It’s the year of our Lord 2026 and indie creator Clyde Shaffer has successfully crowdfunded the GameTank, a new 8-bit video game console.
After running crowdfunding for GameTank over the past month or so, the retro console has smashed its goal of $30,000 and is still available to pre-order for $349.99.
The GameTank is built on a modern version of Western Design Center’s popular 6502 microprocessor. While there are other retro fantasy consoles like Pico-8 and TIC-80, the Game Tank is made to be an actual physical game console first and an emulator second.
Here’s a rundown on the new console, plus a trailer:
GameTank is a new video game console based on WDC’s modern version of the venerable 6502 microprocessor. Similar in spirit to fantasy consoles like the Pico-8 or TIC-80, the GameTank is set apart by its implementation as a physical hardware device first, and an emulator second. Its custom framebuffer-based graphics architecture allows it to produce smoother and more fluid animations than are typical of 8-bit hardware. Additionally, the audio system is highly configurable, using a second 6502 as a dedicated sound coprocessor.
This system uses big chunky cartridges and outputs NTSC composite video from an RCA jack, recalling the tactile experience of early 90’s game consoles. Given its unique hardware design, it is not built to play games from any other platform but rather is an ecosystem of its own. Besides the processors, the system is built out of basic logic and RAM chips instead of an FPGA or microcontroller. In other words, this isn’t just another emulator—it’s an entirely new breed of hardware for the next generation of 8-bit games.
Retro Roots, New Branches
In most consoles of the 8-bit era, a “sprite” refers to a hardware feature with which an image could be placed in the outgoing video signal at a chosen location. These images would have a small fixed size, and there’d be a limited number of sprites that could be drawn per horizontal line. They would be overlaid onto a “tile map” which constructs a background out of image blocks placed on a grid. The grid could be shifted as a whole to create a scrolling effect, but individual tiles in the grid would be locked to the grid lines.
The graphics hardware inside the GameTank differs significantly from the above description. Instead of fixed-function tiles and sprites, a region of memory termed a “framebuffer” contains data for individual pixels of the on-screen image. This is paired with a larger store of off-screen memory “Sprite RAM” and a blitter circuit, which is dedicated to rapid copy of bytes from Sprite RAM to the framebuffer. the GameTank is designed with a generous amount of Sprite RAM to support large sprite sheets, and because the blitter can copy arbitrarily-sized regions of data, these sprite sheets can be densely packed.
Features & Specifications
- CPU: WDC’s W65C02S clocked at 3.5 MHz
- Video: 128×128 framebuffer, some rows on top and bottom hidden by most TVs
- Graphics acceleration: Hardware-accelerated byte copy, also known as a “Blitter”, can transfer images to the framebuffer on every clock cycle at 3.5 MHz
- Graphics RAM: 512 KB used as source data for blitter
- General-purpose RAM: 32 KB banked in 8 KB sections
- Audio: W65C02S at 14 MHz with 4KB RAM, default 14 kHz sample rate
- Controller: D-Pad + “A” “B” “C” and “Start” buttons, 2x ports
- Cartridge: Custom 36-pin 0.1-inch pitch format, standard board contains 2 MB of flash memory
- Expansion port: 26-pin rear expansion port exposing 12 bits of GPIO and other system signals
