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I can’t even remember the day the Commodore 64 went on sale, but I do remember going to by buddies place and sitting on that thing for hours, playing what we thought had to be the best video games ever.

At the time, the Commodore computer cost $595 and came with a whopping 64 kilobytes of memory. It also contained a graphics and sound card that stood apart from other computers of the day.

Now, nearly 30 years later, the Commodore brand has taken on new management and is re-releasing its flagship computer, this time with all the amenities of a modern-day computer packed inside.

It comes in the original taupe color and design, of course — it’s just everything else that’s changed.

The new iteration of the classic computer won’t run Windows (although the company claims you’ll be able to install it if you so choose). Instead, the Commodore 64 runs a version of the Linux operating system on an Intel processor, and boasts 2GB of memory and a modern Blu-ray or rewritable DVD optical drive.

The past isn’t forgotten, however: The company claims that consumers will be able to lay all their favorite 8-bit era games within seconds of turning the Commodore 64 on, by running software that emulates the original operating system.

It’ll be priced from $250 to $900, and you can even get one with a Blu-ray player in there. I’ll wait for the updated Atari.

[Cheers blogs.nytimes.com]