In my latest video that YouTube is not showing to my subscribers, we take a look at the ModRetro Chromatic – a modern handheld that plays the full library of Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. It even ships with a modern version of Tetris that company published and released on a physical cart.
Priced at $199 (compensated affiliate link), this is a definitely a premium device for gamers of a certain age, but its features and build quality justifies its price tag in my humble opinion. If $199 wasn’t enough, there’s a version with a sapphire glass screen that costs $299. But given what I’ve seen with the base model, the sapphire one is overkill.
The build is all metal, something you feel right away in the weight and feel of it. It’s sturdier than the original Game Boy hardware ever felt. The layout mirrors the Game Boy Color closely, though I ran into some accidental diagonal inputs on the D-pad. The firmware includes an option to disable diagonals, and once I did that, games like Tetris behaved much better.
The display is a super low-resolution 2.56-inch IPS panel running at 160×144. It’s so low-res that the pixels are clearly visible at normal viewing distances. That isn’t a flaw—it recreates the “dot matrix” look of the original hardware in a way software filters don’t always get right. Even though the screen is modern and backlit, it carries forward that dot-matrix character. Audio comes through a surprisingly loud speaker, controlled by a physical volume wheel that allows for quick adjustments without diving into menus. There’s also a link port for multiplayer with another Chromatic, a Game Boy Color, or potentially even an Analog Pocket when running compatible games.
Power comes from three included AA batteries, though an internal rechargeable pack is available. The battery door is metal as well, maintaining the overall build quality. On the bottom edge there’s a headphone jack and a USB-C port, and the USB-C implementation is more versatile than I expected. It can power the device, charge the optional battery pack, update firmware for both the console and Chromatic cartridges, and back up save data from both Chromatic cartridges and original battery-backed Game Boy carts. It also outputs video over USB as a standard webcam device with essentially no latency, making it easy to capture gameplay in OBS or other recording software. You do need to be plugged in to record—there’s no internal capture option.
But returning to a time of physical games and cartridges is really the point here. I dropped in some old favorites, including my three decade-old and well-traveled copy of Solar Striker, and the games behaved just like they do on a Game Boy Color. Anything beyond that lineage, like Game Boy Advance games, isn’t supported because this is a strict Gameboy Color hardware replica built around an FPGA. That’s similar in concept to the Analogue Pocket, but the focus of the Chromatic is entirely on the Game Boy and its Color successor.
When I plugged in an old copy of Qix that my dad brought back from Japan years ago, the Chromatic behaved like a Game Boy Color would. It selected a color palette on its own, and I could flip through other palettes in the sidebar menu, including faithful recreations of the Game Boy and Game Boy Pocket color palletes. The effect is especially convincing given the low-resolution screen. The settings menu also includes display tweaks like frame blending, which helps older games look a bit more like they did on the original slow-refreshing LCD, and options for brightness, audio, and various system indicators.
What’s neat is that the packed in Tetris cartridge works on original hardware too. I tested it on my twenty-seven year old Gameboy Color and it played perfectly including loading the save game file. It’s part of a small but interesting lineup of reissued and newly published cartridges ModRetro is selling for the platform.
Because this is a hardware-accurate device and not an emulator, it doesn’t load ROMs or offer save states by default. But flash cartridges work, including my older EverDrive GB. Games, ROM hacks, and homebrew all loaded without issue, and newer flash carts with save-state support should work as well.
Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus, is behind the Chromatic project, and the choices here clearly lean toward preserving a very specific look and feel. For people who want a faithful Game Boy or Game Boy Color experience with modern conveniences, that’s the appeal. For people looking for more flexibility, other devices open up a wider range of systems and features.
There are plenty of alternatives depending on what you’re looking for. Original hardware can be outfitted with modern IPS screens for less money. There are build-it-yourself FPGA handheld kits that deliver a similar experience. And for a little more than the Chromatic, the Analogue Pocket offers a much broader range of supported systems along with SD card loading and community-developed cores. Its display is much higher resolution, which is great for versatility but changes the visual character of Game Boy games unless you apply a software-based dot-matrix filter.
As someone who grew up with these games, it’s been interesting to watch this whole ecosystem of new hardware, flash cartridges, and reissued carts evolve. Some of it improves on the original experience, some of it like the Chromatic leans into preserving quirks, and I seem to be slowly collecting all of it!