Commodore 64 Ultimate assessment – it’s like 1982 another time! | Games

The emotional hit was one thing I didn’t anticipate, though maybe I ought to have. The Commodore 64 Ultimate, a brand new model of the legendary 8-bit laptop, is available in a field designed to resemble the unique packaging – a photograph of the machine itself on a background of deep blue fading right into a sequence of white stripes. Then if you open it, you discover an uncannily correct reproduction of what followers lovingly known as the breadbox – the chunky, sloped Commodore 64, in hues of brown and beige, the pink LED in a single nook above the row of fawn-coloured perform keys. It’s like 1982 another time.

My dad purchased us a C64 in late 1983. It was our second laptop after the ZX81 and it felt like an infinite leap into the longer term with its detailed color graphics, superior sound chip and correct grown-up keyboard. We unpacked it on our dinner desk, plugging it right into a small moveable TV and loading the one recreation we had, a really primary Donkey Kong clone named Crazy Kong. My life would by no means be the identical once more. This contraption was my obsession for the following 4 years – my friendships and free-time would revolve round video games corresponding to Bruce Lee, Paradroid and Hyper Sports. To this present day, I treasure the recollections of taking part in golf sim Leaderboard with my dad. The sound results, speech samples and graphics conjured by that laptop have lived lease free in my head for, god, nearly 40 years.

Commodore was an enormous success for a decade. It adopted the 64 (which offered someplace between 12-30m models) with the Amiga, one other nice gaming machine. But with the rise of the PC got here a protracted painful decline – the corporate finally submitting for chapter in 1994, the model stored semi-alive for years afterwards by a sequence of mental property buyouts. In August 2025, nevertheless, retro YouTuber Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpson, backed by a board of Commodore veterans, purchased the model and promised to reinvigorate it.

The result’s the Ultimate, a devoted copy, not simply in seems to be (though you may go for a Starlight version with a lot of LED lights and a clear case), however in tech specs. Instead of operating a software program emulation of the C64, it’s constructed round an FPGA (field-programmable gate array) – an built-in circuit programmed to simulate the precise {hardware}. You can plug in an unique C64 Datasette or disk drive and it’ll run unique software program (an exquisite contact is that for those who’re operating a disk file, the pc simulates the noise of a disk drive full with whirs, tics and bleeps). It even has a cartridge port that may run previous recreation carts corresponding to International Soccer. To full the scene, you may plug your previous Quick Shot II into one of many two joystick ports. Then merely load up a replica of Daley Thompson’s Decathlon and instantly break it.

But it’s not only a machine for taking part in previous video games. Turn it on utilizing the genuine energy change on the aspect and it boots into the unique Commodore 64 begin display screen, full with the phrases, “Commodore 64 Basic V2, 64K Ram system, 38911 Basic Bytes free. Ready.” And the flashing cursor. You can programme it simply as you would again then, utilizing Basic or, for those who’re feeling superior, meeting language. Obviously I attempted everybody’s first program within the Eighties:

10 print “keith is cool”;
20 goto 10

It labored. After that, I dug out an previous program itemizing from Computer & Video Games journal and have been typing it in – though it’s a problem because the print is small, faint and smudged after 30 years in my attic. On prime of this, you may click on the facility button upwards and it switches to an alternate menu filled with new choices. You can plug in a USB thumb drive and cargo C64 video games and apps that you just’ve acquired on-line. The laptop additionally comes with a pattern USB drive (formed like a cassette tape) that’s crammed with demos and video games to attempt. Even higher, it’s straightforward to attach it the web by way of a wired or wi-fi connection, which supplies you entry to a neighborhood archive of video games, in addition to old style bulletin board methods, principally the Eighties equivalents of Reddit boards.

What I like in regards to the machine is that this seamless integration of recent tech right into a retro setting. You can plug it into a contemporary monitor by way of HDMI, however the menus and inputs are all redolent of the Eighties period – lists of textual content, Ascii artwork, cursor keys or W, A, S, D for navigation. The recollections of interacting with this historic {hardware} got here flooding again. Everything you probably did on the C64 required some effort and experience, whether or not that was loading a recreation or writing little applications – there was no drag-and-drop, no plug-and-play; you had been a pc person not a platform shopper. In its press launch saying the product, Commodore referred to itself as “the Digital Detox Brand – a bold stand against today’s toxic tech”. And whereas that’s a little bit polemical and self-aggrandising, there’s some fact in it. Exploring the C64 these previous few weeks has given me extra pleasure than downloading an app on to my telephone ever has.

Set to be priced at £260.50 ($349.99/AU$524), it’s not low-cost and begs the query – is there worth to this machine past its attraction to unique house owners? I feel there may be. In a extra accessible means than the unimaginable PDP-10 reproduction I wrote about final 12 months, it’s a dwelling historic relic, a option to reconnect with the unique idea of a desktop house laptop – as one thing we discovered and coded for. The glorious person’s information it ships with is crammed with helpful data on the best way to get it to make music and show graphics; I sincerely hope that an alternate indie gaming scene thrives right here because of this. There is intrinsic worth in understanding computer systems at a basic stage past slick person interfaces; there may be worth in creating a data of how applications work, nevertheless easy.

And even the machine’s nostalgic affect has price. It has been enjoyable to point out my sons this fossilised contraption – no curated partitions of video games to purchase, no adverts, no pop-ups, no social media notifications. Meanwhile, taking part in these previous video games once more has confirmed the worth of nice design and intelligent programming over hype and visible affect. It’s a lesson we may all afford to be taught.