Palmer Luckey, CEO of Anduril and founder of Oculus, announced that his ModRetro company is making a Nintendo 64 clone machine.
In a tweet, Luckey said the product is called the M64 — the best and most authentic way to play your favorite N64 games, bar none. Launches at the same prices as the original Nintendo 64.
The announcement comes days after the company announced it was re-shipping its Chromatic handheld, which is a reverse-engineered remake of the Game Boy Color. Check out the Chromatic story for all the details on ModRetro. The M64 is expected to cost $200.
Luckey said, “This is real gameplay on real hardware using our real core. The most efficient and accurate reimplementation of the original by far. We show off the final design and launch preorders for hardware, new titles, and re-released classics pending final legal checks.”
Of course, the latter is a reference to Nintendo’s usual crackdown on anything it considers to infringe its patents. But in this case, like with the Game Boy Color, it’s quite likely patents have expired. Patents last 17 years, but the N64 came out in 1996, or 29 years ago.