On a recent visit to the extremely disappointing EGX at London's Excel one of the few standouts was a new GameBoy handheld from a company called Modretro entitled the Chromatic, I had a brief try on one and was immediately impressed by the build quality, the weight of it and how comfortable it was to use.
Well after a few weeks of waiting mine has finally arrived, has it lived up to my initial impressions at EGX? Frankly, yes! I can confirm that the build quality is outstanding, it has a really nice weight to it (I'd say it's heavier than the original GameBoy) and feels great in the hand to play.
The Chromatic comes in a range of colours and is capable of playing original GameBoy and GameBoy Color cartridges via the slot in the back of the machine and thanks to it's bright and colourful screen and the fact that the Chromatic offers pixel perfect renderings of these games they look amazing! As I don't own any GameBoy cartridges I've not yet been able to test these however the two GameBoy Color cartridges I own look stunning!
Modretro have also released a range of new GB and GBC cartridges which are now available to purchase and pre-order through their website.
Like the original GameBoy the Chromatic comes bundled with a new, officially licensed version of Tetris and this is a really great version, it's in full colour, looks sharp and bright on the screen and thankfully they've retained the iconic music too!
One downside with the Chromatic is that it’s a bit finicky with flash carts, I prepared an EZ Flash Jr. with GB and GBC roms ready to use in it, the cart itself loads fine however at time of writing none of the games will load. I’ve had it confirmed to me by Modretro on Reddit that this is being looked into and worked on so hopefully before too long it’ll be fixed.
This is a really quality device and if the rumoured GameBoy Advance they're reportedly working on is half as good as this we should again be in for something special.
A GameBoy and GameBoy Color for the 21st century and highly recommended.
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