r/ModRetroChromatic

My Chromatic came yesterday, Very impressed!

So I ordered a Ghost chromatic. I also picked up some of my childhood Pokemon GB and GBC games to get sucked in to a nostalgic dream. Wow. Super impressed with the Chromatic. The build quality is pretty impressive. Cold metal. The screen is crazy bright. Playing in my living at night I had to turn it all the way down to like 15 or 20% brightness. Popped in Pokemon Yellow and just got consumed. The buttons feel so so good. The speakers sound great the screen is fantastic. I felt like a 10 year old again playing pokemon. Super happy with this device.

Please please please Modretro and Palmer Luckey, make a Modretro Chromatic Advance in this magnesium shell!

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u/Bruce_Wayne8887 — 8 hours ago

Has anyone gotten The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls working on Chromatic?

Hey everyone,

Has anyone been able to play The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls on the ModRetro Chromatic?

I'm on Chromatic firmware v4.2 and tried loading an English-translated patched ROM through an EverDrive GB X7 (model 17, Rev.E, GBC-OS v1.06). The patch also includes the title screen correction.

Unfortunately, when I launch the game, the screen just turns white and nothing else happens.

Has anyone else run into this?

Any tips or workarounds would be appreciated!

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u/cxq100 — 21 hours ago

Zephyr's Pass completado

Aún no me han enviado la copia física de Infinity, pero sí me llegó Zephyr's Pass y ya me lo he pasado. Es un juego cortito, pero bastante interesante. A nivel de diseño y mecánicas está bastante bien, aunque como mucha gente dice, está plagado de errores y glitches que interrumpen la partida.

Por eso el juego guarda la partida automáticamente cada vez que haces algo de progreso. Y no es raro que salten errores de Kernel Panic o se bloqueé o te maten sin saber muy bien por qué. En ese aspecto es un desastre.

Pero a pesar de los errores (que ya estaba sobre aviso incluso antes de comprarlo), el juego me ha gustado. Ojalá el desarrollador le hubiera dedicado más tiempo a pulir errores.

u/Odd_Death — 2 days ago

Reading and writing an MBC3000 v4 cart from a Chromatic

An update to my previous post (https://www.reddit.com/r/ModRetroChromatic/s/rSnQbCHBEZ):

I’ve published firmware v2026.05.08.01, which adds the ability to read/write this BennVenn cartridge with your Chromatic, a PC, and a USB cable.

You can get the latest version here: https://github.com/fredemmott/chromatic\_dumper/releases/latest

Other cartridges *may* work, but they’re untested so anything could happen; I don’t own other cartridges so I’ve not tested them.

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u/fred_emmott — 4 days ago

The year is 2028. Its been 2 years since the launch of the Mod Retro M64. Mod Retro has teased making a GBA Chromatic for about 8 months straight. You are hit with the very first promotional graphics above! (yes I drew this myself in paint)

Boy am I excited for a Chromatic Advance with a slew of new games and accessories. What do you want to see them release? These are the releases I would love to see!

Accessories

  • Campho Advance
  • Play-Yan
  • e-Reader
  • Camera Attachment
  • Removeable Re-Chargeable Battery Core (want the system to run on AAs)

Original Games

  • Chantey Sequel
  • Metroidvania
  • RPG like Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga, Goldensun, or Fire Emblem
  • Cozy Farm RPG
  • Something from Spacebot

Classic Releases

  • Ninja Five - O DX
  • Car Battler Joe
  • Splinter Cell
  • Batman: Vengeance
u/Retro_Macchina — 11 days ago

There is a secret homebrew mode in the MRUpdater that lets you flash any gb/gbc rom to your Chromatic carts. I've seen posts that mention it as a possibility but no instructions or links. I imagine it wasn't included in the MRUpdater to prevent piracy or maybe its intended to be released in the future. You just need to patch the official MRUpdater.exe from ModRetro to unlock it. Its a fun thing to do and I kinda like swapping carts but using expensive game carts that only hold one game is a little silly when flash carts like Everdrive exist. but for anyone interested, links are below.

You must install python first then just download and run the patch_mrupdater.py

Navigate to your MRUpdater.exe and click patch.

https://github.com/Scryptkeeper2006/Modretro-Homebrew-Unlocker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb6RZD_hKJ4

reddit.com
u/zydrate_junkie — 7 days ago

Status

Works, but not friendly. Stop reading if you're not happy using source code and a terminal.

This is good enough for me, I'm sharing in case another developer is interested in picking this up and making it user-friendly. I don't plan to spend more time on this.

What I've done

Works:

  • Chromatic v2
  • Dumping ModRetro cartridges (ROM and saves)
  • Dumping OG cartridges (ROM and saves)

Does not work:

  • MBC3000v4

Unknown: everything else

Current flow

Once you've built FlashGBX with those changes:

  1. Turn off your Chromatic
  2. Insert cartridge
  3. Plug in to USB
  4. Turn on
  5. Load firmware into the FPGA SRAM - NOT ROM - this way, nothing's permanent. To get back the original firmware, just turn it off and on again
  6. Run the modified FlashGBX

To change cartridges, you need to go back to step 1: turn it off, load the firmware, etc. DO NOT CHANGE CARTRIDGES WHILE THE CHROMATIC HAS POWER.

What needs doing

Extend the FlashGBX code to detect other firmware and automatically load the modified firmware if needed.

Installer/exe for modified flashgbx

Loading the firmware

With GoWin Programmer

You need the full GoWin EDA/Programmer; the license is free, but it's a 'fill in a form and wait a while' thing. The educational version does not include support for this board.

Use programmer_cli.exe --help first to check that:

  • --cable-index 0 means GWU2X
  • --operation_index 2 means 'SRAM Program'

--helpprovides other options like cable by name, but they don't appear to actually work in v1.9.12.02.

programmer_cli.exe --device GW5A-25A --operation_index 2 --fsFile C:\path\to\evt1_x2.fs --cable-index 0

Replace C:\path\to\evt1\_x2.fs with the path to the file from https://github.com/fredemmott/chromatic_dumper/releases/latest , or the output of the build if you used GoWin EDA

With OpenFPGALoader

On Windows at least, use MRUpdater/cart clinic at least once to make sure you've got the right drivers.

If you're on Windows and already use msys2, follow Openfpgaloader's instructions to install. Otherwise, the easiest way to get a usable windows version is to use pyinstextractor-ng to grab openfpgaloader.exe from the MRUpdater.exe .

openFPGALoader --cable gwu2x --write-sram C:\path\to\evt1_x2.fs

Advice for devs

if you want to pick this up, it's probably best to bundle openfpgaloader and the firmware in a modified flashgbx. Not sure about the license on modretro's binary, so for windows, this might mean figuring out how to make a visual studio build yourself. If I were doing this, I'd probably make a fork using vcpkg for dependencies, and use a -static triplet, especially as it already uses CMake.

Given the firmware is only going to FPGA SRAM, I don't think flashgbx's firmware update flow makes sense here; I'd put it in the 'connect' functionality and just do it silently.

You could streamline the flow by writing to ROM and requiring a flash back, but to me, it's great for safety that you just need to turn the thing off and on again to get back to ModRetro's firmware.

u/fred_emmott — 7 days ago

Was looking at Croc 2 and Zas and noticed that there are no reviews posted like the other games. Is it just because they need to reach a certain number of reviews before they appear (eg. 50 reviews or 100 reviews)?

If anyone has bought them, what are your thoughts?

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u/Background_Effort942 — 9 days ago

Considering chromatic plays on the word COLOR in Gameboy COLOR why would you call a gba from modretro a chromatic advance when the original wasn't a Gameboy color advance? Would make more sense if a hypothetical gba would be called a modretro advancement/advantage etc.

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u/Zoronymous — 10 days ago