The Ultimate Commodore 64? - The Commodore 64 Ultimate Review

The original Commodore 64 had a pretty long run for a computing platform, released in 1982 and discontinued in 1994. Its fortunes mirrored that of the company which developed it as Commodore achieved its greatest success with the C64 and never quite managed to achieve a similar level of market dominance thereafter. Now there is a new Commodore 64, the Commodore C64 Ultimate, which promises to be an end-all, be-all solution to running C64 software on a platform worthy of the Commodore legacy. Today, having had a chance to play with one for about a week, I can put those claims to the test.

The New ModRetro Chromatic & Accessories

Last year the company known as ModRetro released an FPGA-based Game Boy and Game Boy Color handheld console. Those consoles were advertised as limited editions and sold out on the ModRetro website. I bought and reviewed one and had an overall favorable opinion of the device. Now eight months have passed and ModRetro is releasing not only a new batch of consoles but also accessories for all Chromatic consoles. I ordered a new console and the new accessories to put them to the test. What has changed? Are there improvements?

The New Chromatic

Let me start with what has not changed. When you order a console the items you get in the box will be the same: the console, 3xAA ModRetro-branded batteries and the Tetris cartridge (which I reviewed separately). That is about it in terms of what is unchanged. Even the box for the new units is slightly redesigned. The old box showed off games that were available for sale on the ModRetro site, but the new box shows screens for a game called "Mega - The Viper Wars" that either does not exist or has not been released.

When the console was originally released last year its price was $199.00 regardless of color or markings. Six standard color variations were offered on the site and with either English or Japanese markings. There was a GameStop variant for sale on GameStop's site and a "Logan Paul" edition sold on the ModRetro site. Both variants were priced at $199.00 but only had an English marking option. All these consoles have a "1st EDITION" marking on them.

The new edition of the Chromatic console is offered for a base price of $199.99 and in all the standard colors (Midnight, Wave, Leaf, Inferno, Volt, Bubblegum) plus a new Cloud color (very SNES-like color scheme). Only English console label markings are available for this edition. These are only available from the ModRetro site. These new Chromatics no longer have a "1st EDITION" marking and only have two color stripes on the bottom left-hand corner of the console instead of three. The middle stripe is gone and the end stripes no longer straddle the edge of the console. This should reduce wear as these colors are printed over the magnesium alloy shell.

The new edition of the Chromatic comes with a Gorilla Glass screen in the base model. An upgrade to a Sapphire Glass screen is available for an extra $100.00. All 1st Edition Chromatics, including the GameStop exclusive, came with Sapphire Glass screens. The Sapphire Glass screens have a small "SAPPHIRE" marking below the bottom of the active display. The GameStop variant is still available for purchase at the original $199.00 price, so if you want a Sapphire Glass screen and do not want to pay the premium, you can still buy that variant at the time of writing.

The main advertised difference between the Gorilla Glass and Sapphire Glass screens is the hardness of the screen. Gorilla Glass comes between 6-8 on the Mohs scale, Sapphire Glass between 7-8. The Mohs scale measures scratch resistance but Gorilla Glass is officially rated with a Vickers Pyramid number, which measures the impact on the screen. Most generations of Gorilla Glass measure between 550-650HV. In short, Sapphire Glass is harder and heavier than Gorilla Glass and offers superior scratch resistance but Gorilla Glass is cheaper and is less prone to shattering on impact.

Comparing both displays, both are equal to my eye in terms of clarity. Gorilla offers slightly superior brightness than Sapphire at the same brightness levels but there is more backlight bleed from Gorilla. Gorilla is less reflective, which may be important if you are in a setting with a lot of ambient or bright light. If in sunlight, find some shade and you should have a nearly equivalent experience with either screen.

The internals bear a comment or two, but there are some improvements. There is one less screw needed to unscrew in order to get the mainboard out of the case. The D-pad trace near the pivot has been moved enough that the pivot cannot wear against it and break the trace. My new Chromatic's mainboard has a microSD card slot soldered onto the board whereas the old Chromatic's only had pads.

There are other minor changes from the old consoles to the new ones. The black RF shield in the back is thicker. The gaps between the power switch and IR window and the shell are tighter. You are also less likely to get a scuffed IR window due to a softer liner used in the new Chromatic's box. The battery cover no longer has the rubber pads on the sides to help hold in the batteries. The metal tabs on the battery cover are in different places and thicker. The bottom of the new enclosure has a plastic piece screwed in to help latch the battery cover. There is a slight ridge or lip behind the volume wheel on the new Chromatic's bottom shell. 

The speaker on the new Chromatic can reach a significantly higher volume than the old Chromatic. However, there is still a lot of noise when both the audio jack and the USB port is connected to the same PC. This makes streaming video and audio less than ideal because the console cannot transmit audio over USB.  As of Firmware v4.0 audio can be streamed alongside video over USB, making the audio quality no longer an issue.

There are slight improvements to the build quality. There is no roughness around the power LED. There were no scuffs on the plastic bits like the IR window or the Tetris cartridge that came with my console. The EverDrive GB X7 worked fine with the new Chromatic.

Accessories

In addition to the new consoles, ModRetro is offering three new accessories, all in their own boxes or packaging with the same colorful, cutesy style as the console's box.

The long-awaited "Rechargeable Power Core" (the battery pack announced alongside the original Chromatic) is finally available for $29.99. The battery pack was mentioned with the initial announcements of the Chromatic but has been MIA until now. This pack fits into the battery compartment of any Chromatic, no tools required, and can be charged by the USB Type-C connector. There are contacts in the battery cavity to make contact with the battery pack and the battery can be easily removed for instances when the console will not see use. This limits unnecessary drain from the battery pack.

The Chromatic can use standard Alkaline, Lithium or rechargeable AA batteries (three required) but cannot charge the latter. ModRetro claims 16 hours of gameplay on a full charge and recharging takes 2-5 hours. These numbers are dependent on the game being played and the power source connected to the Chromatic, respectively. The battery has a 2250mAh capacity and adds about 1.5 oz to the weight (no more than AA batteries) of the Chromatic. It comes with a braided USB Type-C to USB Type-C charging cable, 3.25 feet long.

The second new accessory is a link cable, sold for $14.99. I believe ModRetro made their own so they would not have to listen to customer complaining of flaky vintage cables or poor quality modern cables or have to recommend Analogue's link cable. The Analogue link cable is high quality but it is a competitor's product. Unlike the Analogue link cable the Chromatic link cable does not have a switch for GBA compatibility. GBA link cables are wired differently from GB/GBC cables and require a switch to support GBA and GB/GBC consoles. The Chromatic Link cable is advertised at 6.5 feet, which is slightly longer than Analogue's 4.75 feet. It is also a braided cable as opposed to the plastic sheathed cables from everyone else. Analogue's cable also supports GBA multiplayer and the original Nintendo GBA link cables were shorter than the 8-bit link cables.

The ModRetro site says that its link cable is not compatible with the original Game Boy but that is not the whole story. The Game Boy DMG connector is only physically different from the link cable connector on the later 8-bit Game Boys. The same cables are used for the Game Boy Pocket, Super Game Boy 2 and Game Boy Color. The Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, Game Boy Player and Analogue Pocket are compatible with these cables when playing Game Boy or Game Boy Color games. Nintendo made an adapter, DMG-14, that can convert the smaller GBP/GBC plug into the larger DMG plug. I was able to play a multiplayer game of F-1 Race between the Chromatic, the ModRetro link cable and a DMG-14 in an original Game Boy. I had no trouble using the ModRetro link cable, even with the Game Boy Printer. The link cables are compatible with non-Chromatics.

The final new accessory is the Mod Kit, also $14.99. This includes 9 pairs of A & B buttons, 2 D-Pads, 2 D-Pad Membranes, 4 button membranes, a Start and a Select button, an IR Window, a Power Switch and a Menu button. There is also included some stickers, a double ended bit driver with a 3.8mm security screw bit and a tri-wing bit and an end cap for the bit driver. These parts can be used to customize the look and feel of the cartridge or to fix broken parts. One set of membranes have a softer action press than the other. One of the D-Pads has a short pivot post and the other has a longer pivot post. Once you start breaking open the cardboard covering the back of the blister pack, you will need to find a new way to store these parts.

Button colors are subjective but the big improvement here is the longer D-Pad stem. This eliminated the issue of being able to press opposite directions, which can break some games. The black membranes are supposed to be softer than the gray ones, but I have not noticed much of a difference in the short time I have used them. The included screwdriver is magnetized.

The Koss Porta Pro headphones are still available but only in the standard six color variations. Speaking of Chromatic, there is no red or violet/purple console available or green, blue or yellow buttons in the ModKit. (A red Chromatic was shown during the Classic Tetris World Championship event last year.) I think ModRetro might come up a little short in its spectrum-encompassing branding.

The Chromatic's box states "Designed in California, Assembled in Mexico." The packaging for the Chromatic accessories says "Designed in California, Made in China." It is likely that the "assembly" on the console's box means the assembly line functions of putting the console together (placing the buttons and membranes, screwing in the PCB and shell) and putting it in its box, not soldering electronic components to the PCB. It is more likely that board soldering is done in China but Mexico is not impossible.

Firmware Update v3.2

The new Chromatic and the Battery Pack tell you to update your firmware and give you stickers with QR codes to do this. There last firmware for the Chromatic was released on May 21 (v3.2), so you do not need to rush out to update your old Chromatic if you have updated it since then. My new Chromatic was on the latest firmware out of the box but that may not always be the case going forward. Make sure to update your Tetris cartridge, just in case. ModRetro keeps a changelog documenting updates for any games it sells.

The v3.2 firmware update brought many fixes to the platform but the webcam-identified video based output now no longer uses the RGB color space but the YUV color space with 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. This results in blurrier color but makes the "webcam" compatible with macOS and Discord, as a ModRetro representative explained. Black and white and grayscale are unaffected and still perfectly sharp. The captures I made of the system with launch day firmware are as sharp as a tack. ModRetro is looking at workarounds to the problem but the firmware upgrade tool does not allow for downgrading firmware. The v4.0 firmware is unchanged in this regard. See the link above for details on how to downgrade the firmware (it is not easy).

There is a change to the Chromatic's custom color palettes for monochrome games. The Right + A + B palette is unchanged from prior firmware but the Left + A + B now evokes a Game Boy Light. Another newer option in the menu allows for smooth transitions. This is useful in a game like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening where there is a lot of flicker when Link goes in and out of houses, caves and labyrinths. 

 Conclusion

The new Chromatic offers some quality of life improvements over the old Chromatic. The screens are not so different that you may feel left with second best if you do not fork over the extra $100 for the Sapphire screen. The accessories improve on the console experience. At this point the console's only major flaw is one of its main advertising points, the USB video capture. At present the capture is fuzzier than it needs to be on the horizontal axis with color video and could be fixed. and audio quality is bad if it is connected to a line input to the same PC that is capturing video. Connecting just the line in to the PC without the USB connection allows for high quality audio capture, for what it is worth. This can be fixed in software by permitting USB video and audio capture together as a proper capture device, but this has to be implemented by Gowin, the maker of the FPGA, in its development kit. If this is done the Chromatic would be far better for streaming and capturing GB and GBC gameplay than it currently is.

I bought my new Chromatic and one of each of the accessories on July 10 and received my console on July 31. As a prior Chromatic owner I received a 15% off coupon, before it my order was $259.96, after application it was $230.95 (including $9.99 shipping).

In terms of FPGA handheld placement, the new Chromatic is still well-behind the Analogue Pocket in terms of features and value for money. If I did not have a Pocket I would much rather use the Chromatic over the FunnyPlaying FPGBC. The Chromatic's screen is incredible, bright, sharp, 1:1 pixel resolution (no scaling) and no lag. The simulation quality is excellent and the cartridge slot is deep enough to keep your original cartridges firmly in place. If you want a modern way to play your Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges on the go, the Chromatic is the best option after the Analogue Pocket in my opinion.

Godzilla & Criterion - The Monster vs. The Premier Boutique Label

The Criterion Collection is a well-known boutique distributor of aesthetically-interesting films on physical media. The company releases films that have had some significant artistic or cultural merit and has released well-over 1,000 films on disc. Its releases span the world's cinema, it has distributed films from every civilized continent on the planet. Japanese films are no exception and of course the biggest cultural icon that Japanese live-action cinema is Godzilla. Even if you may debate the artistic merits of the Godzilla films, they indisputably have had a significant cultural impact over the last 71 years. Criterion has released films in the Godzilla series on four separate occasions. In this blog article we will take the deepest dive into its releases, both the positives and negatives.

Comparison of Comic Book Reproduction Editions - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 vs. Cerebus #1

As regular readers of this blog should no doubt be aware of by now, I have had a resurgent interest in comic books. There is nothing quite like holding and reading stapled pieces of folded paper together that tell a story with pictures and word balloons. Recently I have discussed both the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Cerebus the Aardvark. Now let's compare a pair of recent authorized reproduction editions of the first issue of each series.

Holmes D&D-era Dice Replica Review

Holmes Dice, courtesy of eBay

Dice have a very long history, humans have been using them to play games, as parts of a game or to generate randomness since prerecorded history. While the 6-sided cube or hexahedron (d6) has always been the most popular die shape used, it is not the only shape used to generate random numbers. It and other four platonic solids, the 4-sided Tetrahederon (d4), the 8-sided Octahedron (d10), the 12-sided Dodecahedron (d12) and the 20-sided Icoashedron, have long histories in this application. It is their earliest employment in role playing games, namely those dice originally sold for Dungeons and Dragons and included with its original (Holmes) Basic Set, which interests me and the ability to replicate that experience at a reasonable cost. Today I will explore the history of the so-called "Holmes Dice" and two such products which aim to do so.

Wireless Controller Duel - 8bitdo N30 2.4g vs. Retro-bit Origin8

Wireless NES controllers are nothing new but good ones are more recent. Wireless controllers contemporary with the NES were generally infrared based, which meant that they had to be within a direct line of sight to a receiver and within only a rather limited range and angle from the receiver. They also had high latency as the infrared pulses took milliseconds to transmit a full controller packet. More modern solutions use a 2.4g or Bluetooth receiver. Today we are going to compare a newcomer to the NES controller scene, the Retro-bit Origin8, to the reigning 2.4g NES controller champion, the 8bitdo N30 2.4g.

The Model F Labs' F104 Classic Style Keyboard - Buckling Spring Perfection at Last?

For anyone who has stuck with this blog since its earliest days (thank you), it is no secret that I like talking about keyboards. When it comes to modern keyboards, I have merely dipped a toe into the ocean of manufacturers, switches, keycaps and other options. Until this year I have been using IBM Model M keyboards, and prior to that Unicomp keyboards, for about 20 years. This year I have felt it is a time for a change and for the past several months I have been using a keyboard with Cherry MX-style switches. The keyboard I have been using is excellent value for the money, but I always planned for it to be a stop-gap measure until I could get a better keyboard. Now that day has come because I have acquired what could be the ultimate old school PC keyboard, the Model F Labs LLC Classic Style F104 Keyboard.

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 at least 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Mockingboard 4c - Adding Sound Card Functionality to the Apple IIc

Among the Apple II models, the IIc is undoubtedly the restricted of the bunch. The system integrated just about every necessity for mid-1980s computing, a built in disk drive, serial ports for printing and telecommunications, an external drive and a joystick/mouse port. The Apple II line has been previously well-appreciated for its expandability, with each of the three predecessor models having multiple general-purpose expansion slots. For the compact IIc, there was no capability to upgrade the system internally at first, later IIcs permitted an internal memory expansion. This meant that software that did not use a built in peripheral had to be updated to support similar peripherals which had to be accessed in other ways. Today we are going to look at a product that tried to go a different route and try to answer whether it succeeded!

PCE 2.4g vs. PC Engine Mini Controller - Battle of the New PC Engine Controllers

The PC Engine has had something of a reemergence in the past few years. In 2019 Konami announced the PC Engine Mini and TurboGrafx-16 Mini consoles and miraculously released it in 2020. Also in 2020 8bitdo released their PCE 2.4g Wireless Gamepads and Analogue announced the availability of the Analogue Duo, an FPGA console designed to play the original HuCard and CD games. Having acquired both a controller which was sold for the PC Engine Mini console and the 8bitdo PCE 2.4g controller, I can give an opinion on their strengths and weaknesses.

Attack of the PETSCII Robots - Review of a New Action Strategy DOS Game

Attack of the PETSCII Robots MS-DOS Version Cover (Partial, Courtesy of 8-bit Guy)

Back in 2018, David Murray, better known as The 8-Bit Guy on YouTube, released a newly developed game for the DOS-compatible PC called Planet X3. I eventually bought a copy and reviewed it. In more recent years he has designed a new game, Attack of the PETSCII Robots, which was released in 2021 for Commodore computers. The game has since then been widely ported to many home computer and console platforms, including MS-DOS earlier this year. I decided to buy the MS-DOS port, and after trying it out I will give my review here.

Turbo EverDrive Pro + EDFX - A Match Made in Heaven?

Courtesy of Krikzz and Wikipedia

One of Krikzz' earliest flash carts was the Turbo EverDrive for the Turbo Grafx 16 and PC Engine.  His Turbo EverDrive v1 and v2 only supported HuCards.  Eventually competition came in the form of TerraOnion and their Super SD System 3 and later Super HD System 3 PRO, which supported TurboGrafx/PC Engine CD images.  Most people who keep track of the flash cart and optical drive emulator world assumed sooner or later that Krikzz would release a device that would support CD images. While recent events affecting his country may have caused delay Krikzz' CD-ROM simulating device, the Turbo EverDrive Pro, is finally here and I will review it.

The Portable Document Saving Companion - The Epson WorkForce ES-300W

Many institutions, government offices, courthouses, hospitals, still store their records as paper documents.  Making copies of those papers can get expensive, the copies may not be immediately available and the the available copier may not be very good. Paper copies require more paper, which means harvesting semi-renewable resources. Scanning documents can be fast, cheap and easier to handle compared to reams of paper. Scanners used to be anything but portable, but technology has improved to the extent that you can buy a portable scanner and expect it to make reasonable scans.  Almost three years ago I bought a portable scanner, the Epson ES-300W, so in today's blog article I will share my experiences with the scanner, identify its strengths and weaknesses and provide a review for it.

The X-Station Optical Drive Emulator : The Key to the Sony PlayStation's Library

The Sony PlayStation (PSX)'s impact on console gaming cannot be understated.  It was extremely successful, defining its generation of consoles.  It was the first truly successful gaming console to rely on optical discs.  It popularized removable memory card storage, which permitted progress or configuration data to be saved for virtually every game.  The controller design also saw improvements in the form of dual shoulder buttons for each side and later the dual shock analog sticks.  The movement to CDs allowed more games to be published, the US PlayStation library alone amounts to approximately 1,500 distinct games.  Exploring the vastness of the PlayStation library on an original PlayStation has now been made relatively easy thanks to the rise of Optical Drive Emulators (ODEs).  In today's blog post I am going to talk about the X-Station ODE, a modification which opens your PSX to the vastness of PSX gaming.