The iconic Commodore PET 2001 is back in this gorgeous one-off build [Gallery]

Interest in retro gaming has seemingly soared through the roof over the last year. Nintendo has been active with its NES and Super NES Classic remakes, while popular titles like Sonic and others have made comebacks as well. And while it appears just about every platform of yesteryear has made a return, there was one that slipped through the cracks… until now.

Love Hultén out of Sweden has remade the 1970’s iconic Commodore PET 2001 into a gorgeous one-off console. Designed with beautiful woods and bright pops of color, this throwback personal computer is ready to introduce a new generation to old-school gaming. Well, that’s if you can get your hands on one.

The PET De Lux project is craftsmanship at its finest, with a gorgeous walnut casing that holds the display, keypad, cartridge and more. A pop of bright red on the joystick finishes off the bundle nicely as an ode to those popular retro gaming designs.

Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) was first unveiled in 1977, with an iconic angular metal top housing a monochrome display. A built-in cassette player was responsible for loading up one game at a time, along with a handful of productivity apps.

Inside was a 1MHz processor that sported up to 8KB of RAM. It ran the BASIC operating system that was a cornerstone of Commodore systems back then.

By way of honoring the past while also leaning on more modern design cues, Love Hultén has ditched the metal casings for a wooden motif. Made from American walnut, the modern-day equivalent keeps the chiclet-style keyboard and the same cassette storage system (although it’s purely decorative this time). Upgrades include a pair of those gorgeous controllers, which are wireless this time around.

At the heart of the system is a Raspberry Pi 3 that powers an eight-inch color display. While the screen is flat this time around, some interesting trickery is used to make titles look as they originally did. The software is curved ever so slightly to match its old-school tube counterparts. We saw a similar move by Nintendo on the NES and SNES Classic, as gamers could turn on that well-known CRT filter for a more true-to-form experience.

Sadly, the PET De Lux project is simply a one-off build at this time. We’d love to see it come to market in a limited edition run, but at this time there are no such plans. If you’re looking to get into retro gaming, be sure to check out our roundup of some of the best accessories and consoles on the market today to get started.