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ModRetro, a company that makes retro handhelds and consoles playing older games and which is run by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, has announced a new Chromatic device that it is making in partnership with Luckey’s other professional venture: defense technology company Anduril Industries. The limited edition handheld’s big selling point is that it’s made from the same metal Anduril uses to make its attack drones. Gross.
The $349.99 Anduril Chromatic + Porta Pro Bundle contains the handheld, headphones and a charm of Anduril’s logo. The listing says the device is made from “the same magnesium-aluminum alloy as Anduril’s attack drones” and that if you’re looking for a retro gaming system that “provides performance and reliability in all conditions, there is no other option.” What kind of combat zone does ModRetro think people are playing? Tetris in that they need something military grade to play their games on?
While we can speculate about what kind of environment someone might play a retro handheld gaming system in, this is ultimately the latest attempt by a glorified arms dealer responsible for creating weapons used in war to pander to the retro gaming community. The video game industry and the military-industrial complex have long been closely linked in ways too numerous to count, joining forces to leverage games and live streaming platforms to increase military recruitment among Gen Z, but there’s something particularly gross and fetishistic about selling people a Game Boy knockoff that’s made to be as durable as an attack drone.
As you might expect, retro gamers and historians aren’t having it.
Luckey has announced the ModRetro Chromatic back in 2024and called it “the world’s best tribute to the Game Boy,” but even then the entrepreneur’s retro hardware venture failed the smell test. The co-founder of Oculus was driven out of the VR company some time after it was revealed that he had helped fund pro-Donald Trump trolls led to some developers withdrawing Oculus support. In the years since, Luckey formed Anduril, and one thing led to another, and now here we are, looking at a non-Game Boy made of drone metal.
