Items tagged with retro
Retro gaming is all the rage right now, and companies are trying to replicate the success Nintendo had with the NES Classic and SNES Classic. Amid all the noise, however, is a fun and interesting project that pays homage to the Commodore 64, one of the most popular home computers of all time, while combining a passion for Lego blocks. A self-proclaimed "retroholic" who goes by the name Perifractic wanted to find out if he could build a full-size working Lego Commodore 64, complete with a functioning LED, a mechanical Lego keyboard, and a Lego PCB. "When I saw a mini Commodore 64 made of Lego, I...
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A few weeks back, we showed you a handful of Commodore Amiga-related hardware projects that were designed to breathe new life into the popular, vintage machines. Even decades after Commodore’s demise, the Amiga user community remains vibrant and new hardware is being introduced at a steady clip, relatively speaking. In that previous post, we showed you some freshly-minted Amiga motherboard PCBs that were reverse engineered by a couple of members of the Amiga community. We also shined the spotlight on the Vampire 4, a Altera FPGA-based device that could eventually be the foundation –...
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Apple is widely recognized these days as the most valuable company in the entire world, with a market cap of around $1 trillion. Think of Apple products today and what comes to mind are slickly designed MacBooks, iPhones, and iPods. The earliest beginnings of the company were set in motion by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak working out of a garage to build computers that looked more like science projects, versus what we expect from Apple today. Those earliest of machines back then were known Apple-1 computers that were built in the '70s and they certainly look far different than any current...
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Although it has been over three decades since the first Commodore Amigas were originally released, a fan base for the beloved systems is still going strong. Of course, the Amiga install base is a small fraction of what it was during the machine’s heyday, but the community supporting the Amiga is still vibrant and very much alive. In fact, the Amiga community – and many other retro-computing communities for that matter -- seems to be more active now that it has been in years, and a number of exciting new hardware projects have cropped up or hit major milestones in recent weeks. Two relatively...
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Retro Games is at it again promising that the smaller retro Commodore 64 console will be landing in the coming months. The first rumblings of the little Commodore 64, called C64 Mini, surfaced in September 2017 promising an early 2018 launch date. That launch date was then "confirmed" as March, but things didn’t shake out for some reason. Retro Games is now saying that C64 Mini will hit North America on October 9. We want to be excited, but we have been down this road before with the console. Details appear to be the same as was promised in the past. It is a 50% scale Commodore 64 that comes...
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Retro gaming is huge right now and the resurgence in tiny versions of classic consoles is mostly thanks to Nintendo starting it all with its NES Classic Edition and SNES Classic Edition consoles that were huge successes last year. Sega now wants to get into the retro gaming action with a smaller version of its classic console the Mega Drive. Gamers in the U.S. who were lucky enough to have one of these back in the day will remember it as the Sega Genesis. During the SEGA FES 2018 stream Sega announced the Mega Drive Mini console to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the launch of...
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Atari has been trickling out information on its Ataribox gaming console for the past year, and we thought that were getting closer to an official launch. After all, the company announced earlier this week that pre-orders for the Ataribox would launch today, December 14th. However, that pronouncement appears to have been too good to be true. The gaming company announced this morning that the Indiegogo launch has been "officially paused". Interestingly, the company indicates via an emailed statement, "Because of one key element on our checklist, it is taking more time to create the platform and ecosystem...
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As we inch closer to the release of the retro-tastic Ataribox, more details regarding the console are being revealed. At this point, we know the device will be powered by a custom AMD-built SoC, it runs on Linux, we’ve seen its wood-clad aesthetic, and know that a plethora of Atari classics will be available on the console. Today, we can also give you a glimpse of the Ataribox’s controllers, or at least, one type of Ataribox controller (we think). The Ataribox harkens back to the original Atari 2600, which helped pioneer in-home, living room gaming. For those of you that may not have...
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For long-time enthusiasts that were around during the ascent of personal computers, the Commodore Amiga remains one of the most beloved systems of all time. When it was originally released back in the mid-80’s, the Amiga could do things that no other consumer-class computer could – its graphics, sound, and multi-tasking capabilities were simply unmatched at the time. That initial sense of amazement at the Amiga’s unique capabilities is one of the reasons why the platform continues to have rabid fans some 30+ years later and why a small group of skilled enthusiasts have designed and manufactured...
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Dave Haynie, one of the chief engineers that worked on the Amiga back in its heyday, put it best when he said, “Amiga users make Macintosh users look like PC users”, in the Viva Amiga documentary that was released early this year. Those of us that were around when the Amiga initially debuted knew Commodore had something special on its hands. At the time of its launch, the Amiga was the most advanced personal computer money could buy – bar none. It offered multimedia features that were unmatched for many years, it was affordably priced (relatively speaking), and was the first personal computer with...
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Some three decades later, what's old is new again with the Commodore Amiga 2000 HD making an unlikely comeback. Well, sort of. Just over a week before Halloween, some lucky expo attendee stumbled upon a never touched and fully functioning Amiga system powered by a Motorola 68000 processor running at all of 7.16MHz. Oddly enough, his rare find wasn't even the first decades old virgin Amiga system unearthed this month! Around three weeks ago, a Facebook user posted pictures of a non-HD Amiga 2000 that was still in its retail packaging to the Commodore Amiga Facebook group. The system was sold as...
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Hush little baby, don't say a word. And never mind that noise you heard. Unless, of course, it's an array of screaming floppy disk drives cranking out the Metallica classic Enter Sandman. Everyone is going to have soundtracks that bring forth a deluge of memories from the past. Some might consider the Star Wars theme to be the ultimate for that. For metal fans in the 90s, Enter Sandman is going to be right on up there for many. Heck, it even managed to drive Megadeth's Dave Mustaine to begin Sweating Bullets a year after its release. However, this version of Sandman, may just top that for some...
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Longing for those days of yesteryear, questing and conquering in Defender of The Crown? Or perhaps you miss that fast-paced platform action, snuffing out Aliens in Another World? You're not alone; Glenn had the itch too. Commodore Amiga Facebook group member Glenn, (and we'll leave it at that so you're not tempted to ring him up for a retro therapy session), was fortunate enough to stumble upon a machine that could quite literally take him back in time, circa 1985, maybe 87ish, otherwise known as the glory days of Commodore's Amiga personal computer. Rocking a Motorola 68000 processor, 256kB of...
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One common complaint in the twenty-first century is that nothing is built to last. Even complex, expensive computers seem to have a relatively short shelf-life nowadays. One computer in a small auto repair shop in Gdansk, Poland, however, has survived for the last twenty-five years against all odds. In January a photo was taken by Facebook user Bartek for the page Retrokomp/Loaderror. The picture recently resurfaced on Commodore USA’s Facebook page. The computer claiming victory here is a Commodore C64C that has been balancing driveshafts non-stop for a quarter of a century. The C64C looks like...
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