The ModRetro Chromatic Relaunch
- Lee Murray
- Nov 16, 2025
- 3 min read
One of the best documentaries I've watched recently is "Rams", which documents the life and work of the famous and influential product designer Dieter Rams. It's fair to say I'm a bit obsessed with good design.
So with that out in the open, imagine me hearing about the ModRetro Chromatic, which originally launched in 2024. It's a modern handheld, one might say a Game Boy built from the ground up, how it was meant to be built: no plastic, simplicity, beautiful design, and it plays your Game Boy cartridges.
Better still, no downloads, no logins. Just slot in your cartridge, turn it on and start playing. Now that's good design.
It houses an FPGA chip that behaves like the real Game Boy silicon rather than pretending in software, so your original Game Boy and Game Boy Color carts run as they should (unfortunately that doesn't include the Game Boy Advance, but you can't have everything).
Built proper
The shell is thixomolded magnesium alloy, not plastic, with a metal battery door, so it feels like a thing that will still work in fifty years. The screen was made from scratch to nail the exact colour cast of the Game Boy Color, and it hits up to 1,000 nits, so it is readable in direct sunlight (something the original wasn't, I might add).
It gets better: there is an optional sapphire-crystal screen, the same scratch-proof stuff on expensive watches. The base model uses Corning Gorilla Glass at £183, and the sapphire upgrade is £274. That extra hundred quid is purely the sapphire, not a different colour, so do not get the two confused.
Every console ships with a brand-new, officially made Tetris cartridge, and here is a nice touch: it is a real cart that also runs on an actual Game Boy Color. There is a proper Link port too, so you can connect via link cable to another Chromatic, a real GBC or an Analogue Pocket, plus a 3.5mm jack, a physical volume wheel and USB-C for charging, firmware, save backups and even video-out.
New colours, new games
The relaunch brought a new "Cloud" colourway, a white shell with SNES-style purple buttons, joining Midnight, Wave, Leaf, Inferno, Volt and Bubblegum. It also added five new first-party cartridge games. It runs on three AA batteries in the box, with an optional rechargeable pack sold separately.
Full details are on the ModRetro page, with a good hands-on over at Lon.TV.
The only design change I would have made on the ModRetro Chromatic is removing the logo and printed stripes on the front. No need. If they had done that, they might have got the seal of approval from Dieter Rams himself.
A great effort though, and nice to see good design as the differentiator.
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