop in new AAs without losing your game.
There’s really no question in my mind that this handheld is the best retro Game Boy yet made, the one that best captures the physical feeling I had playing Game Boy as a kid. I love remasters because they can let you recapture that childhood joy, playing with the Lego starship or Final Fantasy game you think you remember instead of the one that actually existed.
But I don’t remember my childhood nostalgia coming with a side of possible guilt and fear about putting money into the pocket of a weapons contractor. Feels weird!
Even practically, I wonder who, outside of a handful of 1989 handheld lovers like me, would want a handheld that just plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color carts. Many of the best games are expensive and hard to find in physical form — Metal Gear Solid and the best Pokémon titles can easily command $100 each — and it’d be a more compelling gadget if it could play the arguably better library of Game Boy Advance titles as well. The Analogue Pocket does.
Luckey has said he wants to expand that original Game Boy library. Game developers never quite stopped making homebrew games for the Game Boy, and ModRetro is one of the few now publishing them on actual carts. Every Chromatic comes with a new copy of Tetris, and you can already order 10 more titles, including a new version of Toki Tori and Tales of Monsterland, sequels to Traumatarium and In the Dark, and my personal favorite, the grindy JRPG Dragonyhm with some excellent tunes and pixel art.
This chiptune in particular, Dragonyhm’s “Gonrad Forest,” captivated me at once:
If you feel weird about ModRetro, you should know these games aren’t exclusive to the Chromatic, either — they played perfectly well plugged into an Analogue Pocket or a Game Boy Color, and some even worked on my 1989 original. Some may be available to purchase as ROMs. If you just want to try them, many have playable demos you can try in an emulator, or even a web browser, like this:
On a desktop, tap to focus; press Enter to start; use Z, B, and arrow keys to play.
It’s not clear to me how serious Luckey is about funding a new era of Game Boy. For one thing, the Chromatic is already sold out at his website, and he says he isn’t making any more, but will focus on releasing new games while it builds “something more sustainable” in terms of hardware instead. (A grey Chromatic is still available at GameStop, for now.)
Second, as far as I can tell, all of ModRetro’s games beyond Tetris were already in development; some, like Dragonyhm, were already headed to cartridge elsewhere. Developing new games isn’t currently a company goal: “We are typically looking for games deep in development at this time, and try to push them across the finish line into being a full-on physical good,” Herndon tells me. He says ModRetro largely pays to create cartridges, boxes, and manuals, and gives developers a “pretty awesome” percentage of sales.
The pre-release carts that ModRetro sent me also had a couple issues that are hopefully getting ironed out: I mysteriously lost my entire save in In The Dark 2, and Traumatarium Penitent was missing a key bugfix the developer made almost a year ago. Toki Tori also booted into a full screen glitch the first few times I started it up, but it seems to be working now.
Even when people love the idea of revisiting the Game Boy and supporting retro game development, I suspect most will see a $200 handheld that makes you individually swap pricy cartridges as a luxury they can’t afford — not when every iPhone and a mountain of Chinese emulator handhelds can play the same games, ones they can (illicitly) download for free.
And if you find the Analogue Pocket isn’t vintage enough for your tastes, you could always do what I just did and add a modern backlit screen to your genuine Nintendo Game Boy. It won’t be pixel-perfect, but it might be good enough for me:
