Commodore ships its first C64C Slimline batch and aims the TAC-2 joystick at Halloween

Commodore says the first batch of its Commodore 64C Slimline computers is packed and on its way. In a "From the Factory Floor" post on 22 October 2026, the company wrote that all three colorways are accounted for, that some buyers who paid for expedited shipping already have their machines, and that the remaining expedited units should reach a worldwide depot by air within two weeks. Standard-shipping orders, it said, are "on track for November delivery".

The Slimline is the C64 Ultimate, Commodore's FPGA recreation of the Commodore 64, in a C64C-style case; the store sells it as the Commodore 64C Ultimate. The update does not say how many machines are in the first batch.

The joystick slips

The TAC-2 is late. When Commodore announced its remake of the 1983 Suncom joystick on 11 August, Generation Amiga reported that shipping was expected to begin on 20 October. The October update says the stick "is in production" but that two fixes are still being finished. Brass seatings have been added for the case screws, because the original design's receptacles could strip after repeated opening, and the rubber grommet is being revised because production samples came out too stiff. The new grommets are with beta testers.

Commodore is "aiming to start shipments around Halloween", and its store gives an estimated ship date of 31 October 2026. Both are targets.

The joystick costs $49.99 before tax in four of its five colorways and $64 in the Founders Edition. BASIC Beige, Starlight and Founders have LEDs in the fire buttons; C= White and Knight Black follow the original and have none.

The phone

Commodore lists the Callback 8020 flip phone from $399. Chief executive Peri Fractic and a colleague spent ten days in Shenzhen watching a mock production run, the trial that precedes full production. "Every phone gets a drop test, followed by a full software check covering the radio, OS, and the works," the post says. The official production run is "slated for October or very early November", and first batches are "on track to arrive on doorsteps in late November".

The store on 26 October

The store lists the C64 Ultimate from $299.99 before tax, in breadbin or slimline shape. When we checked on 26 October, the breadbin editions were shown as in stock with US delivery by 2 November. The three Slimline editions, BASIC Beige, Starlight and Founders, were still marked as pre-orders, with a factory dispatch date of 23 October and a latest US standard-shipping arrival of 6 January 2027. That is a wider window than the November delivery the blog post describes.

The Commodore 77

The one breadbin edition that has not shipped is the Commodore 77, a Cyberpunk 2077 edition that Commodore and CD Projekt Red announced on 25 August at $377, with shipping in early 2027; IGN reported that it premiered at Gamescom. Commodore says it uses AMD's Artix XC7A100T FPGA instead of the XC7A50T in the standard machine, a part Tom's Hardware describes as having twice the logic and block RAM, and its release says, in a line it attributes to "word on the neon soaked street", that the machine "will achieve speeds of 77MHz". It comes with a demo by the Polish group Arise, scored by LukHash, that uses 24-channel stereo SID sound and a 2 MB cartridge chip. On 26 October the store showed 291 of 500 pre-order units left in its fifth batch, with a ship estimate of February 2027.