It's fair to say that the announcement of the ModRetro Chromatic took the retro gaming world by surprise.
Created by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and boasting FPGA architecture to ensure 100% compatibility and accuracy, the Chromatic is set to shake up the Game Boy world in 2024 – and Luckey has been sharing some details online about just how much time and effort has been expended on making sure this thing is as good as it can be.
When quizzed on the display, Luckey replied:
I spent a ton of money developing a custom display of money developing a custom display that is accurate all the way to the subpixel level, which is critical given how subpixel-aware good art of the time had to be. The panel isn't even standard RGB, we used custom color filters to mimic the GBC LCD.
The Chromatic runs Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges, as well as its own bespoke cartridge format, which will be used to host a bunch of modern-day Game Boy Color releases.
It launches this Christmas and can be pre-ordered for $200 / £160.