ModRetro Chromatic: Better Than the Game Boy Color it Emulates

Today, we took apart the ModRetro Chromatic: a new entry in the handheld gaming market that might remind you a bit of something from the past. The ModRetro Chromatic really does hit us hard in the nostalgias, bringing home that Christmas morning feeling.

Nintendo hooked whole generations on gaming with the Game Boy—millions of kids dropped Tetris blocks, captured Pokemon, and stomped Goombas in the backseats of cars. Lots of those former kids have tried to keep their Game Boys working. Sure, you can play some classic Game Boy games on your Switch. But that doesn’t always scratch the nostalgia itch. 

Compared to the consoles of today, the Game Boy and Game Boy Color were relatively straightforward to repair, if you’re willing to do some simple soldering. Yet Nintendo never sold parts, and Game Boys have been beyond their service life for many years, so some of the most troublesome parts can be hard to get ahold of.

That’s a big part of why ModRetro made the Chromatic. It plays all the classic cartridges, and it’s built with longevity and repairability in mind—of course we love hearing that, so we dug in.

There’s no mistaking that the Chromatic is a passion project. You can see it in the beautifully vibrant box art, annotated with “MATH QUIZ FRIDAY” in one corner and peppered with doodles of familiar pixelated friends from our past.

CT Scans

For a head-to-head comparison, we used Lumafield’s CT scanner to peek inside both the Chromatic and the original DMG-01 Game Boy first made in 1989 (sorry, we didn’t have a Game Boy Color in the office!).

The Chromatic’s electronics are seemingly antithetical to the three-decade-old hardware it emulates, and nowhere is this more evident than when comparing the modern IC BGA solder points to the bulky through-hole components that are visible on the original Game Boy.

Overall, the general profile of the ModRetro is definitely similar to the handheld systems of old, but a closer look at the components, like the upgraded speaker and the wireless module, leaves no doubt that this is a very modern device.

Batteries and Game Cartridges

That’s not to say that the Chromatic doesn’t borrow some of the most repairable design choices from its predecessors. While capable of supporting an optional lithium ion battery pack, the device is designed to run off three AA batteries (included in the box) via an easy-access latched compartment on the back. Not happy with the AA batteries or the lithium ion pack? That’s fine, too! So long as you’re outputting around 4.5V, you can hook in salt batteries or a miniature nuclear reactor for all the device cares. 

Speaking of replaceable batteries, the sturdy hatch combined with the silicone strips swaddling the batteries was a nice touch; gone are the days of dropping your Game Boy and the batteries flying out and under the Christmas tree. 

When you’re near an outlet, a USB-C port sitting just above the battery compartment on the lower edge allows the device to operate on external power, giving your batteries a break and saving their juice for on-the-go gaming. The port also allows lagless video output to your PC, so you can show the world the wonders of Kirby’s Dream Land in real time—or just play on a bigger screen. If you’ve got a friend nearby, you can swap Pokémon via the IR sensor, or engage in two-player gaming with the Link Cable.

Turning to the game cartridges, the handheld is backward compatible and works flawlessly with both Game Boy and Game Boy Color games (though not Game Boy Advance games, sadly). Whether you’re using the modern redesign of the cult classic Tetris or you fancy giving that other cult classic, Wario Land 3, a whirl, the Chromatic promises a hassle free experience because it is a Game Boy Color at the hardware level—not merely an emulator.

A quick comparison of the electronics in the included Tetris game and the circa 1998 Wario game provides another interesting contrast. My colleague Connor Bassolino, who works on iFixit’s educational partnerships with universities, pointed out that the original Game Boy stored save data to the cartridge, not on the device itself. This meant that, with the technology of the time, the cartridge needed a power source of its own in order to retain game saves. A persistent power source was doubly important in games like Pokemon where the passage of time in the real world needed to be tracked by way of a persistent clock.

The Tetris cartridge, made with modern electronics, is a fascinating comparison when viewed through the lens of 1990s circuit design. The FPGA chip sits prominently in one corner, a modern IC capable of mimicking the hard-baked functions of any of the ICs on the original Game Boy’s PCB, and there is no battery in sight. Instead, we have a ferroelectric RAM module capable of mimicking and exceeding the benefits of static SRAM while offering long term persistence of data without an active power source.

The Chromatic still needs a battery in the cartridge for games that keep time, and obviously the majority of the game cartridges out there won’t benefit from this advancement, but it’s interesting all the same to see the limitations of old hardware alongside the solutions available today.

It’s All About the Screen

I spoke to Torin Herndon, the CEO of ModRetro, to better understand what went into the making of the Chromatic. Of the 45 minutes or so that we were on the Zoom call, most of that was spent talking about the screen.

The screen, it turns out, is a rare example of a fully-custom LCD manufactured using modern techniques to mimic the obsolete LCDs used in the Game Boy Color. As Torin explained, this was done with the firm belief that it would be impossible to recreate a true Game Boy Color facsimile without getting the display right…and he’s absolutely right.

From color contrast issues to the way pixels are portrayed on the screen, modern LCD’s have introduced so many improvements designed to increase the capabilities of the displays, that the resulting image can be very far from what the game designers of the 90’s intended for us to see.

There’s no denying that one of these LCD panels runs at a much higher resolution and increased brightness, but that comes at the cost of an increased image magnification, a garish color gamut, and the complete lack of the nostalgic charm for which justifies the retro device category’s existence in the first place.

The pixel-perfect image, while desirable in certain situations, simply doesn’t translate well to a low resolution art style that was never meant to be upscaled. After all, what is pixel art without the chunky pixels?

Torin and team felt the display was a major shortfall of modern emulators and to address the problem, they went to extreme lengths to create a very custom—and therefore very expensive—LCD panel that would faithfully represent the art style of the original games. 

From layering a color correcting lens in the LCD stack to ensuring the correct pixel density and sub-pixel layout—and even going as far as using a spectroradiometer to match the wavelengths of light!—there is no question that the 160×144 resolution LCD screen is the centerpiece of the ModRetro Chromatic, and around which all the other design parameters revolve.

Made for DIY Repair

Torin mentioned that one of their design goals was to address the biggest shortfall of the original Game Boy Color: the inevitable lack of service support and the lack of availability of spare parts. It’s clear that both he and Palmer Luckey (the financial backer and visionary behind the creation of the Chromatic) want their swan song to the Game Boy Color to defy entropy to the maximum extent possible.

And you can see this in the design choices they’ve made, choices that have pushed the price tag of the Chromatic well above most other competitor devices. The magnesium alloy frame is sturdy and is undoubtedly a step up from the original Game Boy’s plastic shell, a material choice that ensures the Chromatic won’t yellow or stain like crusty plastic consoles of yesteryear. 

The lab grown sapphire crystal glass atop the display is the type of scratch resistant protection you’ll find on luxury watches, and as important as the custom LCD is to the ModRetro team, it’s still somewhat stunning to find that level of protection applied to a $200 handheld gaming system where most others opt for Gorilla Glass or no additional scratch resistance at all.

It’s not just the quality of the build that makes this device longlasting, the team has already released 3D printable CAD files for the mechanical components, a repair guide on iFixit’s website, and has committed to releasing spare parts for the electrical components within the first quarter of 2025.

The battery terminals and speaker were particular pain points on the original Game Boy, requiring basic soldering skills to perform these repairs. With a couple of notable exceptions—specifically the USB-C and Game Link ports—the highly modular design on the Chromatic makes significant strides towards ensuring that the end user is able to fix the device with a minimum set of tools and skills. This is the kind of device that you can buy once and keep forever, and it’s from this perspective that the $200 price tag should be viewed.

The Last Game Boy You’ll Ever Buy

The only fault I found in my time with the ModRetro Chromatic was the use of tripoint screws, a stylistic decision the team made to match the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color devices, but that really is all I can fault.

As we’ve seen in other hardware, the creators of a device are most invested in the product when the reason for the device’s existence is something other than the drive for profit. In the case of Framework and Fairphone, it’s the need to provide an alternative model to our culture of forced obsolescence. 

From what I’ve gathered, it’s something different that drives Palmer and Torin. It’s a passion to revive a beloved device from their childhood and a desire to share the joy it brings with a wider community than the usual retro modder crowd. In doing so, they’ve poured their hearts and souls into a creation that they’re deeply invested in on a personal level.

To quote Torin: “I would never have worked on something like this if it wasn’t for someone as crazy as Palmer.” I’d say it takes two to tango, and the result of this crazy partnership is a device made to be bought once, and kept for life.