THEC64 HANDHELD
THE PORTABLE 8-BIT MACHINE WE NEVER HAD
If someone had told you as a kid that one day you'd be able to carry your Commodore 64 to school in your pocket, you'd have laughed. And fair enough. Some things in the 80s simply didn't exist in that universe: money for a new game, your mother understanding why you needed another joystick, and a portable version of the best computer in the world.
The closest we got was imagining it. That someone might have had the technology, the money and the will. That instead of the Game & Watch, something had appeared with the SID chip inside, with those 64 kilobytes that were enough for everything. It was so unlikely we didn't even put it on our Christmas list. Not because we didn't want it. But because some things were simply outside the catalogue of known reality.
If Marty McFly had set the right date in the DeLorean, he wouldn't have brought us hoverboards or flying cars. He'd have brought us this. And the right date would have been October 2026.
There are news stories you see coming and you already know you're going to write about them. This is one of those. Blaze Entertainment and Retro Games Ltd —the same people who brought us THEC64 Mini, The Spectrum and the Super Pocket— have just announced something we've been unconsciously imagining for decades without knowing it: the C64 and the Spectrum in portable format. Clamshell style. As if someone in the 80s had the budget, the technology and the will to do it properly.
They're called THEC64 Handheld and The Spectrum Handheld, distributed by HyperMegaTech!, and if that name alone didn't give you a little rush, you've been away from the eight bits for too long.
The first thing that grabs you is the shape: a clamshell that vaguely recalls a Nintendo DS but actually —and this is the great part— evokes more those palmtops and organisers of the 80s that we never got in console format. If in 1984 someone had designed a Game Boy C64, it would have looked something like this.
And they haven't held back on the details. The C64 model is beige. Glorious beige, authentic beige, the beige that stains the photos in family albums across half of Europe. Tactile plastic buttons, just like the original. The Spectrum, on the other hand, comes in black with its coloured stripes, and features those iconic rubber keys that tormented so many souls. The buttons you pressed and were never quite sure whether you'd actually pressed them or not.
A 4.3-inch IPS screen at 800×480, a Quad Core processor at 1.2 GHz, 256 MB of RAM and a 2000 mAh battery for more than three hours of play. USB-C charging —cable included, about time—, a 3.5mm headphone jack so you don't scare the people next to you with the SID, and a USB-A port on the back to connect an external keyboard or joystick if you want to take your geekery to the next level.
But what truly makes it more than a pretty toy is the MicroSD slot. Load your own ROMs —legally obtained, of course, we're very serious about that here— and you've got access to decades of catalogue. The C64 can emulate PAL, NTSC, C64C, PET64 variants and more. The Spectrum covers everything from the 48K to the +3, with overclock and underclock included for the hardest of the hardcore.
Each handheld comes with 25 games included. A mix of historical classics and modern homebrew titles that prove this isn't just packaged nostalgia.
- Boulder Dash
- Paradroid
- Speedball 2
- Nebulus
- + 21 more
- Manic Miner
- Head Over Heels
- The Great Escape
- Skool Daze
- + 21 more
The million-dollar question. Or rather the 129.99 euros question. Because yes, there are Chinese emulators for 50 euros that do the same and more. That's true and I won't lie to you. But it's also true that none of them have the Spectrum's rubber keys. Or the Retro Games Ltd name behind them. Or the licensed catalogue. Or that feeling that someone actually thought about you while designing it.
This isn't a product for the person who wants the best performance per euro. This is for the person who wants that specific object. The one who can picture themselves sneaking this into work in their pocket. The one who wants to be able to say "I've got the C64 in my pocket" and have it be literally true.
Expected launch: October 2026.
Collector's Edition exclusive to Funstock · 2,000 units per model.
PRE-ORDERS ARE OPEN.
I ALREADY KNOW WHAT I'M DOING.
Real beige, real rubber buttons, real MicroSD slot. Forty years after the C64 hit the market, it finally fits in a pocket.
AND YOU?