Nintendo’s Switch might be a portable gaming device for some, but for old-school players, the Game Boy will always be the gold standard of handheld gaming. Now Palmer Luckey, one of the most controversial figures in the tech world, is hoping to bring it back.
Luckey, who made virtual reality relevant again with the Oculus and went on to found Anduril, a defense contracting firm that makes lethal drones, has introduced the ModRetro Chromatic, his own take on the Nintendo Game Boy that he says will play Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges.
It’s an eye-catching device, with a magnesium alloy case, several bright colors, a screen that’s the same size and resolution as the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, and “well over a thousand” nits of brightness, meaning you can play out in the sunlight. Luckey is charging $199 for the device, which is set to start shipping around Christmas.
ModRetro managed to stir up some excitement in the gaming world with the announcement, but analysts caution it might be a little early to start putting the device on your wish list. Because the system plays original Nintendo cartridges, that could put it in murky copyright waters.
“Nintendo has a patent on the hardware that can read its software,” Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush, tells Fast Company. “Most likely, it violates their patents, unless [Luckey] can demonstrate that there is an alternative process that allows the cartridges to be read. I am skeptical he can prove that and confident that Nintendo has a claim if they choose to pursue.”
Nintendo has a storied history of going after emulator programs. Dolphin, an open-sourced emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a target of the gaming giant a year ago when Dolphin announced plans to put its emulator on the Steam game distribution platform. And earlier this year, the team behind a Switch emulator agreed to pay $2.4 million to the video game giant and ended its operations after Nintendo accused it of “facilitating piracy at a colossal scale.”
ModRetro did not respond to a request for comment about potential IP issues surrounding the device, and neither did Nintendo.
The Chromatic, assuming it comes to market, will ship with a special version of Tetris included, hearkening back to the late 1980s, when the original Game Boy was bundled with the puzzle game. In another callback, ModRetro says it has teamed with GameStop as its exclusive retail partner for the holiday season.
Luckey calls the Chromatic his “ultimate tribute to the most important handheld console of all time” and, in a video, said his passion for the project led to several design decisions that were “fundamentally irrational from a moneymaking perspective” and “definitely a bad business decision.”
He’s also promising skeptics that the device will be supported long after launch, saying, “We have a huge slate of content coming from some of the best developers in the industry. . . . We will also be launching all-physical rereleases and remasters of classic Game Boy titles, entirely new IP from incredible indie developers, first-time launches of Game Boy games that were canceled before release, and even some titles that were canceled before the public ever found out about them.”
In announcing the Chromatic, Luckey said he had been modifying the Game Boy off and on for 17 years—and he has a history with many gamers, due to his work in the virtual reality field (before he sold Oculus to Meta and was later dismissed).
He has also courted controversy, however, embracing fringe politics and working with Milo Yiannopoulos to fund a pro-Trump group that focused on trolling opponents. Luckey also supported the GameGate movement and mocked “social justice warriors” on Twitter in 2016. He vocally supported a “virtual border wall” during the Trump administration.
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