It’s hard to overstate just how seismic an impact the Commodore 64 had on home computing. Launched in 1982, the 8-bit machine—iconic in its beige plastic shell with integrated keyboard—went on to become the best-selling personal computer of all time. Despite the success, manufacturer Commodore International folded in 1994, with rights to the name floating around for years.
Then, retro gaming YouTuber Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpson got the bright idea to buy the company wholesale and re-create its most important piece of hardware. This isn't the first effort to resurrect the Commodore 64, but this particular reborn rig might be the best attempt yet. It’s a near-perfect replica of that 43-year old titan, one that looks, sounds, and feels like the original. It is, by any measure, a frankly extraordinary achievement—but it’s not going to be for everyone.
Photograph: Matt Kamen
Everything Old Is Old Again
Dubbed the Commodore 64 Ultimate, the old-new (or new-old?) device looks like a relic of the ’80s—and I mean that as a compliment. It bears the same all-in-one wedge-shaped design as the original, the same chunky keys, even the same overall color palette for the beige model (it’s also available in a transparent “Starlight” model with RGB lighting and, for early buyers, a golden “Founder’s Edition”). If it weren’t for the distinctly un-yellowed plastic shell, it could be mistaken at a glance for the real thing, leftover stock straight from 1982.
For some, that will be the most compelling thing about the C64U—it is the real thing, sort of. At its core, this is a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device, an approach most often seen to re-create classic game consoles (as with the recent Analogue3D “remake” of the Nintendo 64). To strip the idea right back, FPGAs tell one chipset to pretend it’s another and, ideally, allow for performance near-identical to the original machine at a hardware level, rather than through emulation.