A review of the Chromatic

 

In the realm of FPGA Game Boys, the Chromatic has some obvious disadvantages compared to its main competitor, the Analogue Pocket. Where the Analogue Pocket has Game Boy Advance cartridge support, adapters for other cartridges, as well as SD card support that allows for playing, well, pretty much anything, the Chromatic is a much simpler device. It’s just a Game Boy Color. An extremely high-quality Game Boy Color, with fantastic image quality far beyond our childhoods, exceptional battery life, a slick metallic shell with very tactile buttons, and software allowing integration with modern devices.

 

 

But it’s still just a Game Boy Color. Yet with the Chromatic back in stock, there’s no denying that ModRetro has located a peculiar niche in the FPGA market. Rather than a machine that can do everything, the Chromatic is a machine that can do a few things very well, and as it happens, that’s all most consumers really want. I think back to when I first received my review copy of the Chromatic. My girlfriend likes games but isn’t a gigantic fan of them. There’s typically no point trying to convince her to try a weird one with me. She took one look at the Chromatic and was quite impressed. That’s a Game Boy. But much nicer than the actual Game Boys. Then she found out that it came with Tetris as a pack-in game, and that’s when she got really excited.

 

 

I don’t think the apparent success of the Chromatic can be decoupled from how much it looks and feels like a normal product. Though the Chromatic may lack the customizability of the Analog Pocket, this is actually a benefit from the perspective of stores like Gamestop, which stocks the Chromatic as an exclusive. This is a machine Gamestop can sell as an impulse buy to the typical consumer and not worry about that customer never coming back. Yes, the ModRetro version of Tetris is a lot of fun. Possibly even $200 worth of fun. But if you want to play a different game on that shiny little Chromatic, you’ll have to buy it somewhere. And I don’t think it’s coincidental that many Gamestops have been stocking older Game Boy games again.

 

 

None of this is to imply that ModRetro is an entirely soulless corporation. One of the more interesting initiatives they’ve been running in parallel with the Chromatic is releasing new games. Some are reprints of obscure titles like Baby T-Rex, but the bulk of the Chromatic lineup consists of games from the online Game Boy Studio community- a very interesting subculture of Game Boy aficionados with their own awards ceremonies. ModRetro and the Chromatic has substantially increased the reach of these developers from casual modders to producers of actual cartridges of games that could easily be mistaken for lost classics in their own right, were they to appear on a shelf alongside their original Game Boy progenitors of thirty years past.

 

 

The Game Boy may have lost its mainstream commercial viability long ago, yet both its physical aesthetic as well as the potential to create interesting games with its limited hardware remain as strong as ever. And this is the real product that ModRetro is selling- nostalgia for those who remember the Game Boy fondly, and legitimacy for those who never forgot about it. Although to be clear, it doesn’t hurt in the slightest that the Chromatic is a fantastic piece of hardware even ignoring all that context.