THEC64 is currently unavailable in the UK

The popular THEC64 Classic edition, with its working keyboard, is reported as unavailable in the UK and North America

I have pondered the future of THEC64 platform, especially with Retro Games Ltd (RGL) being behind this modern days Commodore C64 clone, along with THEA500 Mini (Amiga-based) and THE400 Mini (Atari 400/800/XE/XL based) consoles. The latter is competing in what I see as the same space as THEC64. Thankfully, THEC64 Mini is still readily available, and you may find new units in the UK for under £40.00p. So, what is going on?

My conjecture on this is that THEC64 classic is no longer economically viable to produce. Inflation has devalued the British Pound Sterling and US Dollar, with THEC64 typically retailing at around £119.99p - £129.99p, whereas THEA500 Mini's initial retail price point was £119.99p, and THE400 Mini is a penny shy of £100. We know that the world is fraught with dangers now, and some would argue on the verge of another World War, and that has increased shipping costs. All models of THEC64 (along with all of RGL's products) are manufactured in China, and for us in what is called "the West", our Governments have been somewhat hostile, or let's say unfriendly to the one place that we've exported nearly all of our manufacturing to. Not a great plan, one might say.

In my view, THEC64, or more specifically, THEC64 with the latest firmware, is very good value at its typical price point when compared to the other machines from RGL; for about the same price as THEA500 Mini (at least when THEA500 Mini is not discounted), you get essentially a fully working computer that mimics and emulates not just the famous C64, but also the VIC-20, and one that may boot straight to classic mode just like a real C64 or VIC-20. It has 64 built in games, which were nearly all pretty well recieved from the computer press of the 1980s and early 1990s, and more free games when upgraded, and it includes a much improved microswitched joystick that to me feels authentic.

But if you can put up with a non-working keyboard, or providing your own keyboard, and you have a better solution to THEJoystick included with THEC64 Mini, then THEC64 Mini is a steal at the moment. I regularly see it online and in Game stores retailing at under £40.00p. So what you have a keyboard that isn't correctly mapped? And who cares about playing VIC-20 games anyway? We all know that the C64 is where it's at, right? So, for the time being, and I would say the foreseeable future, if you want THEC64 then it's a Mini you'll have to purchase. Although, I don't know the availability of the Mini in North America, but it's certainly available in Europe.

Some context to my time at Retro Gamer magazine

In issue 257, Shaun Bebbington answered some questions about his time at Retro Gamer magazine

Retro Gamer is for me a long way in the past now. One may be wondering how come I've stopped writing for RG? It may seem to some people that (when I stopped writing for RG) I was trying to diss other people's work and big up my own. That was Chris Boyo's opinion anyway back around 2006 or so, when I was no longer being published by the then Imagine Publishing printed matter periodical.

For those of you who have procured issue 257 of the aforementioned publication, you may have enjoyed the look back at the history of said magazine, and likely skimmed over the Q&A which features yours truly. In any case, it was truncated from my original answers, which were sent to me via email to answer at my leisure (except for the deadline). I guess the old saying that behind every good writer is a great editor shines true here. Either Martyn Carroll (who sent me the questions to answer), or Darran Jones (who is the current editor of Retro Gamer) cut out a lot of the guff, primarily for space but to better fit into the feature, which is presented in an A5 sized booklet.

I thought I'd publish here the full unedited Q&A (including my usual typos and grammatical mistakes) as it may be of interest to you, dear reader, or provide more context. So, without further ado, here is Martyn's questions and my not so sequent answers.

1. Can you sum up what it was like working on Retro Gamer as a staff writer?
   
   Shaun Bebbington: Retro Gamer was my first office job and I didn’t go to University as, I suspect, many or most of the people at Live Publishing did. There were things that I didn’t know about nor how to do. Office politics is one thing that I didn’t know about, and triangulating one’s sources was something that I didn’t know how to do, as two examples.
   
   It was pretty good at the start, though I didn’t and still don’t drive, so getting to a place called Adlington in Cheshire wasn’t so easy as there was no direct public transportation route from Crewe. I somehow made it work in the beginning, but as Matt Mabe lived in Sandbach, and he was kind enough to pick me up from Sandbach station which simplified the journey.
   
   Things started to go down hill quickly as I was out of my depth. I wasn't a gamer. Not really. I was much more interested in hardware and non-entertainment software, and had a passing interest in programming, but people were still making software for many of the 8-bit machines that I loved and grew up with, so I wanted to write about those new games.
   
   Although I was only there for nine months, and most people don’t know that I contributed anything to Retro Gamer, I have had a small but significant influence on the magazine and I think retro gaming in general in this sense: that people now take new software for these antiquated 8-bit machines much more seriously, especially entertainment software.
   
   
2. Which of your features are you most proud of?
   
   SB: Due to the back story and insane deadline, working full time for Social Services and breaking the limitations of Windows Notepad on my Windows 98SE PC, it is the feature in issue two about Commodore computers and the companies history.
   
   I was asked to write 10 pages, more than I’ve ever written before or since for any publication, and I was paid £500 for it, more than I’ve been paid for any freelance before or since. Martyn gave me a deadline of several weeks. This became two weeks as Retro Gamer issue one had done really well, and the intended quarterly publication was going monthly because no one knew how much money you could make from retro gaming nerds I guess. This was an all waking hours job, and some of the work had to be re-written because Notepad couldn’t save that many characters and I didn’t realise its limitations. I had to start using Microsoft WordPad to finish the feature, and I discovered something called "Rich Text Format" too. It was very lucky that I had already been reading up about the history of Commodore Computers for a number of years before hand, otherwise I wouldn’t have made that insane deadline at all.
   
   
3. What's your favourite anecdote from your time on the mag?
   
   SB: The brightest pub in the world was not far from the office. This pub was so bright that the owners thought it was necessary to have all of the lights switched on even on the most sunny of sunny days. We’d often go for a quick half and some food, and Dan Whitehead was about the funniest person in the company. So no specific stories, just some good memories.
   
   Tony was another funny guy, but lacked the intelligence of Dan, so he didn’t know it. He was a bit of an alpha male as I remember, and would say some random nonsense to make himself look good, and he didn’t seem to know what he was talking about much of the time. I was unorganised, but him trying to organise anything was something to watch. He also got his 15 minutes of fame by being interviewed on some Satellite TV show or something about the magazine. I wisely stayed out of the way as I probably would have said all of the wrong things.
   
   
4. What are your thoughts on RG still in print 20 years on?
   
   SB: It’s pretty amazing - even to me - that there are still printed matter computering magazines in 2024, but I guess if you are a retro gamer, you don’t want to be reading PDFs or something, you want a physical periodical that informs and delights in equal measures. Retro Gamer must be doing some of that.
   
   
5. Finally, no-one believes me, so can you confirm to readers that a lot of your in-house features were indeed written on a Commodore 128?
   
   SB: Of course. I had a Commodore 128, with GEOS, well it was the Click Here Software’s Wheels upgrade, a CMD FD-2000 and Commodore 1581 disk drive. Oh, and a CMD RAMLink and SuperCPU. Because of Commodore’s over-engineered way its computers would talk to its disk drive, and read from/write to the disk media (a legacy of Chuck Peddle from the Commodore PET), it meant that a Commodore C64, or even a VIC-20 could read and write MS-Dos formatted 3.5” disks. I could write my articles on a VIC-20 if I wanted to, and yes there would have been a simple word processor to do that. In fact I think I still have a VIC-20 word processor.
   
   Clearly the C128, with its 80 columns screen and fast serial bus, along with some GEOS tools like geoDos, meant that I could write my articles in geoWrite and transfer them to my PC, and back again. And despite the comments at the time, GEOS did have a spell checker. What caught me out, and again this shows how out of my depth I was, was that I trusted the Windows spell check without proofing my own work. I had no strategies to proof my own work then, something which took me some time to learn how to do. As I recall, Andre Baune’s name was "corrected" by Microsoft’s spell checker to Buchane. I made a lot of junior mistakes like that back then, much to Martyn's frustration I suspect. Thankfully, I'm not a writer anymore, nor have any aspirations to be one again.
   
   

As a side note, some of the above answers were interspersed with a conversation I had with Martyn via Facebook Messenger when finally published in RG (I will not be publishing said conversation). In the Messenger conversation, I provided some context around who made RG a success. I know, because I was there, that it was Martyn and Matt Mabe (Art Editor) who were driving the magazine. I, like all of the freelancers, were just along for the ride, even though many people, including many of the freelancers, tried to claim RG as their own, and tried to say it was because of them that the magazine was a success.

One might notice in this Q&A that I didn't have a lot to say to this question "What are your thoughts on RG still in print 20 years on?" I don't often think about the magazine, nor that time in my life. The only real thing of substance I had to say is that I think printed matter computer magazines shouldn't exist in 2024.

I have held the assumption that RG isn't the sort of magazine that would interest someone like me, and I haven't purchased an issue, until 257 at least, for many years. And reading through issue 257 to some degree, I know now that it isn't a magazine for me at all. It is reflective of its readership, so I suspect that it had a very different reader 18 or 20 years ago than now. Not that I'm trying to diss RG to big up my own work of course. As for a magazine (or in this case a fanzine) I would 100% recommend, it has to be FREEZE64 available at freeze64.com.

Finally, more keen eyed readers may know that, although I have no aspirations to be a writer again, I have been published since 2020 in Popular Retro; this wasn't to kick start a career in writing, but simply as a favour to Retro Games Ltd and to other people who have helped me out over the years. I may be published again, but only on that basis, or as one may have guessed, the occasional blog post here.

THE400 Mini - The Atari 400 platform recreated. My initial thoughts.

Retro Games Ltd (RGL) have partnered with PLAION to bring the wonderful world of the Atari 400, 800, 5200 and XE/XL range to life in a now famous mini form factor. THE400 Mini using modern days connections like HDMI and USB, will soon be available (and may be pre-ordered now) in "console" form.

The famous Atari 400, along with its "more serious" and compatible 800 model, were initially announced in December 1978 by Atari to follow up on its successful 2600 Video Computer System. It offered many advanced features for a personal computer of that era, and eventually launched to retail in October 1979. Until then, Commodore, Apple and Radio Shack had been slogging it out for dominance in this fast growing personal computer market. Atari entering this fight was significant, and the 400 model was pretty formidable, especially when it came to computer graphics.

Offering high resolution graphics of up to 320 x 192 pixels, utilising hardware sprites, and having a palette of 128 colours, all through a standard television set, meant that this computer was going to be good for playing video games. And its 40 x 24 character display made it equally good for the applications of the day. Being powered by the popular 6502 Central Processing Unit (CPU) at 1.8Mhz, which [in raw Mhz] was faster than both Commodore's and Apple's offerings (I won't compare this to the Radio Shack's TRS-80 as comparing a 6502-based processor to a Z80-based processor is folly). From 1980 through to around 1986, the Atari 8-bit computer range had some seriously good entertainment software produced for it, by then upcoming and staple video game developers like Activision, Epyx, Datasoft, and Atari itself.

From around 1986, the Atari 8-bit personal computer platform began to fade, even with improvements made to the compatible XE and XL range, which could display 256 colours and had a few more graphics modes. Commodore, with its C64, largely won the home computer war, and this model wouldn't die until around 1992. Remember that the C64 competed against (in many ways) more technically capable machines like the Commodore Amiga or Atari ST for over half of its commercial life. To still be a relevant in 1990 was quite a feat.

What I find most interesting about the announcement of THE400 Mini is its price point. And I'm taking nothing away from its perfect replica form factor.

THE400 Mini will be pre-loaded with 25 licensed games, and will provide a way to load your own legally purchased or public domain software by "side-loading" tape, disk or cartridge images. Knowing RGL as I do, I'm certain that it will support THE400 through firmware updates based on user feedback, so you will be able to buy with some confidence. I note that other "Mini" console producers do not offer this. Releasing a new firmware update is timely and costly, and provides RGL with no additional revenue.

I think the promised feature to "rewind" your gameplay by up to 40 seconds is interesting, and I guess this may be more convenient than the "saved game states" on THEC64 or THEA500 Mini. It is the price point of £99.99 that I think makes THEC64 Mini and even THEC64 Classic, or THEVIC20 (if you can find one) look very good value indeed.

THEC64 Mini launched at £69.99, and included 64 licensed games. It has since had several firmware updates, adding more games of varying quality to the carousel. Like THE400, THEC64 allows you to side-load any tape, disk, or cartridge images of software that you own. It includes one joystick and all the necessary cables to get you started. Although some will say that the joystick included with THEC64 Mini wasn't good quality, the joystick included with THE400 won't be worth £30 more. So, THE400 has more USB ports, but THEC64 Mini can use a cheap USB extender. One thing I don't know is if THE400 will include a decent USB power adapter, but looking at both THEC64 Mini and THEA500 Mini, it is likely that it will not, though it may require lower power consumption and/or not run so hot as some versions of THEC64 Mini.

THEC64 Classic and THEVIC20 launched at £119.99 (some sources say £109.99), which included an improved joystick (especially on THEVIC20), with a fully working and correctly mapped keyboard, more USB ports and a USB power adapter, and all of the necessary cables to get you started. All firmware updates to THEC64 Mini also work on THEC64 Classic, and THEVIC20. So, you legally have over 64 games if you have the latest firmware version, and many good features that some C64 fans will love, like being able to emulate the Commodore Ram Expansion Unit (REU), or the ability to play four-player adapter games, like Bomb Mania, from Protovision.

Aside from entertainment software, you have much more choice of other types of software too. I could write many pages just about the GEOS operating system, which by itself had all kinds of productivity, utilities and so on. The Commodore C64's library of games alone certainly exceeds the cumulative totals of all models of the Atari 8-bit personal computer range. And THEC64 Classic can also play VIC-20 games too. A lazy estimate is that owners or THEC64 Classic and THEVIC20 will have at least 10,000 software titles to pick from. As you might have guessed, these are not that difficult to find these days, and even after the commercial demise of the C64, there has still been lots of software released for it considering that it was a commercially dead platform for at least 15 years after 1992.

Could this therefore be a sign that THEC64 platform is about to be discontinued? Or will hard-nosed consumers simply make a cold decision that, because many games on the Atari 400/800/XE/XL had comparable versions on either the C64 or the VIC-20, or both, that THEC64 Classic or Mini is simply better value? If the latter is the case, this may mean that THEC64 has, at least, another year at retail in it.

All of this means, at least to me, that THE400's success is in the balance, although I'm sure that many people will be pre-ordering this right now. RGL already have a product that will fit many gamers who were around from ~1981 through to the early 1990s - or those people who don't want to mess around with a Raspberry Pi and spend time configuring it with this or that emulator. The Atari 400/800/XE/XL was only a significant player for about half the 1980s, with the 5200 model only really a footnote in all of this. The VIC-20 was significant from 1980-1984, and the C64 from 1982 through to the end of that decade. But is the Atari name enough to carry this new product? And will it at least sell as well as THEC64 Mini when you are paying more to get less? Time will tell.

A side note to this is that it kind of reminds me of when Commodore launched its Plus/4 model in 1984: the Plus/4 was too similar to the C64 in many ways but without a better sound chip, and although it could display more colours, it could not do hardware sprites like the C64, and did not use the most common joystick type. Okay, so the Plus/4 was meant for a different market, to compete at the low end with the Sinclair/Timex machines, but somehow it ended up launching at $299USD. By the time of its launch, the C64 was certainly no more expensive than this, and had already started to have a second user market, and had a vaster software library. It all sounds too familar.

But all of this said, I'll probably be purchasing THE400 Mini myself because it looks like a lovingly created Mini console with a beautiful aesthetic. Because I guess a fool and his money really is easily parted.

Edited by Mike Mee. Many thanks for your help Mike.