Palmer Luckey’s Nostalgic Gaming Side Hustle Is About to Become a Unicorn

One might know Palmer Luckey as the 33-year-old CEO of Anduril, the defense tech company with close ties to the U.S. government, or as the prodigy who sold Oculus VR to Facebook at just 21. Luckey’s entrepreneurial journey began even earlier—with ModRetro, a venture he launched as a teenager in Long Beach that has grown from an online forum for video game console modifications into a gaming startup nearing unicorn status.

ModRetro is in talks for a new funding round that could value the company at $1 billion...