The GameTank just cleared its Crowd Supply goal, which means this weird little open‑source console is officially headed into production instead of the vaporware graveyard. Not bad for a machine that looks like a devkit escaped from 1987 and fell into a maker space.
According to the campaign page, GameTank passed its $30,000 funding target and is sitting north of $40,000 raised, with units expected to start shipping around July 12, 2026. Backers are getting a full console, a chunky custom controller, a cartridge flasher, a blank cart, and a physical copy of Accursed Fiend, a top‑down dungeon crawler. That’s right, this isn’t an emulation box; it’s a brand‑new 8‑bit platform with its own library.
Under the hood, GameTank runs a W65C02S at 3.5 MHz as the main CPU with a second W65C02S at 14 MHz handling audio, pushing a 128×128 framebuffer with a hardware blitter and 512 KB of dedicated graphics RAM. Output is strictly composite video, which is either a charming design choice or a deal‑breaker depending on whether you still have a CRT (or a scaler) in the house. The whole thing is built from off‑the‑shelf through‑hole parts, with schematics, board files, and 3D‑printable shells all open‑sourced so you can build your own or mod it into something truly cursed.
Most importantly, GameTank is meant as a playground for people who actually want to write games and tinker with hardware, not just load ROM sets. There’s already a cross‑platform emulator plus a browser build, and an SDK based on CC65 for 6502 development, with more docs and tutorials on the way via the project Discord. It’s niche of a niche, absolutely, but now it’s a niche that’s actually getting manufactured, which is more than you can say for half the “new retro console” pitches that float through crowdfunding every year.
Source: GameTank Crowd Supply via RetroDodo
