Blaze delays TheC64 and The Spectrum handhelds to 22 April 2027 as THEA1200 becomes an official Amiga

Blaze Entertainment has pushed TheC64 Handheld and The Spectrum Handheld back by six months. In a statement dated 29 September 2026, the Evercade maker said it had moved the release "from 15th October 2026 to 22nd April 2027", for both the standard and the collector's editions.

The reason given is build quality. "During production, we identified areas where the product construction was not meeting our high standards," Blaze wrote. Some of the problems could have been fixed in time to ship this year, it said, but it preferred to take the extra months. The statement does not say which parts of the construction fell short.

The two clamshell machines, made with Retro Games Ltd and first announced in April, according to VGC, are styled after the original computers. Each has a 4.3-inch IPS screen, 25 built-in games, a MicroSD slot for adding software and a USB-A port for a keyboard or joystick. VGC reports plastic buttons on the C64 model and rubber ones on the Spectrum, tailored to each built-in game and remappable for others.

Blaze's product page lists the standard editions at GBP 109.99, $129.99 or EUR 129.99. Collector's editions, exclusive to the retailer Funstock and limited to 2,000 of each, cost GBP 129.99, $149.99 or EUR 149.99 and add a hard-shell case and an exclusive magazine.

The delay does not touch the Evercade Nexus, which Blaze says "remains on track for release on 30th October 2026".

THEA1200 gets the Amiga name

Retro Games has its own delayed machine. In August the company said "The A1200 is officially an Amiga product", citing "the recent announcement from Mike Battilana and the Amiga Corporation" in a Facebook post reported by Generation Amiga on 19 August and by Time Extension on 21 August. Time Extension describes the underlying deal as one that lets companies including Retro Games and Commodore International use the Amiga name under licence. THEA500 Mini, Retro Games' earlier Amiga product, could not carry it. On 28 August the company posted Gamescom photographs of the machine in the hands of Battilana and of Commodore's chief executive, Time Extension reported.

The full-size A1200 recreation is due on Friday 4 December 2026, according to Retro Games' product and announcement pages. That date is itself a postponement. When it moved the launch from 16 June, on 6 May, chief technical officer Chris Smith said the hardware was complete but that chip shortages and rising plastics costs had delayed the schedule, and that the operating system "isn't yet where it needs to be", Time Extension reported.

Retro Games says the machine emulates the A1200's AGA chipset as well as the OCS and ECS of earlier Amigas. It comes with Workbench, 25 games, a two-button mouse and an eight-button gamepad, and loads software from USB sticks with WHDLoad support. A 3 A mains adapter is not included. The company's own pages link to retailers and do not state a price.