Commodore 64 Ultimate

Back in June of 2025, a retrocomputing-enthusiast YouTuber I hadn't heard of started a series of videos talking about a new project he had embarked on to save the classic computer brand, Commodore.

It was a pretty audacious (and expensive) idea, but his plan wasn't just to resurrect the trademarks and whatnot, but to also bring together a variety of hobbyist and small-scale projects into a large-scale re-release of the iconic Commodore 64 personal computer itself.

While I'm not very familiar with what has sprung up over the years, I know there have been many enthusiasts and companies periodically releasing hardware to fill this particular nostalgic niche - often in the form of a mini (or even full-sized) box that looked more or less like a C64, but functioned largely as an emulator-in-a-box bundled with a variety of games in a menu and maybe some USB ports with a nonfunctional decorative keyboard.

So while these products scratched some itches, they weren't "real" in the sense that you could have an experience the way you would with genuine hardware.

Unfortunately real hardware has been getting more and more difficult (and expensive) to obtain, and it seemed likely that these emulator products might be the best "new" option more casual enthusiasts were ever likely to get.

The game-console-like products weren't the only Commodore 64 projects out there, though. There were (and are) dedicated fans working on designing and building replacement parts for folks restoring the actual aging hardware from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. There were projects to recreate the keyboard keycaps, the cases, the main boards, and even the microchips inside among other things.

What the YouTuber Christian Simpson (aka Peri Fractic) managed to do was to get the band back together. He raised a bunch of capital, bought the rights to the Commodore name and iconic logo, and even managed to convince some of the original folks who worked at and ran Commodore back in the day to get on board.

He also convinced a lot of folks running hobbyist projects designing and building Commodore 64 replacement parts and upgrades to join, too, and together they combined forces into a brand new reincarnation of Commodore International with the intention of building a new authentic Commodore 64 machine.

This machine would be a faithful hardware-level reproduction - not just an emulator running on a modern processor, but a recreation of the underlying chips and circuitry using an FPGA.

By July they were taking pre-orders for a product that promised to be as true to the original as makes sense in 2025.

Right about the same time in July I was feeling especially nostalgic for hardware from the magical 8-bit era and this project seemed almost too good to be true. I wasn't sure if I wanted to throw money at what seemed like a vaporware product, but dang it, something about it somehow felt right.

I figured if they took 2 years to ship it'd be no big deal since it's not like they were targeting the bleeding edge of tech - the thing is already 40 years out of date, what's a couple more? And unlike some other projects, this one wasn't starting from scratch since they were pulling together many existing parts and pieces into a final product so I figured it had a decent chance of eventually succeeding.

Having convinced myself, I placed a pre-order on July 12, 2025.

A week or so later I started to get a little bit of cold feet about the Starlight edition I had initially pre-ordered. While the idea of a light-up glowy computer was sort of appealing, I decided that what I really wanted was the genuine nostalgia and Starlight wasn't that - it was something kinda new and different.

It was also slightly more expensive than the beige, so I convinced myself to cancel the Starlight preorder and use the price difference to also order a joystick - something else I had realized I'd need.

So on July 24, 2025 I cancelled the pre-order and placed a new one for the BASIC Beige model.

I worried I might have lost my place in line, so to speak, but it was what it was. I stopped thinking too much about it and mentally switched back to the mode of, "I'll be happy if this thing ships at all."

By late November I had somewhat forgotten about all of this until I got a mystery shipping notification from FedEx with a sender I didn't recognize. Long story short, I had guessed it must be the Commodore joystick (since the computers themselves weren't shipping yet) and started to get a little excited again.

Naturally FedEx managed to deliver it to entirely the wrong house, but luckily a neighbor either returned it to FedEx or dropped it off in my mailbox themselves. In any case, it eventually showed up!

With the arrival of the joystick, I started getting increasingly impatient for the actual machine. The joystick was sitting there on my desk taunting me. Eventually I hacked together a little project just so I could use the joystick with my iPad!

Then on December 18, I got an email notification from UPS that another mysterious shipment was incoming. It once again had some unknown-to-me sender and all of our Christmas shipments were accounted for. Could this be the Commodore?!

IT WAS!

It arrived on December 19 and that day turned into one of the most magical days I can remember having in a long, long time.

I chronicled the day on Mastodon in a thread, but I'm going to re-post it here with timestamps and this will serve as my "first impressions" review of the Commodore 64 Ultimate.

12:49 PM: IT'S HERE!! The Commodore 64 Ultimate is here!!

1:06 PM: The box is amazing! There’s a full freakin' spiral bound manual in here, too. There’s stickers. There’s a (USB) cassette tape?! They went so hard. They didn’t need to go this hard. This is awesome.

1:22PM: READY.

1:25 PM: If anyone decides they want one of these machines, in theory this is a $10 discount code. I have no idea if it is single use or not.

1:29 PM: My kids have already stolen it from me and are busy programming it while consulting the excellent manual!

This is probably how my dad felt…

1:55 PM: Typing on this is very very nice. (Aside from the outdated symbol placements and those wonky cursor keys.)

4:21 PM: I haven't hardly been able to touch the Commodore myself between work and the kids stealing it from me. 😛

7:17 PM: My oldest is still hacking BASIC on the Commodore - now by lamplight so he can read the manual. This is pretty much exactly what I was doing in the late 80s - although I was using an Atari 800 and books from the library for a lot of years since I didn’t get ahold of a C64 for the first time until they were already pretty obsolete.

12:24 AM: It is now past midnight and we had to tear the kids away from the Commodore to get them to bed.

I took the machine down to our main TV and we were sitting on the couch computing like it was 1988.

I even read off some BASIC programs for a kid to type in - which was a thing I did with my mom (because she knew how to type) as a kid. lol

Then we took turns playing some of the games on the included "cassette" along with copious amounts of rambunctious trash-talking.

12:29 AM: Basically, it was awesome.

I don't really anticipate a repeat of today's magic moments tomorrow, but it was 100% worth it for today even if we never use the thing again. (Although I know we will.)

I kinda can't believe this product exists and that it really did live up to the hype - even if it was only for today.

The Commodore 64 Ultimate hit me hard in the nostalgia and delivered on exactly what they promised to do and I kind of can't believe it.

Amazingly, some of the magic even carried into the next day - both my youngest and oldest spent several more hours hacking on BASIC programs, exploring menus, and flipping through the manual.

The C64U is a nearly flawless execution and all of the attention to detail with the box, the manual, the keyboard, and the ports have combined into something truly special, I think.

I have no idea if the C64U magic would work on someone who wasn't "there" back in the day or not or on someone who hasn't put themselves into the right mindset beforehand. Would it work on kids that haven't already been exposed to some of this world? I don't know, but this product is probably the closest way we have of finding out without a time machine - and I think anyone even a little bit of curious should give it a try while they still can.