An Interview with ModRetro CEO Torin Herndon: Future of Gaming and Consumer Electronics
Key Context by Tae Kim
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An Interview with ModRetro CEO Torin Herndon: Future of Gaming and Consumer Electronics<br>I’ve spent the past week with the ModRetro Chromatic, which plays Game Boy games. It rules.<br>Tae Kim<br>Jul 16, 2026
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Gaming is at a crossroads.<br>Modern gaming is a frustrating experience. Sometimes it feels like I spend more time waiting for updates than actually playing. We fiddle with drivers, wait for shaders to recompile, and sit through patch after patch when all we want is to turn on the PC or console and just have a good time.<br>The gaming industry may be becoming something different. Not in a good way. Gamers now have to worry about the end of physical games. This month, enthusiasts erupted after Sony announced that physical production for all new PlayStation games will be discontinued starting January 2028. Questions about game ownership in an all-digital world, the death of affordable used games, and game preservation have dominated social media and internet discussion.<br>Ironically, the answer may be retro physical games. I’ve spent the past week with the ModRetro Chromatic, which plays Game Boy games. It rules. No sifting through menus, no incessant patches. Just insert a cartridge, turn it on, and you’re having fun in seconds. Just like I remember from childhood.
Tae’s Newly Started Game Boy Color Physical Game Collection<br>The build quality is fantastic. The screen matches the original Game Boy’s pixel count, so there are no blurry visuals. The D-pad is the BEST I’ve ever used. Poor controls are normally the death knell for every other retro and modern handheld I tried. Well done, ModRetro. I can’t recommend it enough.<br>My favorite part of this job is talking to and learning from smart founders and executives about their life experiences. I love geeking out in the technical weeds and learning what makes companies successful.<br>Earlier this week, I spoke with ModRetro CEO Torin Herndon about the company’s history, what makes his co-founder Palmer Luckey special, future projects, and the state of modern gaming. He was also one of the early employees at Anduril, one of the hottest startups in the world today.<br>Here are lightly edited highlights from our conversation, along with my thoughts on ModRetro at the end:<br>Tae: Talk through your background. Stanford, Oculus and Anduril. Obviously, your relationship with Palmer Luckey.<br>Herndon: Let’s go back to the beginning. I’m a product designer and mechanical engineer by trade. I studied those two fields at Stanford. And then about midway through my college experience, the Oculus Kickstarter came out. I backed the DK1. And I honestly just became somewhat obsessed with working in virtual reality. That was the first time that I’d encountered Palmer as a public figure as well. I thought he was incredibly interesting.<br>I vowed that I was going to work in virtual reality somehow. And then as I was graduating from Stanford, that was the same summer that Facebook was acquiring Oculus. I’m already living in Menlo Park. This is in my backyard. I have to get in here.<br>I became a product designer on the Oculus Rift. It was the first consumer shipping headset. Kind of by happenstance I sat next to Palmer’s best friend. Through that I got to know Palmer outside of work as well.<br>When I met Palmer and then got to know him I quickly realized I had encountered one of the greatest minds of our generation. I was coming right out of Stanford. So I had been inundated with people who were like savants in various areas and just incredibly smart and entrepreneurial. But Palmer opened my mind to the actual ceiling of possibility. In any case, I was like I’m gonna follow this guy wherever he goes.<br>Tae: What made Palmer special? Why were you so impressed then?<br>Key Context by Tae Kim is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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I’ve thought about this over the past 10 years or whatever working with him. There are a few attributes. One of them is that he has a completely insatiable curiosity for an extremely broad variety of subjects. To a level that is very abnormal. Like you could ask him about almost any topic and he has an enormous amount of information and opinions on the topic.<br>The second thing is that Palmer’s the only person that I’ve personally encountered who truly has an eidetic or photographic memory. He can literally recall any piece of information. It’s mind-bending to interact with him and see.<br>Most of the media about him just doesn’t understand this because they don’t talk to him about it and he doesn’t bring it up. That is the second reason why he’s so differentiated compared to other people because he remembers everything that he’s ever looked into. Combined with that curiosity he has just an immense amount of knowledge about every subject under the sun. Those two...