Commodore 64

Launched in August 1982, the Commodore 64 sold somewhere between 12.5 and 17 million units by independent estimates, and its library is so big that a collector can spend years in it. The reason people still talk about it is the SID sound chip, which gave C64 music a character all its own, and 64K of RAM that was generous for the price. In Britain it was expensive, going on sale in 1983 at £399, far above the Spectrum's price. For a modern route in, Commodore's new owners began shipping the FPGA-based Commodore 64 Ultimate in early 2026, built to work with original cartridges and peripherals while adding HDMI and USB. Original owners will want the 1541 disk drive or a datasette for real software.