ModRetro, a company that makes retro handhelds and consoles that play older games and that’s run by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, has announced a new Chromatic device it’s making in collaboration with Luckey’s other professional endeavor: defense tech company Anduril Industries. The limited-edition handheld’s big selling point is that it’s made from the same metal Anduril uses to create its attack drones. Gross.
The $349.99 Anduril Chromatic + Porta Pro Bundle includes the handheld, headphones, and a charm of Anduril’s logo. The listing says that 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 offers “performance and reliability under any and 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 effort from a glorified arms dealer responsible for making weapons used in acts of war to cozy up to the retro gaming community. The video game industry and the military-industrial complex have long been deeply connected in ways too numerous to count, joining forces to use games and live-streaming platforms to try to increase military recruitment among Gen Z, but there is something particularly gross and fetishistic about selling people a Game Boy knock-off that is made to be as durable as an attack drone.
As you might expect, retro gamers and historians are not having it.
Luckey announced the ModRetro Chromatic back in 2024, calling it the “world’s best tribute to the Game Boy,” but even then the entrepreneur’s retro hardware venture didn’t pass the smell test. The Oculus co-founder was ousted from the VR company some time after it was revealed he had helped fund pro-Donald Trump trolls, which led to some developers pulling Oculus support. In the years since, Luckey founded Anduril, and then one thing led to another, and now, here we are, looking at a not-Game Boy made of drone metal.