The retro revival has been running on familiar fuel for years now – mini consoles, pixel art indies, the same SNES and Mega Drive greatest hits doing the rounds – but something slightly left-field is starting to happen, and it doesn’t come from the living room console wars, the battle of Sega and Nintendo, but from somewhere old, and little UK-centric, it’s the even deeper contest betwee the clacky, beige keyboards and rubber keys of two of the 1980s most-loved home computers.
The reveal of the new THEC64 Handheld and Spectrum Handheld from Blaze Entertainment’s HyperMegaTech! brand – that makes the impressive and fun Super Pocket handhelds – feels like stoking a fire between Speccy fans and Commodore enthusiasts that has been smouldering for 44 years (grudges are long held). But more so, this is a tipping point as retro gaming finds new avenues of games and hardware to recreate and in new ways, whether that’s the recent NEOGEO AES+ or these Game Boy DS-like retro takes on two 1980s home computers.
