There's been lots of speculation about the new Chromatics heading out of ModRetro HQ as of late, especially since there have been a few images leaked in both ModRetro's official marketing images and in posts from the likes of Logan Paul on X. Now, a leak from yoshitendo on X has shown all four of the new transparent plastic designs together, and they look superb.
We've seen the green briefly in Logan's post, and it looks stunning. I'm a big fan of the Volt Yellow Chromatic I bought back when the original 1st Gen handhelds first came out, but I'm also a sucker for transparent tech as you guys well know. These look very cool indeed, with all of the chips and gubbins available to look at, just like my orange Analogue Pocket that you will have seen in some of my articles.
The leak shows transparent Green, Red, Purple, Smoke/Clear variants. The video shows that, just like the original Chromatic, they can be used with AA batteries (included) or a Power Core, and they play ModRetro Chromatic games and your original Game Boy games. I'm sticking Dragonyhm straight in one of these when they come out!
The pink and purple contrasting colours on this one are awesome - the eagle-eyed amongst you will see that the colours are the same as the M64 consoles that released recently too, so you can now have a Chromatic that matches it! Everything is the same size ratio as the original Chromatics, and the button layouts are the same as well. The main difference, according to the video, is that these use Gorilla Glass instead of Sapphire Glass, which the cheaper second-gen variants of the original Chromatic also use.
It looks like each handheld will also ship with Tetris too, allowing you and a friend to hook up using a link cable just like the good old days. According to the leak, the price is ¥26500, which works out at around $168/£127. That's a huge saving compared to the original metal Chromatic, which costs $299/$277. It puts it much cheaper than the Analogue Pocket too, which costs $239 for the boring black and white variants, with the colourful versions costing anything upwards of $400 on auction sites.
As of now, there isn't any information on the release date or any other specs. I'm hoping that, because of the same colour schemes as the M64s, Chromatic Passthrough will be available as an M64 update when these release - here's hoping. I'll be sure to pass on more information as and when I get it!
Credit: ModRetro
