Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus and Anduril Industries, has made a comeback to the gaming industry with a new product – a pixel-perfect ultrabright magnesium gaming device, which is a modern take on the classic Game Boy, retailing at $199.
What Happened: Luckey’s latest venture, the ModRetro Chromatic, is scheduled to ship this holiday season. The device, encased in a magnesium alloy, features a sapphire crystal cover glass, PBT buttons, and a pixel-perfect IPS screen. It also boasts “well over a thousand” nits of brightness, enabling users to play in sunlight, reported The Verge.
The ModRetro Chromatic is designed with an FPGA to play authentic Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. It comes with a genuine copy of Tetris, developed by Luckey’s team. The device includes a Link Cable port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and USB-C for “lagless” video out. It operates for 24 hours on three standard AA batteries.
In collaboration with Koss, Luckey’s team will ship color-matched retro Porta Pro headphones. The ModRetro Chromatic does not use ROMs and is a cartridge only unless the user provides their own flashcart.
Luckey hinted that the quantities of the ModRetro Chromatic will be limited, but GameStop will carry an unknown number of them. He stated, “I don't see this as a way to make money, I see it as the way to make the world's best tribute to the Game Boy.”
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Why It Matters: Luckey, who co-founded virtual-reality startup Oculus which was subsequently acquired by Facebook in 2014, was reportedly ousted by the Mark Zuckerberg-led company because of his political activity. However, that doesn’t mean his product innovations haven’t made headlines since then.
In 2022, Luckey announced that he had developed a custom VR headset named “NerveGear,” that could kill a player in real life if they die in a video game.
Meanwhile, his company Anduril Industries has also been making significant strides. In April, the company won a contract with the U.S. Air Force to develop autonomous fighter jets. At the time, Luckey said, “It's also a milestone for the U.S. Air Force to be building and developing an autonomous fighter jet for the first time at scale, this is really an incredible program.”
Photo Courtesy: Palmertech Through Wikimedia Commons
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