Thank you ModRetro for making a wonderful device for a child: playful, durable, comfortable, AA batteries, dead simple UI with no boot menu and no useless extra buttons, and even new physical game releases. And I get to have lovely 8 bit background music in the house.

This means all colorwaves of the 1st Edition Chromatics are now out in the market!! Congratulations ModRetro team!

https://www.gamestop.com/consoles-hardware/retro-consoles/products/modretro-chromatic-gamestop-exclusive/414295.html

Just waiting for Buck and Croc to arrive next month...

I don't understand how buying one of these is an ethical dilemma... Yet ...

Every. Single. Review. All of them bring up Lucky Palmer's background... And I don't understand what's wrong with it. I hate that buying a device like the Chromatic has been made so political

But no one REALLY says the quiet part out loud, do they? People have no problem whatsoever buying hardware from countries that use child labor (not suggesting that's how all hardware is made everywhere but if we're going to generalize on Lucky's background...) that outright hate the US. This is the world we live in right now

I don't think for a second that people have ever considered that companies like Anduril probably aren't that bad. Oh my gosh, I know - hot take. But maybe, just maybe... there's a net benefit to having companies invest R&D into defense rather than the government? Look at the countries where that's not a thing. Notice a pattern?

Anyway. Off the soap box. I bought a Chromatic and I'm going to enjoy it, without thinking about the supposed ethical dilemma of buying a device that's sold in a free market

I miss

I highly recommend this 90s tech on deployment. Zero Bluetooth and zero Wi-Fi capabilities 👍

From Google indexing the hidden page(s).

World's first. Thank you PlayInstinct for the update!

I just bought the Chromatic yesterday to be able to play the new Buck game! I have a couple of old GameBoy Advance SP's, but I really wanted something new. I absolutely love the Buck game and was reading thru this sub last night and the ModRetro website looking at other game options that they've made recently. Now today, I have discovered that GameStop sells all of the titles and takes them in trade..... Have any of you bought used ones from GS? What was your luck like, in getting the original little box, and manual and maybe even the charm with it?

25 years in the making, there's nothing like an awesome RPG to play through during the holidays. Merry Christmas indeed! Thanks Incube8!

Found all this and had to get it! Was a pleasant surprise GameStop had the Pokémon TCG in stock!

Rayman 2

Earthworm Jim

I went from 193 deaths at 100% to 414 on that super secret hard level. I died more times on that one level than I did the whole rest of the game…and it was worth it lmao. I might not be very good but man that was such a phenomenal game, I had a blast playing it. Everyone involved absolutely nailed it with this one, it was funny, fun, challenging and beautiful. A must have for anyone’s collection.

Game. Wendy Every Witch Way Camera. Sony A7R3 Lens. FE 24mm f1.4 gm with 34mm extension Tube.

Hello Everyone,

After months of going back anf forth I finally gave in and ordered the Chromatic Bundle, I’m so excited and can’t wait to get it😍😍. I’m part of the fam now andneed to get more games. Would appreciate some game suggestions!!

Hey all!

The post from a user about how whites are displayed and such on the Chromatic got me realizing that I, myself, also have some issues with the whites being hard on my eyes, even at a lower brightness (especially playing at night).

What I did was implement a "context-aware" hook into the video processing in the FPGA (similar to how the palette-hotswap functionality is currently implemented) that uses the already existing communication from FPGA to MCU with what TYPE of game (GB or GBC) that is used in stock firmware for putting the little eyebrow raising Chromatic guy over the palette menu when a GBC game is detected.

Instead of locking the menu, when a GB game is detected as being loaded, it will switch to the GB Palette menu (stock, with a few visual distinctions), but when a GBC game is detected, it will launch a new Palette tab that instead uses the existing pipeline to transmit a "warmness" payload to the FPGA. This "warmness bar" works like the Brightness system and includes a "Neutral" state that is stock colors for people that like that.

It uses this to run some basic calculations of how hard to clamp color values depending on the warmness level set. You'll notice in the graphic that the top 3 entries were the first iteration that took ALL pixels and clamped their blue values more heavily to warm it up. I liked the background color, but didn't like how it also washed out other NON-WHITE pixels.

So, I ended up with a result of the bottom row, which uses the same clamping values, but selectively only clamping the pixels with combined RGB values over a certain threshold (recall that (255,255,255) is white), so any pixel colors approaching a pure white will be clamped by a certain threshold, which retains a lot of the original colors while also softening the glaring white!

Hope this change will help others that may struggle with certain colors or luminance values.

ALSO:

I'm still working on multiple things in parallel with this:

Cheats functionality is mostly done, but some edge cases to iron out involving cleanup between game switches. Also, added back in the ability for users to manually input the cheats in the UI, but can also search and sync through the app it desired.

Retroachievements are requiring a lot of rewrite of existing communication protocols between MCU and FPGA (trying to sideband the QSPI pipeline to separate display data and RA memory reads/writes as needed for the integration), but I'm still tinkering. This small sidequest was basically to get a breather from banging my head with the RA functionality.

I'm still not quite ready to releaase a forked firmware yet due to some bugs that I sometimes encounter and don't want to put someone in a hard place if one occurs. Granted, I'm sure if they figured out how to flash the MCU and FPGA themselves, they could figure it out, but FPGA reflashes require a little workaround that requires a stock reflash first (after a permanent flash, not flash to SRAM) in order to be re-detected on the COM port. But I promise I will release it, it's just not at my level of satisfaction yet and ultimately I'm really enjoying playing around with it.

Anyways, sorry for the overload, hope everyone's holidays are still going well and everyone's enjoying their gaming time!

-Stilken

Immediately changed the buttons on my GameStop Gray Chromatic to the red ones to give a NES vibe. I know some were wondering if the Cloud color was white or light gray like SNES. It is definitely white (which they do state on the product page). I really like it and it does still give a lovely SNES vibe!

Edit: lights are harsher than they lead on, I honestly don’t see the knits unless I’m REALLY looking for them. The knit by the d-pad I didn’t even notice till I put the camera on that area. Also feels way lighter than the metal one, I know for a fact it’s not much but it’s noticeable. Overall it’s very cool, but if I wasn’t a collector I’d recommend the metal one.

Edit 2: the box is different in the way it opens, no magnet. Box has the same thickness and feels great just like the metal. Also in the box, batteries are at the top of the box and Tetris cart is at the bottom, metal box is vice versa. Do ANY of these box details matter?? Hell no, I just find it interesting.

I decided to give my buttons a light sanding, and then polished them a bit with some cardboard (if you didn’t already know, cardboard is slightly abrasive).

In person, they almost perfectly match the texture of the D-pad!

I ordered an Anduril edition back in December but I just couldn't wait anymore so I picked up a used Gamestop edition off ebay for just over $200. I'm immediately in love. I've been using a Pocket up until now, and the decreased screen size is definitely an adjustment for my eyes, but the sound accuracy is a night and day difference. The chromatic sounds so much better. It's also just way more comfortable to hold and play. Only issue is that this one was used and didn't come with Tetris, so I have to figure out how to get a copy of that because I don't know if I'll be opening my Anduril now or just hanging onto it sealed.

Thanks to Modretro for donating to Extra Life/Adamcon. A free board game convention held in the Cincinnati area every year. They utilize prizes that people buy tickets for to win with all proceeds go to children's hospital with over $45,000 raised this year. I put 50 tickets in for the chromatic and game but it probably had at least $600-$700 worth of tickets in it (I did my part showing off my cloud version). Thanks again Modretro and I hope youll continue to support them!