buying Commodore

From the «to synthesizer soundtrack» department:
Title: Let’s Buy Commodore! Well, Somebody Is.
Author: Jenny List
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2025 20:00:08 +0000
Link: https://hackaday.com/2025/06/07/lets-buy-commodore-well-somebody-is/
Podcast Download URL: https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/commodore-64-featured.jpg

[image 1]

When a man wearing an Atari T-shirt tells you he’s buying Commodore it sounds
like the plot for an improbable 1980s movie in which Nolan Bushnell and Jack
Tramiel do battle before a neon synthwave sunset to a pulsating chiptune
soundtrack. But here on the screen there’s that guy doing just that, It’s
[Retro Recipes], and in the video below he’s assembling a licensing deal for
the Commodore brand portfolio[2] from the distant descendant of the Commodore
of old.

It’s a fascinating story and we commend him for tracing a path through the mess
that unfolded for Commodore in the 1990s. We tried the same research path with
a friend a few years ago and ended up with an anonymous Dutch paper company
that wouldn’t answer our calls, so we’re impressed. In conjunction with several
other players in the Commodore retrocomputing world he’s trying to assemble a
favourable percentage deal for manufacturers of new parts, computers, and other
goodies, and we’re pleased to see that it’s for the smaller player as much as
for the industry giant.

When looking at a story like this though, it’s important not to let your view
become clouded by those rose tinted glasses. While it’s great that we’re likely
to see a bunch of new Commodore-branded Commodore 64s and parts, there are many
pitfalls in taking it beyond that. We’ve seen the Commodore logo on too many
regrettable licensed products in the past, and we fear it might be too tempting
for it to end up on yet another disappointing all-in-one video game or just
another budget PC. If something new comes out under the Commodore brand we’d
like it to be really special, exploiting new ground in the way the Amiga did
back in the day. We can hope, because the alternative has dragged other famous
brands through the mud[3] in recent years.

If you want an insight into the roots of the original Commodore’s demise, have
a read of our Hackaday colleague [Bil Herd]’s autobiography[4].

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Header: Evan-Amos, Public domain[5].

Links:
[1]: https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/commodore-64-featured.jpg?w=800 (image)
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN8r4LRcOXc (link)
[3]: https://hackaday.com/2018/08/02/sinclair-zx-vega-to-lose-the-sinclair-name/ (link)
[4]: https://hackaday.com/2021/09/08/books-you-should-read-bil-herds-back-into-the-storm/ (link)
[5]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACommodore-64-Computer-FL.jpg (link)