It took simply 24 hours for the ModRetro Chromatic to promote out when it launched in December 2024. An unapologetic Recreation Boy clone packaged in a slick, robust new shell, it delivered the proper dose of gaming nostalgia alongside a couple of fashionable upgrades. Eager to construct on that success, ModRetro has revamped manufacturing efforts and rejiggered its provide chain to ensure the Chromatic can stand the check of time. Now the snazzy, geeky gadget is accessible on the market once more—this time with new options, new video games, and a brand-new colorway.
The corporate, helmed by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, says this time there can be no shortages of the Chromatic. It’ll price you $199 with no video games, or $299 for a model with a beefier sapphire crystal display screen. Greater than that, Luckey desires the gadget to final, principally ceaselessly. Possibly even develop into the Recreation Boy’s closing type.
Courtesy of ModRetro
“In idea, you possibly can put this in a field for 100 years after which pop in a pair of batteries and it will simply go,” says Luckey. “Should you’re saying that is going to be the final Recreation Boy ever made—that that is the factor that can persist and be the way in which you expertise that complete period of gaming—you higher make one thing to final. It is nearly like you’ve an ethical responsibility to ensure it is one thing that’s going to outlive.”
Luckey, Silicon Valley’s preeminent Hawaiian-shirt-clad tech bro, is legendary—or notorious, relying on the way you have a look at it—for pioneering VR tech and army protection alike. In 2012 he created the Oculus Rift, the product that successfully gave life to the then merely theoretical VR trade. He’s had a controversial journey since then, promoting Oculus to Fb in 2014, then leaving in an acrimonious cut up three years later. He moved on to begin the military-industrial tech firm Anduril (named after a sword from the Lord of the Rings collection) that now makes assault drones, border surveillance tech, and AI-powered weapons.
His right-wing political leanings, whereas as soon as out of favor in Silicon Valley, are actually on show way more freely by the broader tech elite. Luckey has not too long ago been re-embraced by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (née Fb), in his personal rightward flip. One other of Luckey’s latest endeavors, a crypto financial institution known as Erebor (after the Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit), is being funded by conservative billionaire and fellow LoTR nomenclature fanatic Peter Thiel, the CEO of Palantir.
On one other entrance, Luckey remains to be very into the tech of the previous. The identify ModRetro comes from a discussion board Luckey created as a child to work together with different gadget lovers. The factor that caught with him probably the most from his childhood was the Recreation Boy.
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