Feeling Nostalgic? Commodore 64 will Be Released Again by End of Year

News Commodore 64 Computer

Advances in technology are always welcome and are quite exciting, but often this means that our older tech devices get lost in the dust. We dump them off readily for the next big thing.

That’s what makes it fun sometimes to remember those old devices we had “back in the day.” You can do more than just remember your old Commodore 64, though, as there are plans to bring it back by the end of the year.

Rebirth of Commodore 64

Are you suddenly remembering your first foray into computing and possibly gaming? Chances are if you’re over the age of 40, you definitely remember the Commodore 64. It may have even been your first home computer. You may even still have one sitting in your basement or attic.

The Commodore 64 was an 8-bit computer that made its debut in 1982 and stuck around an entire decade until 1994. Its initial cost was $580. At one point the Guinness Book of World Records listed it as the best-selling computer of all time, with over 17 million sold at that time

I can remember having one at my parents’ home when I was a young adult, but I don’t think it really caught on with us at the time. My sister and I had bought it for our dad for Christmas. I believe I played around with it a little and that was it, and I probably still used it more than my father. Quite different from spending much of my day now connected to my iPad Pro.

News Commodore 64 Featured

Nostalgic gamers will get the chance to resurrect what was perhaps their first foray into gaming when the C64 is released again, with plans to have it stocked on the shelves by Christmas.

This comes after the success of older gaming systems such as the PlayStation Classic and NES mini, and phone cases that look like Game Boys. There were earlier plans to bring the C64 back, but a crowdfunding campaign in 2016 didn’t pan out.

The re-released Commodore 64 will work with modern televisions and will offer updated essentials such as HDMI connectivity and 720P connectivity. It will also include an updated version of its old joystick.

The simple games carousel mode will include game titles like California Games, Boulder Dash, Attack of the Mutant Camels, and Gridrunner.

Reaching Back in Time

You’ll be able to reach back in time and reconnect with what may have been your first tech excitement by buying the new Commodore 64 that is scheduled to launch in December and retail for around $199.99, less than half its original price 36 years ago.

Does this make you nostalgic? Did you have a Commodore 64? Would you consider buying a new one? Let us know in the comments below.

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Laura Tucker Avatar

Read next

In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
When Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky pointed a rotating antenna at the sky in 1932 looking for sources of transatlantic radio static, he kept picking up a faint hiss that peaked every 23 hours and 56 minutes, and he eventually realized he had become the first human to hear the center of the Milky Way.
When Harvard astronomer Cecilia Payne submitted her 1925 doctoral thesis arguing that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen, the field’s senior figure Henry Norris Russell talked her into adding a line calling the result ‘almost certainly not real,’ and then published the same conclusion himself four years later to widespread acclaim.
When seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact reached what is now North Dakota roughly ten minutes after the asteroid struck, they appear to have triggered a ten-metre standing wave in an inland river that flung fish onto the bank and buried them under glass beads still falling from the sky.
When survivors near Lake Nyos woke on the morning of 22 August 1986, the cattle were dead in the fields, the birds had fallen out of the trees, and 1,746 of their neighbours were lying where they had stood the night before, with no fire, no flood, and no wound to explain it.
In October 2002, a Russian scientist named Dimitri Malashenkov stood up at a space conference in Houston and quietly explained that the dog Laika, whom the Soviet Union had publicly mourned as a heroic week-long orbiter in 1957, had actually died of heat and panic within about five hours of launch.