Latest news with #GameBoy
CNET
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
ModRetro Chromatic Review: The Perfect Game Boy Restomod
CNET's expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise. 9.0 / 10 SCORE ModRetro Chromatic Review Pros Beautiful screen Sturdy construction Vibrant design and colors Cons Batteries Delicate paint job Price Mono sound ModRetro Chromatic Review 9/10 CNET Score Table of Contents ModRetro Chromatic Review: The Perfect Game Boy Restomod Lots of brands attempt to market nostalgia, but few succeed in capturing its warm essence. From hot pink flip phones to guitar amp-inspired Bluetooth speakers, these retro callbacks have the sheen of decades prior but are nothing more than reskinned modern tech. The ModRetro Chromatic, a modern Game Boy from Oculus Rift inventor and co-founder of defense company Anduril Industries Palmer Luckey, however, makes deliberate old-school compromises. Mainly, it uses less pixel-dense LCD displays to elicit emotions from yesteryear. It's these forced compromises that help the Chromatic stand out even if, on paper, it doesn't have all the most cutting-edge tech. The result is a super-premium, slightly hindered Game Boy clone that feels like what Nintendo would have made if cost weren't an issue. It even includes a copy of Tetris, like the original Game Boy did in 1989, a nice touch by ModRetro. The Chromatic's high-end materials and features do come at a high price, though: $200, which is substantially higher than the Game Boy Color's MSRP of $80 back in 1998 -- about $160 adjusted for inflation. For the gamer who appreciates high-quality bespoke hardware and a commitment to authenticity, however, the price is well worth it. Big chunky pixels The ModRetro Chromatic playing a copy of Pokémon. Numi Prasarn/CNET The most standout feature on the ModRetro Chromatic is its screen. It's a 160x144, 2.56-inch IPS LCD display. If that resolution and size seem small, that's because they are. Unlike modern displays, which have resolutions so high that you can't even make out the individual blocks, ModRetro keeps things chunky. This choice allows ModRetro to recreate that original Game Boy experience. Back then, cheap consumer displays weren't as advanced and had pixels that were simply larger and more visible. For games that used sprites, like Pokemon or Wario Land 3, the pixel layout was a perfect grid to lay art assets on. It was a limitation of the time that game creators used as a canvas. Modern emulation devices, including emulator apps you can install on your phone, can simply upscale all the in-game assets to make the image look super sharp. This is an approach that 2021's Analogue Pocket used. When I heard that ModRetro was going to produce a device with big, blocky pixels, I was left perplexed. I believed that Analogue's approach was the most sound. But after using the Chromatic, I realized there's a charm to keeping things old school. In my roughly 20 hours of Pokemon Crystal and Tetris gameplay over the past few months, I was slowly won over to the charms of the Chromatic's screen. The lower resolution is what Pokemon was meant to look like. Sure, the Analogue Pocket, as well as a whole host of other emulation devices, can mimic the retro grid of the original Game Boy using filters, but it's not the same. You can tell it's software making the pixels look chunky. In terms of colors, the IPS display ModRetro has sourced for the Chromatic is excellent. Visuals pop, and the overall presentation is clean without any smearing. The only way it could have been better is if ModRetro had opted for an OLED display. The glass atop the display is also of remarkable quality, using Sapphire crystal glass. Sapphire is a high-quality and expensive material known for its durability and transparency. It's most often found on the faces of high-end watches and camera lenses. The Chromatic captures in my mind the rose-tinted memories I had of playing my Game Boy Color on long road trips back when I was in elementary school. It's something that the Analogue Pocket couldn't do. Although the Pocket does have a Nintendo Switch-like dock and lets me play games on my giant television, a novelty I very much enjoy. The Chromatic feels substantial There's been a long-running meme about the indestructible nature of the Nokia 3310, a beloved classic cellphone from the year 2000. It was made with chunky plastic and could survive just about any drop. The original Game Boy and Game Boy Color had that same design philosophy in mind, with one even surviving the Gulf War. The minimalist iPhone style hadn't yet entered mass-market electronic design. The ModRetro Chromatic adopts the '80s and '90s chunky design philosophy and opts for magnesium alloy instead of plastic, which offers both durability and heft. The three AA batteries inside also add to the weight and feel, but bring back '90s handheld annoyances. A set of AA batteries lasts about 6 to 8 hours, depending on the screen's brightness. As someone who loves the Game Boy Color, one thing I don't miss is looking under seat cushions for batteries. ModRetro's FAQ says a rechargeable battery pack was set to be released in early 2025, but it's not yet available. Despite the shortcomings of AA batteries, as I mentioned previously, the Chromatic feels like what Nintendo would have made if costs weren't a concern. It's something I love about it. So rarely do we see electronics leaning into absurdity with little worry about cost. The expenditure in developing the display is something Luckey spoke of on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Even though there's a good heft to the Chromatic, there didn't seem to be any room for stereo speakers. Regrettably, there's just a single speaker at the bottom of the device. A large part of the Game Boy library actually does support stereo sound, so headphones will be required to get the full sonic experience. There's no Bluetooth either, so you'll need to stick to wired cans. Vibrant but delicate paint job The ModRetro Chromatic is almost the antithesis of the Analogue Pocket. It opts for metals over plastics. It sports a lower-res screen over one that's literally 14 times more dense. And instead of black or white, it gives consumers a wide range of color options, all with wonderful flourishes to give each unit a distinct identity. Unfortunately, all these colors, except the muted GameStop-exclusive gray, are currently sold out. ModRetro Chromatic close-up shot of buttons. Numi Prasarn/CNET (Note: Analogue has done limited edition re-releases of the Pocket in a wide range of colors, including ones inspired by the original Game Boy Color and Game Boy Pocket lineups, as well as a $500 aluminum variant.) Our first-edition review unit in yellow, which ModRetro calls Volt, has red face buttons and brown and beige accents in the corners, reminding me of the earth tones present in homes from the 1970s. The ModRetro Chromatic is as much a plaything as it is a display piece. Unfortunately, ModRetro didn't spray a clear coat over the Chromatic's luscious paint job. Sure, it gives the Chromatic a satisfying matte texture, but it makes the paint very delicate. Even with my careful use, I've already marred it with two small nicks, revealing the bare metal underneath. It makes me scared to take the Chromatic out of my house, which defeats the purpose of handheld gaming. A nick on the back of the ModRetro Chromatic. Numi Prasarn/CNET A worthy Game Boy revival at a high price The ModRetro Chromatic's gorgeous screen, magnesium build, stand-out paint job and sapphire crystal come at a $200 price. That's a lot to pay for an electronic that can only play games from the '80s, '90s and early 2000s. Well, ModRetro is publishing newer Game Boy games, and companies like Incube8 Games, Bitmap Soft, and Mega Cat Studios are also releasing newer as well as homebrew titles on classic cartridges. For $200, you could get a Nintendo Switch Lite and gain access to a massive library of modern titles as well as older games via the Nintendo Switch Online service. There's also a slew of emulation devices filling up Amazon, AliExpress and TikTok Shop that offer thousands of old-school preloaded Game Boy titles of legally dubious origin for less than $50. Here's the thing: Emulation can't beat the original. Even on the newly released Nintendo Switch 2, game emulation of older content still introduces input lag, which is the amount of time it takes for a button press to show up on screen. For hard-core gamers, this is suboptimal. Only when the original code is running through real circuits and transistors does it deliver an authentic experience. If you're the type that doesn't care about authenticity and a true-to-form gaming experience, well, you likely aren't reading this review. For this person, one of those emulation handhelds will suffice. There are dedicated sites that review the sea of retro gaming handhelds coming out of China, seemingly on a bi-weekly basis. But if you're the person who wants the satisfying snap of docking in an old-school Game Boy cartridge and sinking into the corner cushions of your couch with a pouch of Capri Sun resting on your chest, there really isn't a much better experience than what the ModRetro Chromatic offers.
The Star
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Who wants a BlackBerry? Apparently, Gen Z
When Victoria Zannino was in middle school, back in 2013, her father gave her a precious hand-me-down in the form of a used BlackBerry. Back then, the device was a marvel. Unlike most phones on the market, it had a physical keyboard, albeit tiny, and a private messaging service called BlackBerry Messenger that she and her friends could use to text. 'I just feel like the time of the BlackBerry phone was very nostalgic,' Zannino, now 25 and working in advertising, said in an interview. 'Growing up watching 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians,' seeing them driving with one hand on the wheel and a BlackBerry in the other hand was just such a slay of a moment.' Zannino's yearning for the piece of older technology led her to post a TikTok calling for its return. 'PLEASE blackberry,' she wrote over a selfie, 'I beg you to make your move and make a come back.' The video has been viewed more than 6 million times and received more than 500,000 likes, backing up the idea that Zannino isn't alone in her nostalgia for older phones. All over TikTok, young people are romanticising the era of the BlackBerry, despite the fact that many of them weren't old enough back then to have a phone. It is part of a larger trend in which people are posting and sharing videos of what they call 'nostalgia tech.' They miss the tactile keyboard, they say, and the smooth feel of the trackball beneath their thumbs. Dig in on the various videos, and what they really seem to miss is a simpler time when their entire lives didn't exist inside their phones, which, at that point, were just gadgets akin to a portable CD player or a Game Boy. Dan Kassim, a 29-year-old writer who describes himself as 'elder Gen Z,' said he didn't get his first BlackBerry until after college, but he still feels a flash of yearning for the older phones of his youth. 'The thing about these phones that we had in the 2000s and 2010s – everyone remembers them really well because they embedded in those memories of our childhood or early adolescence,' he said. 'So there's that real kind of pull on the heartstrings when people bring them up.' Kassim has posted several TikToks about the BlackBerry resurgence, to which many young users have responded with a desire to bring back what they call 'retro' phones. He believes that – much like the embrace of flip phones by so-called Luddite teens – the trend can be chalked up to a rebellion against the hyperconnected world we currently live in. 'I think there's a charm to the BlackBerry and older phones and all that kind of retro tech,' he said. 'It ties into vinyls and Polaroid pictures and all of that. I feel like people are kind of burned out from the notifications and being always on, and BlackBerrys and early smartphones feel like a bit of a throwback to when phones were tools but not, like, the centre of your life.' While some users are purchasing old BlackBerrys to use as their everyday phones – despite the fact that many of the apps no longer work – others are demanding a reimagined version for 2025. But after BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion) ended its support for the devices in 2022, and an attempt by a company called OnwardMobility to create a 5G version was scuttled shortly after that, there's little hope for a new BlackBerry anytime soon. Still, the nostalgia lives on, at least on TikTok. 'It's interesting that it's happening on TikTok, because I feel like TikTok is the most addictive form of social media,' Kassim noted. 'And you couldn't actually use a BlackBerry to work TikTok.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
The Verge
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
'Game Boy worm lights have changed a lot since I was a kid.'
Posted Jun 23, 2025 at 7:26 PM UTC 'Game Boy worm lights have changed a lot since I was a kid.' I didn't even know USB-C endoscopes were a thing , but now I've got one plugged into my Nintendo Switch 2 and phone! And yes, it also works as a GameChat webcam (including Nintendo's background removal feature) when you're not inspecting pipes and walls. Unfortunately, the $10 model I show you here is out of stock; fortunately, you can buy a less flimsy one if you want!
Mint
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Nintendo Switch 2, Steam Deck or something else? How to pick the right handheld console
Portable gaming consoles are on the rise, bringing high-end gaming experiences wherever you go. If you're caught up in the hype and thinking about getting one, there are a few things you should keep in mind, like size, display, game library and more. Here's a quick guide to help you pick the best one for your needs. The whole point of a gaming handheld is to carry it with you in your backpack and play on the go. Some handheld consoles are light and small enough to carry without a backpack, like a Nintendo Switch, which is slightly heavier than modern flagship smartphones. But in that case, you are losing performance and features that you get on a handheld PC like the ROG Ally. Remember when we used to play games on a 2.6-inch display of a Game Boy? The standards have been raised, and now we have handhelds with displays ranging from 5.5 inches to 8.8 inches. We also have features like OLED panels and high refresh rates to get the best gaming experience. So, pick the display size that suits you best, but keep in mind that a bigger display means a bigger device. This is the part where things get interesting because some devices, like the Nintendo Switch, have exclusive titles like Zelda, Mario Kart, and more. Handheld gaming PCs like the ROG Ally or Steam Deck open doors to a large library of PC games. One more thing: if you like old-school games, you can play them using emulators on handheld gaming PCs. Now, to make a choice, create a quick list of games that you want to play and see which handheld console supports the majority of those games. Always look for a console with a better processor, enough RAM, and a large storage capacity to carry a lot of games. This increases overall performance and promises smooth gameplay, but this all comes at a cost: battery life. If you are away from a charger, then pick the console that offers several hours of gameplay on a single charge. Consoles like the Nintendo Switch are optimised to offer longer battery life. Other handhelds like the ROG Ally let you tweak the game settings to balance the performance for more battery life. If the handheld is not ergonomically comfortable, you cannot game for long, just like on a smartphone. So you need to pay attention to the shape and size: does it fit naturally in your hands? Are the buttons easier to reach? And do you like simple control schemes or a more intricate, feature-full console? Also, keep in mind the feel and build of the grip that you are getting on the console.
Mint
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
6 gadgets from 90s we all used, loved, and lost: How many do you remember?
Do you ever stop and wonder what happened to all those gadgets we couldn't live without in the 90s, and running into the early 2000s? It's wild to think how quickly they vanished from our lives and how far we've come in terms of speed, design, and efficiency. Back then, every new device felt like a doorway to the future. Now, most are just memories, sometimes tucked away in a drawer, sometimes just a story we tell. Ready for a little trip down memory lane? Let's see which classics made the list. Walkman Who remembers popping in a cassette and heading out for a walk, headphones on, feeling like the star of your own movie? The Walkman was pure magic. You'd rewind, fast forward, maybe even untangle a tape with a pencil. Crazy, right? Streaming was a distant dream. That click when you pressed play was all you needed to escape for a while. Floppy disc Saving a school project or swapping games with friends meant one thing, floppy discs. They could barely hold a single photo by today's standards, but back then, they were everything. Most people would label floppy discs with a marker because of how easy it was to mix them up. The suspense of waiting to see if your files survived, that was real drama. Now, the floppy lives on as the save icon on our screens. Who would've guessed? Of course we can't forget this one. Before everyone had a phone, the pager was king. Doctors, business folks, even teenagers clipped these little buzzers to their belts. You'd get a beep, see a number, and then rush to find a payphone. It sounds slow now but back then, getting a page felt urgent and important. Did you ever try to use one just to feel cool? Taking a photo was an act of faith. You'd line up the shot, snap the picture, and then wait days to see if it turned out. Picking up a fresh envelope of prints from the photo lab was like opening a present. Sometimes you'd get a masterpiece, sometimes just a blurry mess. But that surprise was half the fun, wasn't it? Game Boy The Game Boy was the ultimate sidekick. Chunky, a little heavy, but always ready for Tetris or Pokémon. Swapping cartridges with friends, hunting for batteries, and playing by the window for better light, those were the days. Can you believe how simple it all felt? No updates, no downloads, just pure fun. Here's one that probably got you in trouble at school. Tamagotchis were everywhere. These tiny digital pets needed constant feeding, cleaning, and attention. If you forgot about them for a few hours, you'd come back to a sad screen and a virtual mess. The obsession was real. Did your Tamagotchi ever survive more than a week? It's funny how fast things change. The gadgets that once felt futuristic are now relics of another time. But every so often, it's good to pause and remember those clicks, buzzes, and beeps that made the 90s feel so alive. Makes you wonder which of today's tech will be tomorrow's nostalgia, right?
