If Palmer Luckey weren’t seen as such a controversial figure, I think he and his company would pretty much be the kings of the retro industry right now. There are rumors that he owns the largest collection of retro games and consoles in the world, which he keeps in an underground bunker.
The Chromatic console, a modern reinterpretation of the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, is widely regarded as having the best screen ever made for this type of console, thanks to the fact that the Oculus co-founder had the funds to develop and manufacture a display from scratch, with the exact specifications of Nintendo’s original architecture, but built to 2025 standards.
For a while now, it’s been known that there are official plans to launch an FPGA-based reinterpretation of the Nintendo 64, following the model of the Analogue 3D. And on the real Black Friday in America, the official renders of the console and controller were revealed, along with a few interesting details, such as the fact that both the console and the controllers will get shell kits in different colors, which can be swapped out easily.
Console gallery
Controller gallery
Now that we have the official images, I’ve put together a few opinion points on what we can expect from this console:
- Visually it looks good, really good. In contrast with Analogue’s conservative approach on the 3D model, here they’re clearly leaning into a more colorful direction, closer to the original console, which itself was offered in many colors over Nintendo’s support period.
- Much closer to Nintendo’s original design, especially the controller. And here I’ll make a bold statement: Palmer Luckey, thanks to his financial comfort, can probably push further when testing the limits of how far Nintendo would go in risking a lawsuit over intellectual property infringement. By contrast, Analogue did everything possible to stay further away from anything Nintendo might protect.
- Huge development potential: it’s been announced that the operating system running on the FPGA hardware will be open source, which opens the door to additional developments and extensions. Powerful hardware – the deal with AMD is expected to bring one of the most powerful FPGA hardware platforms in the retro space.
- If we factor in the extravagance that defines the Chromatic – magnesium alloy shell, Corning Gorilla display, and so on – I think we can expect something similar with the M64, with various opulent touches.
- Game library: Nintendo 64 has the smallest game catalog – 296 titles – among Nintendo consoles, but if they follow the same strategy as with the Chromatic, where ModRetro launched dozens of new and relicensed games, we can expect the library to grow. In fact, there have already been official statements from Palmer Luckey saying that the console will be accompanied by Nintendo 64 games that were never released. With the financial firepower at his disposal, I think it’s fairly easy for him to strike deals with various game studios that have unfinished N64 titles in their portfolios.
Photo source: ModRetro
