Spy Kombat III brings new secret agent action to the Commodore 64

There’s a special kind of thrill in seeing a brand-new Commodore 64 game in 2026 and realising it isn’t just trading on nostalgia, but actually trying to bottle that old, frantic magic properly. Spy Kombat III looks like that sort of game. Not a wink-and-nudge “remember the 8-bit days?” project, but something much more endearing: a sincere, slightly scrappy, full-blooded C64 action game that seems to understand exactly why people still love this machine in the first place. From the footage shown so far, it has that unmistakable old-school pulse about it, the kind of game that starts off looking simple enough and then, within moments, has you hunched forward and muttering at the screen because things have become unexpectedly serious. That’s always a good sign. This time you’re back in the shoes of secret agent Shancky, who has the thoroughly inconvenient task of stopping Colonel Zenfrox and his army of bots. It’s gloriously daft, naturally, but in exactly the right way. The best old action games were often built on that sort of straight-faced silliness, where the plot was just enough to give the chaos a bit of flavour and send you charging into danger with purpose. Spy Kombat III seems to understand that perfectly. It isn’t bogged down in over-explaining itself. It just throws you into the mission, points you at the trouble, and lets the game do the talking. There’s something wonderfully refreshing about that.

In an age where even the smallest indie title can sometimes feel obliged to explain itself for half an hour before it lets you press fire, a game like this feels positively rebellious. What makes it especially appealing is the way it leans into the simple pleasures that made so many old budget blasters and arcade-style C64 games so hard to put down. You’re collecting discs filled with information, raiding buildings for cash, grabbing weapon magazines, chasing score, and trying to stay alive long enough to make the whole thing matter. That might sound basic on paper, but this is exactly where these games live or die. The real trick is in whether the action creates that lovely feeling of mounting pressure, where every pickup feels slightly risky, every move feels a little greedy, and every mistake feels like the kind you absolutely swear you won’t make again on the next go. From what’s been shown so far, Spy Kombat III looks as though it understands that tension rather well. It doesn’t just want you to survive; it wants you to keep pushing your luck, and that’s the secret ingredient in any decent score-chaser.

That’s the thing that gives the game its charm. It feels like it wants to be played in that wonderfully old-fashioned way where you’re not drifting through it for spectacle, but really getting stuck into it, learning its rhythms, figuring out better routes, grabbing more points, lasting a bit longer, and telling yourself “just one more go” until your entire evening has quietly disappeared. Those are the games that stay with people. Not because they’re enormous or flashy, but because they get their hooks into your competitive side. The Commodore 64 was full of titles like that, games that could look modest at first glance but then absolutely consume you once you started understanding how to play them properly. Spy Kombat III gives off that same sort of energy, and that’s probably the nicest compliment you can pay a new C64 release. There’s also something deeply likable about how personal it all feels. This doesn’t come across like a sterile retro exercise assembled by committee. It feels handmade, enthusiastic, and rooted in genuine affection for the machine. You can sense that somebody wanted this to exist because they love C64 games, love this style of action, and love the idea that there is still room for one more ridiculous secret-agent mission on ageing hardware that refuses to die. That warmth matters. A game doesn’t need to be a technical miracle to win people over if it has character, pace, and heart, and Spy Kombat III looks like it has all three. In some ways, its very rough-edged sincerity is part of the appeal. It feels like something from the living C64 scene rather than something dressed up to impersonate it.

That’s why the game feels so much more charming than a lot of modern retro-styled projects. It doesn’t seem embarrassed by its own pulpy setup or by the straightforward pleasures of shooting, collecting, scoring, and surviving. It embraces all of that with the kind of cheerful conviction that defined so many beloved 8-bit games. It’s easy to imagine stumbling across something like this in the late eighties on a market stall or in the pages of a newsagent magazine and taking a chance on it purely because the premise sounded exciting and the screenshots looked lively. And then, a few hours later, discovering you were far more invested in it than expected. That old sense of discovery is very hard to fake, but Spy Kombat III seems to come by it honestly. At the moment, of course, this is still very much a preview story rather than a final verdict, because the game remains in pre-order rather than full release. In a funny way, that only adds to the old-school atmosphere. There’s something incredibly fitting about seeing a promising C64 title hovering just out of reach, close enough to get excited about but not quite in your hands yet. That anticipation used to be half the fun. You’d read about a game, stare at the screenshots, imagine how it would play, and build the whole thing up in your mind before the tape or disk ever arrived. Spy Kombat III has a bit of that energy about it now. It feels close, tangible, and very real, but there’s still that little wait before players can properly get stuck in and see whether it delivers over the long haul.

Even so, what’s visible already is enough to make it easy to root for. The game looks energetic, honest, and pleasingly old-fashioned in the best possible sense. It isn’t trying to reinvent the C64 action game or turn itself into some grand statement about retro design. It just seems to want to be a good one, and there’s a lot to be said for that. Sometimes the most lovable Commodore 64 games are the ones that know exactly what they are and get on with it. Spy Kombat III looks like it belongs firmly in that tradition. It has a daft but enjoyable setup, a healthy-looking focus on points and pressure, and that all-important sense that somebody made it because they genuinely care about the machine and the kind of joy it still delivers. If the final release keeps that pressure high, makes the score-chasing rewarding, and delivers the sort of action that nags away at you long after you’ve switched off, then Spy Kombat III could turn out to be exactly the kind of modern C64 release fans love to discover: not a museum piece, not a novelty, but a proper little game with proper little obsessions built into it. And really, that’s the dream, isn’t it? Not just to remind you of the old days, but to make it feel, for half an hour or an entire lost evening, like they never went away at all.

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