In brief: Four decades after revolutionizing the home computer market, the Amiga still draws significant interest from hardware developers. The legendary gaming machine has been recreated countless times in cheap plastic clones and clunky emulation boxes, but Apollo now aims to deliver the ultimate Amiga experience for affluent Commodore enthusiasts.
The Commodore Amiga left a lasting impression on countless computer users in the 1980s, and demand for new Amiga hardware persists to this day. Apollo, a German company best known for developing modern Amiga accelerator cards, is now bringing a complete Amiga system to market. As with previous retro computing efforts, enthusiasts are eager to get their hands on one of these costly machines.
Apollo describes its new A6000 as the most powerful Amiga 68k-compatible computer ever developed. At its core is the Apollo V4 AC68080 accelerator, designed to deliver full compatibility with original Amiga hardware while offering orders-of-magnitude improvements in CPU and graphics performance.
Built on a modern FPGA-based reinterpretation of the classic Motorola 68000 architecture, the A6000 also integrates everything needed for a contemporary yet nostalgically faithful computing experience.
The Apollo A6000's case is 3D-printed to both replicate and refine the compact form factor of the original Amiga 600, which debuted in 1992 just months before the release of the 32-bit Amiga 1200. The system features a mechanical keyboard with durable ABS plastic keycaps and Cherry MX switches, along with 2GB of Fast RAM, 12MB of Chip RAM, and a 128GB CF card pre-loaded with ApolloOS.
While retaining compatibility with legacy Amiga hardware ports and software standards, the A6000 introduces a range of modern upgrades. These include dual SD card slots, HD video output, a 100Mbit Ethernet port, four USB ports, and more. The premium package also ships with a USB mouse, gamepad, video cables, and even a mouse pad.
Designed for maximum compatibility, the machine supports the full library of Amiga software and can even run titles originally developed for Motorola-based Atari and early MacOS systems.
Apollo said its team spent nearly a decade reverse-engineering the complex Amiga chipset and Motorola's M68000 CPU architecture. The new AC68080 processor now delivers performance levels unimaginable to Amiga fans in the 1980s, while also addressing several bugs in the original 680x0 design and adding extra capabilities on top.
The first production run of the Apollo A6000 was a special First Edition created to mark the Amiga's 40th anniversary. All 40 FE units have already sold out, but Apollo plans to begin taking new orders in October. The system is priced at €960 (around $1,128), which is not dramatically higher than the cost of some heavily used Amiga 1200 units still circulating on eBay.
The Commodore Amiga returns in style with Apollo's high-end A6000
