The Most Correct Approach to Play Sport Boy Video games Is Accessible Once more, however There is a Catch

Palmer Luckey, the person who took a profession crafting VR headsets and turned it into an organization that sells weapons of struggle to the U.S. army, also makes a Game Boy-like handheld. The ModRetro Chromatic, designed to play outdated Sport Boy cartridges, has proved extremely in style.

Now, the hand held, in all its authentic colorways, is again after a 12 months of unavailability, however with a couple of adjustments. First, there’s an all-new grey and purple colorway that’s giving SNES vibes. Second, whereas the Chromatic nonetheless begins at $200, which will get you an identical magnesium alloy shell and a particular copy of Tetris, the display screen cowl is now Gorilla Glass as a substitute of the extra sturdy, scratch-resistant sapphire glass that each one authentic Chromatics had. If you need the model with the sapphire display screen, that now prices $300 (additionally bundled with Tetris). Whether or not or not the Chromatic is value it will depend on how a lot you really liked your outdated Sport Boy Colour and the way a lot you possibly can abdomen Luckey’s ongoing love affair with the military-industrial complicated.

The Chromatic is a form of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) emulation gadget. Which means it doesn’t merely recreate Nintendo’s authentic handheld as software program, like most typical emulators do; it successfully replicates the {hardware} and chip logic. As such, it could actually play authentic Sport Boy and Sport Boy Colour cartridges alongside ModRetro’s personal “Chromatic” cartridges.

ModRetro, an organization cofounded by Luckey and fellow Anduril lead Torin Herndon, began selling the Chromatic virtually a 12 months in the past alongside a couple of homebrew video games designed for the gadget. There are a couple of extra ModRetro-specific video games to go alongside the hand held re-release. The choice now includes Sabrina: The Animated Series – Zapped!, First Contact Protocol, Depraved Plague, Self Simulated, and Gravitorque DX. The final of these is a gravity-manipulating indie platformer akin to lo-fi darling VVVVVV from again in 2010. ModRetro can be promoting a couple of extra equipment, together with a chargeable battery to switch the outdated AAs, a mod equipment to swap its buttons and D-pad, and a hyperlink cable to commerce Pokémon with associates the old school method.

I’m happy to annouce our newest recreation!

Gravitorque DX is a puzzle platformer the place you management gravity as a substitute of leaping, fixing mind-bending ranges throughout 4 distinct worlds.

Get it now on a REAL cart: https://t.co/94qOCZBbV5@modretro #modretro #GameBoy #gamedev pic.twitter.com/35Ob3LBYXx

— Nikita Kurylev (@NikitaKurylev) July 10, 2025

The Chromatic is at present essentially the most correct approach to replay Sport Boy and Sport Boy Colour video games, with the additional benefit of a backlit IPS LCD display screen and different trendy facilities like video out through USB-C. That IPS display screen replicates the colours discovered on Nintendo’s authentic handheld. Whereas there are different FPGA mod kits out there for DIY fanatics like this one from FunnyPlaying, your solely different choice for the same full system to play your outdated Sport Boy cartridges is the $220 Analogue Pocket. It’s a fellow FPGA emulation gadget with a four-button format that can be suitable with Sport Boy Advance titles and different non-Nintendo video games like Sega Sport Gear with extra add-ons. Whereas Analogue has executed a number of restricted version colorways earlier than, it’s at present solely out there in black or white. In the previous couple of months, Analogue seemingly managed to beat continual inventory points, so a minimum of for now, patrons have a selection.

Grabbing your stash of Sport Boy video games from the attic sounds attractive, till you think about who you’re shopping for the Chromatic from. With one hand, Luckey promotes his retro gaming enterprise—a continuation of his early days as a handheld modder. With the opposite, he’s turning his army weapons maker, Anduril, into one of many authorities’s de facto suppliers of cutting-edge army know-how. These days, Anduril took Microsoft’s place making XR goggles for troops on the bottom, and he even partnered up with once-friend, then-enemy, now-friend once more Mark Zuckerberg to craft the XR gadget for the U.S. army’s future troopers. Past his overtures to his nerdy past, Luckey sees the world in stark traces. He has stated in past interviews his objective is to produce sufficient weapons to behave as a form of deterrent in opposition to aggression towards U.S. pursuits. This sort of “recreation concept” isn’t what most players love most about their pastime, however it’s intrinsic to how Luckey views his different, non-Sport Boy-related enterprise pursuits.

The best way to compartmentalize Luckey’s companies is as much as every particular person purchaser, however I personally can’t advocate supporting the arms vendor regardless of how harmless this enterprise appears. You have already got an unbelievable variety of software program emulation-focused units out there—together with sub-$100 handhelds just like the Anbernic RG34XXSP or TrimUI Brick—so patrons will not be starved for choices. Luckey has urged he’ll launch a Sport Boy Advance-like gadget and Nintendo 64 emulator sooner or later, however when these hit the scene, we’ll nonetheless have the identical reservations, all to do with Luckey himself.