For all you old-school video gaming geeks like me—or you kids who just think old tech is kind of hipster cool—I’ve got some big news. Twenty-some years after its heyday in the home-computer sun, the Commodore 64 is being re-released. I kid you not.
Back in the early ’80s, that 8-bit home computing beauty lived up to its name with a whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM. Which, nowadays, would be the equivalent computing power of the average running shoe. But, baby, it was something back then.
Looking almost identical to its original all-in-one keyboard form, the latest Commodore is being packed to the brim with new tech that includes a 1.8 gigahertz dual-core processor and the possibility of a built-in Blu-ray player, the latest nVidia graphics chipsets and HDMI ports. You can even play all those old 8-bit games if you’re so inclined. (And who wouldn’t be?!) And interestingly, it costs pretty much the same as the early model. In ’82 the Commodore ran about $595, while today it’ll cost somewhere between 250 and 900 bucks, depending on your extras.
The new Commodores start shipping at the end of the month. And, believe it or not, sales could be brisk.
“The response has been completely dramatic,” Barry Altman, president and chief executive of Commodore USA, told The New York Times. “We’ve been averaging about five registrations per second on our website. This is from people giving us their name and e-mail address to be kept abreast of updates on the new Commodore.”
See, everything old is new again. Besides, now I can break out my black-and-white TV with the rabbit-ears antenna and look superretro-cool. C’mon, kids, get with it. iPads and giant flatscreens are so yesterday.
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