The ModRetro Chromatic is one of the year's most exciting retro hardware announcements and will give Game Boy and Game Boy Color fans a new means of reconnecting with their beloved collections of carts.
However, one format the system doesn't play is Game Boy Advance. When we spoke to ModRetro CEO Torin Herndon recently, he explained why the Chromatic doesn't play GBA games like its FPGA rival, the Analogue Pocket:
GBA formats deserve their own dedicated landscape device as much as GBC formats deserve Chromatic and its 160x144 pixel display. Nobody wants to awkwardly hit trigger buttons on the backside of a portrait handheld. Form factor and ergonomics matter. GBA had a 240x160 pixel resolution display, and that display needs to be made so the world can enjoy these games properly in perpetuity.
He also said that we can expect more consoles from the company, hinting that GBA would be a future project – and that sentiment has recently been reinforced by ModRetro founder, Palmer Luckey.
Speaking to our pals over at Retro Dodo, Luckey said:
We’re certainly going to end up doing Game Boy Advance someday. It’s just a matter of the priority list. It’s going to happen at some point because I’m a big Game Boy Advance fan too. There are lots of systems that can emulate GBA games well, and that’s great, but the ergonomics are not optimised for Game Boy Advance games, the button layouts are not optimised for Game Boy Advance games, the type of D-Pad is not necessarily representative of the same kind of pivot feel as the original Game Boy Advance.
If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right! A great thing about retro consoles is that the Game Boy Advance isn’t going anywhere. If I wait 10 years to do this, it’s not like I’m going to be late to the boat.
The ModRetro Chromatic launches later this year.