This is the story of, what looks like one person’s work to keep a brand, held dear to many, alive
How Important Commodore was to Europe
Photo by William Warby
A couple of times in previous articles, I’ve joked about how I consider myself RH’s European Correspondent, which is mainly due to the fact that I’m British and have lived in the UK all my life.
Being a kid in the UK in the 90s, the playground argument wasn’t Sega vs Nintendo, it was Atari ST vs Commodore Amiga. While I was a little too young to be gaming when the Amiga launched, the Amiga 600 (a device refresh 6 years after launch, which was received about as welcome as the Wii Mini) was my first ever gaming device, and it’s a system I have a huge amount of love for.
The Amiga 500 launched in 1986 (a year after the Atari ST). It was a 16-bit gaming machine at a time when the latest game consoles were the Sega Master System and NES. The next 16-bit gaming system (the Mega Drive / Genesis) wouldn’t be launched in Japan until 1988 and even that wasn’t able to display as many colors on screen as the Amiga.
For those few precious years, the Amiga really did feel like the best thing in the world. One way to consider how ahead of its time it was is to look at the Super Nintendo’s Super FX chip which launched in 1993 in the game StarFox. The Amiga had a similar technology included internally at launch.
After losing the gaming wars to Sega and Nintendo, Commodore UK eventually went bankrupt in 1995, with the brand name being sold off and used to market a range of PC hardware that no one was interested in. Essentially, this was the same as what happened to the Polaroid brand in the 00s. Anything launched in the 21st century with Commodore branding has essentially been trash.
“I Won’t Let You Down”
It’s interesting how 5 words can cause such an impact.
In June 2025, Christian Simpson of the YouTube channel “Retro Recipes” uploaded a video, which was ambitiously called “Part 1” of what he called the “Let’s Buy Commodore” series. The episode ended on a cliff-hanger, where the current owners of the Commodore brand were suggesting, in a voicemail he heard for the first time on camera, that they might sell the whole Commodore brand to him. YouTube being YouTube, and content farming being what it is, I didn’t personally think anything would come of this.
Last week, Chris uploaded Part 2, where he reveals that he’s signed the agreement to buy Commodore and, in a turn of events that seems like something out of a film, is now the Acting CEO of Commodore. After revealing this, he speaks to the camera in a calm voice, acknowledging that the Commodore brand has essentially been a scam recently, and how it is a company that he loves as much as others in the community, and tells us that he won’t let us down. I can’t quite put into words why (I’m one of the least patriotic people), but I found hearing those words in a British accent disproportionately affecting.
The slide he then shared on screen gives me a lot of hope that it’s not just words.
Why I’m Hopeful
The other truly iconic logo of British computing was the dot-matrix owl of the BBC Micro. When, in 2008, a group of people who all loved the BBC Micro came together to make something modern, both as a tribute and a spiritual successor to the BBC Micro, the result was the Raspberry Pi, a series of devices that were (and continue to be) more successful than the wildest dreams of anyone involved
The purchase of Commodore isn’t complete yet; the sale price for the brand was described as “in the low seven figures,” and currently, only certified “Angel Investors” who are willing to put $250,000 or more into the company are able to contribute. Chris has additionally refinanced his home and put his own money into the venture.
“The Future We Were Promised”
The new Commodore organization has trademarked two phrases: “The Future We Were Promised” and “Honoring the Past, Innovating the Future”, which might be windows into the future of the organization. In the Retro Recipes video, Chris seems to indicate that the “new” organization will target both Retro Futurism and Digital Minimalism.
There are a host of faces from Commodore’s past who have joined this version of the company. While many were faces before my time owning an Amiga, I very much recognize the name David Pleasance, essentially the face of Commodore UK from my time reading gaming magazines and also one of the two people who attempted a management buy-out of Commodore which would have prevented it going bust, if it had succeeded.
Can Nostalgia Really Sustain a Business?
An Amiga Game – Wings – Running on My Favourite Handheld
Chris isn’t ready to share the upcoming Commodore products with us yet; these were teased, and I would expect these to be on camera in Part 3. He was, however, able to initial details of a plan to allow the Commodore branding to be made available to creators who are releasing appropriate products of a high enough standard.
The phrase “quality first” was used elsewhere in the video, but if this is to be a success, I think this needs to be predominantly applied here. We don’t need a repeat of the Commodore-branded products
The video indicated that the new Commodore will release games. While I would expect these to be fully licensed versions of Retro Games, Chris did indicate that there are at least 2 new games that are in development.
Will It Work?
Photo by Alexander Grigoryev on Unsplash
To be honest I don’t know. To a person like me who loved the Commodore machines of the past, it’s an enticing prospect, but with so much left to be revealed, nothing is clear at the moment, and nothing is certain. I will say that, from a personal note, in a world where misery and suffering are everywhere, watching the video about Commodore being relaunched put a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
One thing that I’m not clear on though, is where the purchase of Commodore leaves the trademark of my beloved Amiga, since I believe that was separated away from Commodore in the 00s.
Anyone who wants to stay informed on the future of Commodore, or even maybe invest, should register their interest using this Google form.
Hopes and Dreams
Again, speaking personally, as a guy who grew up with an Amiga and truly loved it as a gaming platform, I’m clinging on to hope that the renewed interest in Commodore will make it easier for an Amiga game to be selected for RH’s Game of the Month at some point.
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Nowadays nothing will work because every company that releases a classic device like this will want an indecent amount of money, and that will always end in failure. Nostalgia does not work unless you have a huge amount of sheeps in your fanbase as Nintendo does. The only way something like this can work is to create a truly 100% compatible hardware and price it accordingly to what the internal pieces cost. Release something that emulates it and you will die before dawn if the price is not similar to an Android TV.
I couldn’t agree more.
You know, what you said reminded me of another comment I read once.
To paraphrase:
“It’s common practice to price your product based on the cost to produce it. But what companies need to learn, is that it’s better to produce the product to the cost that people are willing to pay.”
There’s already hardware that he helped work on for this. The Commander X16. As far as handhelds go, I looked into producing my own hardware for a project and making something like anbernic or any of the others is not that expensive really. Making single units was roughly $80 each in parts for me if I 3D printed the molds for the shells and produced them myself.
That is to say you may be thinking of the wrong economy of hardware. Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology can take you a long way.
Unless you implement the original Commodore Hardware in FPGA, thus reducing chip count.
That’s how the ZX Next (Sinclair) did it. It looks the same and works the same but with less semiconductors
the amiga 1000 was 1986 not the 500 ffs these people cant even do homework right
Being on team Atari, after decades of ‘hate’ (ofcourse not, but you know what I mean 🙂) towards Commodore, I say: Commodore Must Go On.
You sir are a moron. There’s already a huge following on FB groups alone.
You’re making the same mistake Commodore did. The Amiga wasn’t just a gaming machine. It was a computer way beyond it’s time. It was a graphics powerhouse. SLAC used it as a graphical front end for IBM mainframes, basically using the mainframe to analyze high energy physics detector data to find relevant events then using the Amiga to draw them in 8-bit color. It was a video studio because it could accept an external video sync signal. My Emplant board ran Macintosh OS faster than an SE30 on a 25 MHz 68030.
I had an A500, an A2000 and an A3000. All amazing machines in their own way.
I’m glad something may come of Commodore. Amiga OS was my favorite of them all.
I had a commodore 16 then a c64 loved then infact I still own the c16 must dust it off one day & try power it up… A Commodore system that let u download retro games may work as long as the price is right…
Your obviously far too young to properly know about the early UK home computer scene. You should do some more accurate research.
In the early 1980’s The UK home computer market was flooded with lots of different brands and systems. Many of which you will never of heard of or don’t exist anymore.
Some were rebadged systems from other manufacturers like the dragon being a tandy. They ran various different operating systems and nothing was cross compatible with other systems. Everything was usually proprietary.
The original playground fight was really between the 8bit Sinclair spectrum and commodore 64 in the UK, with the Amstrad CPC appearing later.
We did have other 8bit systems in the UK from Acorn (BBC micro, atom and electron) Atari 400/800/1200/65xe etc, Other commodore machines (vic 20, c16, plus 4) Dragon 32/64, Enterprise 64/128, and later the MSX systems and 8bit consoles. But none of those were as popular as the Speccy or C64.
Commodore is a very important computer company and brand. They introduced the world’s first colour computer (the Vic 20). They introduced the first proper sound synthesizer chip in the C64 SID chip. They had the first million selling computer. The c64 holds the world record for the highest selling home computer in the world.
Commodore were highly integrated and designed and manufactured their own silicon chips and memory. As they owned MOS who created the 6502.
Steve Jobs and Steve wizniak had to visit CBM/mos to get help from Chuck peddel (creator of the 6502 CPU) to get their first computer working. They then tried to sell CBM their apple one. CBM didn’t want it as they were about to release the original PET.
The original Amiga A1000 actually came out in July 1985.
The original Amiga A500 launched in 1987 in the UK.
The Amiga CD32 launched in September 1993. It is actually the world’s first 32bit CD-ROM based games console, and NOT the PlayStation.
I know this for a fact, because I’ve owned an Amiga A500 since March 1987.
I still own it along with many others commodore 8bit (Vic 20, C64, C64c, C128, C128 D, lots of disk drives 1541,1570, 1571, 1581, oceanic) and Amiga systems (A500, A600, A1200, CD32 and A4000) and a Mister just for good measure.