The new Commodore 64 is a modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible. It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest Nvidia Ion2 graphics chipset. It comes in the original taupe brown/beige color, with other colors to follow.
They also have plans for various Amiga boxes, and apparently the various machines will all run original software in emulation modes, as well as boot Windows.
Play all your favorite 8-bit era games within seconds of turning the Commodore 64 on, by either selecting the C64 icon from the boot menu to run a C64 emulator directly, or from a media center program within our own Commodore Operating System, Workbench 5, which includes screenshots, descriptions and ratings.
Don’t forget that the new Commodore 64 is a fully functional PC compatible, so you can even install and use the latest versions of Windows if you really feel you need to.
Slot loading DVD drives and card readers are all “shoehorned” into the boxes (by contemporary standards you could fit a tank in a C-64 case!), as well as what looks like a lovingly crafted replica of the original keyboard on the C-64 box.
I think that the iPhone Emulators might be a more cost effective option for most of us though.
Apparently it runs almost exactly like a stock Amiga 500 when running on an iPhone 4. The video below brings back some amazing memories for me of some of the best games I have played.. and some of the best projects I ever worked on too.
In fact many of these games rival a lot of iPhone games from this year! Retro games are a gold mine of inspiration and forgotten classics for gamers and developers alike.
It’s no wonder that many of us often find solace in the high-concept games of the classical arcade era, that beautiful time in the 1980s when Pac-Man was god and Defender was thought to be too damn confusing. There is one game that towers above even those in my—admittedly minority—opinion: Robotron 2084.
Great article.
Robotron and Defender are still my all time favorite games.
Bliss is finding an arcade with a well-maintained machine that still runs on a single quarter. If the time comes when I can’t find one, I’ll buy one for our basement and teach my sons to play properly. Robotron 2084, in some ways, teaches you to be a gentleman. Albeit a slightly brutal one.
Which is exactly why I do own a Defender and a Stargate arcade original.
I also have a set of Robotron boards, and the control panel.
They are among some of my most prized possessions. If my house was burning down I’d carry them out with me, along with the dog and right now my iPhone 4!
Standalone softwares to create old-school electronical sounds, noises, effects and 8-bit sounds. For info, the freewares Audacity and MilkyTracker can generate 8-bit sounds easily, too ! Good for retro games !
…used to make an animated promo clip for a band called Grandaddy. In order to get the code into the computer they had to save it as an MP3 and play it into the old Mac from the iPad.
Panic’s Cabel Sasser tells it like it was, “It’s an obvious solution in retrospect, but there is something very unreal and amazing about tapping a button on a multi-touch screen and watching an Apple IIe fill up with data.”
The full album is available on Brad’s web page as a download, and also on his YouTube page.
Awesome stuff.
Reminds me of the original music to one of my first published titles “Driller“. The entire game has been remade for the PC by the guys over at http://www.ovine.net/
Gloriously, on the same web site they also have the original Commodore 64 game music done using that machine’s funky little SID audio chip. Music was by Matt Gray.
I still get a tingle in my spine when I listen to it today.
