The ModRetro Chromatic Review - A High End Alternative GBC FPGA Handheld Solution?

The Game Boy and Game Boy Color systems have had a very active "afterlife." Screen mods, homebrew games and clone consoles are just some of the developments that have gained prominence in the past 10+ years. The idea of cloning a Game Boy or Game Boy Color is not a new one, hardware clones have been around for around 10 years. More flexible FPGA technology has resulting in two consoles which can play original GB/GBC cartridges, the Analogue Pocket (2021) and the Funny Playing FPGBC (2023). Now a new challenger enters the arena in the form of the Chromatic from a company called ModRetro. Let's see what it has to offer and how it measures up against the competition.

Game Boy Tetris New vs. Old - ModRetro Chromatic Tetris

The company ModRetro has released their Chromatic, an FPGA handheld console which simulates a Game Boy Color and plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. It retails for $199, which may seem rather pricey but to attract buyers ModRetro developed a new version of Tetris and bundled it with the console. This version of Tetris can only be purchased with a Chromatic, it is not available separately. Having bought a Chromatic I intended to review both the console and its game, however as the console review was already pretty long and the game review ended up being lengthy in its own right, I decided to split the article into two parts for easier reading. In this article I will review the Tetris games which came before ModRetro's, give an overview of ModRetro's features and gameplay and see how it stacks up against its predecessors and whether it offers good value to the Chromatic package.

Dracula the Undead, An Atari Lynx Tragedy

The Atari Lynx was a groundbreaking handheld console, as it was the first color handheld console ever made. Unfortunately it was not a great success but it was neither a footnote as 71 games were officially released during lifetime (1989-1995). One of its more unique games was Dracula the Undead, something of an adventure game retelling of the first few chapters of Bram Stoker's original novel, Dracula. Ever since I acquired a Lynx I was so entranced by the game that I felt compelled to beat it without the assistance of a walkthrough. Having accomplished that feat, I feel like this underappreciated game deserves a special review.

Sherlock Holmes and Copyright Term Expiration

Two attempts to murder Sherlock Holmes, the left much more freely usable historically than the right

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle wrote and published Sherlock Holmes stories from 1887 to 1927, a span of forty years. That broad period has some unusual implications for the copyright of the stories and the character of Sherlock Holmes. This blog article intends to answer the question how did Sherlock Holmes enter the public domain and at what times did he do so?

SummerCart64 - The Open Source N64 Flash Cart

The Nintendo 64 has had devices (such as the Bung Doctor V64) which allowed games to be played unofficially almost from its release. The 2010s saw the introduction of the first flash cartridges for the console such as the EverDrive 64. Flash cartridges have come a long way and now can run almost any regular N64 cartridge game. Until recently there was only one flash cart readily available, the EverDrive 64 X7, but now it faces competition from an open source flash cart, the SummerCart64, which promises new functionality. In this blog article I will take a look at the SummerCart64 and go over its functionality.

Sound Blaster Live! Primer

The Sound Blaster Live! represented Creative Labs return to products which could compete with other sound cards designed for the PCI Bus. First released in 1998, the Live! was Creative's first "real" PCI sound card. Things had changed, competing chipsets had improved in quality, Windows 95's standardization meant that sound drivers did not have to adhere to proprietary hardware as they did with DOS and the use of wholly-digital sound leveled the playing field compared to the DOS era. Let's explore their Live!

D&D and AD&D Character Creation Historical Overview

Dungeons and Dragons in all its forms and editions requires you to create one or more characters to play the game. The process by which this has been done has changed over the years, gradually increasing in complexity edition by edition. In this blog article today I would like to focus on how it changed during the first twenty-five years of the game's life.

Tandy Deskmate - Tandy's Ace in the Hole

In 1984 Tandy released a software package called DeskMate. DeskMate was a basic suite of office productivity software and Tandy would bundle the software with its computers or sell it in Radio Shack stores and via mail order for a relatively low price. DeskMate, while little remembered today, was a key factor in putting Tandy computers in many homes. Let's take a look at how the suite did that and evolved over time.

The Power of the Modern Gotek Floppy Drive Emulator

The Gotek Floppy Drive emulator is a diamond in the rough as it comes from the factory. While cheap, the common Goteks only emulate a single type of floppy. While this may be all you need if you only need a DOS or Windows 95 boot disk, running floppy disk images on vintage computers is quite possible with a Gotek flashed with community-based firmware. In this article I will take a look at what the Gotek can do with the Flash Floppy firmware.

Montech MKey - Dipping the Toe in the Modern Keyboard Scene

Montech MKey Full Size Darkness (Stock)

My first post on this blog was about keyboards, namely the IBM Model M keyboard. At the time I thought it was the greatest keyboard that was ever made or will ever be made. As a mechanical buckling spring keyboard it was one increasingly few such keyboards that, even in reduced form through Unicomp, survived the push to cheap, disposable rubber dome membrane keyboards of the 1990s and 2000s. Mechanical keyboards have made a comeback with Cherry switches and their clones and advancements and improvements in keyboard design have compelled me to take a look and see if I can replace my beloved Model M as my desktop weapon of choice. Starting with a relatively inexpensive keyboard, the Montech MKey, let me explain in this blog entry the experience I have had customizing this keyboard.

Godzilla on Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray Disc

Updated 12/9/24

The Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray format has been around since 2016. As the next generation in video disc formats, it has certainly not seen the level of success of DVD or even Blu-ray in terms of adoption or sales. Streaming platforms have posed a challenge for physical media's sales, and there may been many hyperbolic statements that "physical media is dead." Streaming offers conveniences over disc, instant access to content, no need for another device to connect to your TV, watch enforced previews and need to store discs. But there are serious drawbacks to relying on streaming services, the need to pay subscription fees every month for continued access, having to subscribe to multiple streaming platforms to watch what you want to watch, the variable quality of the stream depending on the bandwidth available and content going away. 

With disc-based media, you own that disc for as long as it lasts. Keep the disc free from scratching and fingerprints and it can last a very long time. However, disc-based media is read only, it cannot be "upgraded" when a new scan of a film is made, so you will have to buy a new disc in order to enjoy the benefits of the latest and greatest restoration. For today's blog article, we are going to examine that question in the context of Godzilla films. For the films which have seen Ultra HD 4K Blu-ray releases, I will attempt to tackle the question of whether you should buy or upgrade to Ultra HD 4K for these films. I will also give links so you can buy the correct discs if you wish.

Nuked-SC55: True Roland SC-55 Emulation is Here

Roland Sound Canvas emulation has long been a "white whale" of DOS emulation. While there have been several efforts from Roland over the years to emulate the Sound Canvas line, they have not targeted the modules used by most DOS games, the SC-55 and SC-55mkII. Other emulation methods have not quite hit the mark for other reasons. Recently, an emulator author with the handle "nukeyt" has released an emulator called Nuked-SC55. In this article I will tell you how to run it with DOSBox and other programs.

Completing the Apple IIc Upgrade Experience

The Apple IIc, while a great little system, has a great deal of upgrade potential. In a previous blog entry I talked about the Mockingboard 4c, which is one of the most interesting upgrades for the system, but there are other upgrades worth discussing that may not be worthy of a full blog entry. So here are some of my thoughts and review of some other upgrade options for the original IIc.

The Sony PVM 1342Q - A High Quality Display for Consoles and Computers

Sony PVMs and BVMs are probably the most desired CRT displays for all retro gaming. They were high end monitors and cost a lot of money to purchase when they were sold. I recently acquired one of them, a PVM 1342Q, at reasonable cost. This monitor is very versatile in that it has both Analog and Digital RGB inputs as well as Composite and S-Video inputs. Let's take a focused look at what this PVM can do.

FPGBC - The Budget FPGA Handheld

Portable or handheld devices which play retro video games are very common these days. Companies like Anbernic and Powkiddy make multiple consoles which can emulate some very advanced video game consoles. The Steam Deck and the Nintendo Switch can also emulate or run retro video games. These things are a dime a dozen these days and come in all shapes and sizes, but they all rely on software emulation. Until recently there has been one FPGA handheld console, the Analogue Pocket. In the past several months, a new challenger has entered the arena, the FPGBC from FunnyPlaying. In this article I will give my impressions of the device and review it on its own merits compared to the console it is trying to simulate, the Game Boy Color.

Nintendo's Console Accessory Cheapness

Nintendo's consoles have, for the most part, been somewhat high priced over the years. The company likes to keep it that way, you will not see a Nintendo console in a bargain bin or heavily discounted, even toward the end of its lifespan. The maintenance of price contributes to its "prestige branding." Nintendo usually makes a modest profit on the consoles it sells, unlike Sony and Microsoft it does not solely rely on software sales to make up the cost of hardware production. But those profits come at a price for the consumer, especially in Japan. Let's see how Nintendo cut costs when releasing consoles in its native country.

King's Quest IV - The First True PC Compatible Game

KQ4 Box, courtesy of MobyGames

When we think of PC Compatible games, thoughts of freedom may pop into one's mind. Intel, nVidia, AMD, gamers generally have a choice of which hardware to use in their systems. PC games have been, generally speaking, not tied to any particular manufacturer's hardware. Competition within the PC hardware market allowed consumers the luxury of choice. In the 1990s and onwards your motherboard could have been made by one manufacturer, your graphics card by another and so on and you could get a really good gaming experience. But this was not always the case, PC compatible games of the 1980s were often seen as lacking compared to other computers and generic PCs were content to clone rather than innovate. This all began to change in 1988 when King's Quest IV was released. In this blog article I will briefly summarize the evolution of PC gaming hardware and then discuss how KQ4 opened up PC gaming into what would eventually become the default non-console paradigm of how to play video games.