The Commodore 64 is back as new company unveils C64 Ultimate

The Escapist brought you news a short while ago that YouTuber Peri Fractic had seemingly been successful in his crusade to rescue the much-loved Commodore brand and hopefully re-ignite a future for one of the reasons we are all here today. You can read all about that here.

At the time, he promised there would be new hardware launching, but little further information was available.

This morning, however, a new video has dropped unveiling the Commodore 64 Ultimate – a new machine that can be pre-ordered and is expected to ship before the end of the year.

This is the first official Commodore 64 in over 30 years and is a faithful recreation of the original motherboard on FPGA hardware, housed in a glowing translucent case, classic beige box, or even the special gold Founder’s Edition.

The machine will come in a variety of modern builds as well as that classic beige ‘breadbin’ look, which is the one I am about to order.

Commodore 64 Ultimate Features

• Play 10,000+ original games.
• Plug in dusty old cartridges, CRT TVs, datasettes, or disk drives – it all works.‡
• Light up the room with a game sound-reactive hidden-LED color-changing case† and the world’s first translucent mechanical keyboard PCB.†
• Includes a cassette-style USB packed with 50+ titles – full games, licensed classics, music, demos, and Commodore’s exclusive new sequel to our first ever game – Jupiter Lander: Ascension.
• Get lost in the spiral-bound manual with BASIC coding adventures, and ogle the glossy original-style box.
• Enjoy HDMI clarity, Wi-Fi game transfer, USB convenience.
• Hidden inside: the autographs/names of C64 creators past and present, etched forever in the motherboard copper.*

Commodore 64 Ultimate models

There are three models available for pre-order:

• Starlight Edition@ $349.99
• BASIC Beige: $299.99
• Founder’s Edition: $499.99

The Founder’s Edition is described as follows:

“Inspired by the famous one millionth gold C64, the Gold Founders Edition adds 24k gold-plated badges, satin gold keys, a translucent amber case, commemorative Commodore gold seal ‘share’ certificate, “I Rebooted C=” tee, and a gold label holographic serial number sticker starting at 00000001 – that boosts the mission to reboot Commodore.

When will the C64 Ultimate be released?

The first batch of machines is earmarked for October/November of this year and can be pre-ordered now at the website. Like Kickstarter, you will be charged now but there is a full money refund available should you change your mind.