The People Behind the Most Accurate Game Boy Recreation Are Making an N64

No other company makes the retro gaming scene more onerous than ModRetro. The company behind the ModRetro Chromatic—fronted by the CEO of military contractor Anduril, Palmer Luckey—is at it again, announcing an enticing recreation of the Nintendo 64 meant to hook up to your TV and play all your old cartridges as if it were 1996 all over again. Drooling over this still unrevealed recreation console also requires you to put aside any inhibitions over Luckey’s deep ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex and surveillance state.

ModRetro’s first big hit, the Chromatic, was an FPGA emulation device capable of playing Game Boy and Game Boy Advance cartridges. FPGA stands for field-programmable gate array, which, in layman’s terms, means the programmable chip can copy the chip logic of the original device to play these games as accurately as possible. An FPGA Game Boy is far less complex than a console with 3D graphics like the N64. Luckey promoted ModRetro’s M64, which will offer “the best and most authentic way to play your favorite N64 games.” The Anduril founder said the device will cost as much as the Nintendo 64 did at launch—$200.

ModRetro's newest product is M64. The best and most authentic way to play your favorite N64 games, bar none. Prepare your wallet and brace your mind.

Launches at the same price as the original Nintendo 64. Inflation isn't nostalgic. pic.twitter.com/LYDyiBBx2O

— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) July 24, 2025

There’s a good reason so many retro enthusiasts are enticed by an FPGA Nintendo 64 recreation. Nintendo designed the N64 architecture in such a way that it’s more difficult to replicate through software emulation compared to most other gaming consoles. This results in awkward texture mapping in some games, among other graphical glitches that mar the experience.

Luckey, always the capitalist, picked up on that demand after Analogue promoted its $250 Analogue3D, another Nintendo 64 FPGA console. That device promises to upscale games to 4K resolution from the N64’s native 480×360. It also introduces a full “3Dos,” which will act as a backend to support in-game screenshots, save states, and more. Analogue delayed its device multiple times, most recently pushing the ship date to August. The company blamed Trump tariffs for the shipping issues, although the device still remains sold out anyway.

Luckey doesn’t actually have a console to show anyone yet. He wrote on X that what was displayed of the M64 was “real gameplay on real hardware using our real core.” It’s unclear if the device is still in the prototyping phase or if the company had to wait for “final legal checks” before it could show off its recreation hardware. He cheekily referenced AMD in his post, implying the M64 will be using an FPGA chip from the company. The Analogue 3D, instead, bases its design on an Intel 220K LE Altera Cyclone 10GX FPGA.

At least Luckey confirmed in a response to The Shortcut’s Matt Swider that the M64 will have several different color options, and it will support the original triple-handed N64 controllers as well as a new “M64 controller.” Like the Analogue3D, the M64 will support 4K resolution. However, the Anduril and ModRetro founder said, “Upscale is the wrong word for what we’re doing.”

As with the ModRetro Chromatic, the bigger issue than how well the hardware recreates your favorite childhood moments is how much you want to support a man who unapologetically makes weapon-mounted drones, missiles, and now AR headsets for the U.S. military. Reports from Business Insider and Reuters indicated Luckey plans to get into digital banking, something that may be related to crypto. Let’s just imagine a future where, after washing his hands of Oculus and Meta, Luckey instead started making Game Boys instead of weaponized drones.