The Magic Desk revival is here in the form of Marina64—a new 1MB banked ROM cartridge for the Commodore 64, Commodore 128, and SX-64. It might look unassuming at first glance, but this modern reimagining is rooted in a quirky piece of Commodore history: the Magic Desk cartridge from 1983.
Back then, Magic Desk was Commodore’s early attempt at a graphical desktop environment. And yes, it actually featured a virtual desk. Users could interact with a file cabinet file manager, a calculator, and—most infamously—a typewriter-inspired word processor. This oddball editor let you “type” across a virtual page that scrolled horizontally, squeezing 80-character documents into a 40-column world. Charming? Yes. Practical? Not so much.
While Magic Desk didn’t exactly light the computing world on fire—it was quickly eclipsed by GEOS—it left behind an interesting hardware legacy. And that’s where Marina64 steps in. It builds on the original concept, using that foundation to deliver a modern banked ROM solution with expanded possibilities for vintage computing fans. It’s a Magic Desk revival that respects the past while nudging it into the present.
For the full scoop and technical breakdown, the Tynemouth Sofware Blog has all the details.
