Rolls-Royce Black Badge Ghost Gamer: 8-Bit Bespoke Luxury
“The unique privilege of working within Rolls-Royce Bespoke Design is the extraordinary breadth of ideas we’re asked to bring to life. This brief was fascinating. Over the course of a month, we immersed ourselves in the 8-bit aesthetic that defined late 70s and early 80s gaming – from the games themselves and archive imagery of arcade halls, to original promotional and cabinet artwork. As well as capturing the distinctive colour palette, mood and atmosphere of this rich source material, we wanted the client to feel that the motor car itself was an immersive experience – and that every time they stepped inside, it would recreate the same thrill they felt when they pressed ‘start’ on an arcade machine for the very first time.” Joshua McCandless, Bespoke Designer, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars
Rolls-Royce unveils the Black Badge Ghost Gamer, a Bespoke commission inspired by the 8-bit universe of vintage video games. Designers created this nostalgic luxury motor car for a client with a deep passion for early arcade culture, weaving intricately crafted references to the dawn of gaming into every surface. They coded the Bespoke Rolls-Royce with details including a hand-painted 'Cheeky Alien' exterior Coachline motif, 'Player One' seat embroidery, a 'Pixel Blaster' Starlight Headliner, a unique 'Laser Base' Illuminated Fascia and a hidden cache of joystick-era Easter eggs, so each discovery turns the motor car itself into a stunningly crafted game.
Insert Coin signals a new generation of collectables, and Black Badge Ghost Gamer leads it as the first-ever Bespoke Rolls-Royce commission to take its main inspiration from arcade gaming culture, a rapidly emerging space in the contemporary collectables landscape. Early video games, vintage consoles and early media formats now define this market, and several Rolls-Royce clients actively engage with it. Their enthusiasm rises not only from accelerating values but also from a nostalgic personal connection and a desire to preserve the artefacts of the late 1970s and 1980s.
This mindset inspired the Black Badge Ghost Gamer, a motor car that reimagines the 8-bit aesthetics of vintage video games through stunningly immersive Bespoke features. The marque’s designers arranged each detail so that discovering every element, from bold and expansive motifs to secrets the team hides until discovery, becomes an immersive luxury game in its own right.
The Bespoke exterior paint for Black Badge Ghost Gamer uses a striking two-tone finish, with the main body in Salamanca Blue and the upper body in deep-shimmer Crystal over Diamond Black. This theme echoes the super-metallic, neon-lit aesthetic of classic arcade hardware. Rolls-Royce designers worked closely with the client to develop a unique motif to codify the commission. Nicknamed the 'Cheeky Alien', it appears as a hand-painted green Coachline motif beside a pink 8-bit explosion design on one side of the motor car, and yellow and blue on the other. The artists created it from 89 individual 'pixels', each measuring just 3mm by 3mm, which recall the bitmapped graphics of early video games. The retro-futurist theme continues with the Illuminated Pantheon Grille, while black brake callipers complement the 22” seven-spoke forged Black Badge wheels.
Inside, the Black and Casden Tan interior suite of Black Badge Ghost Gamer forms a richly layered and tactile homage to the early digital age, and it is where the game truly begins. Craftspeople designed and crafted each detail to reward exploration, echoing the logic and visual language of a late 1970s video game arcade. The seats feature Bespoke embroideries, with 'Player 1' and 'Player 2' in the front and 'Player 3' and 'Player 4' in the rear, rendered in an 8-bit-style font. The stitching uses colours that take inspiration from the electric, flickering hues displayed on vintage arcade monitors, contrasted with block-colour 'Cheeky Alien' embroideries on each headrest. Like the Coachline motifs, the artwork uses individual 'pixels', 89 in total per design, to create a richly tactile graphic.
Designers finish the area between the rear seats, named the Waterfall, in Black Badge Technical Fibre and embellish it with another tribute to early gaming iconography. Two inlaid stainless steel 'flying saucer' spaceships hover above a hand-painted lunar scene with a starscape backdrop, a design inspired by the artwork on early arcade game cabinets. Craftspeople invested more than two weeks of intensive development to craft this remarkable battle scene, refining multiple paint iterations to create the final, period-perfect hues. They brought the final artwork to life using a combination of Black and Mandarin paint: a Black background, Mandarin highlights and blended mid-tones created by mixing the two. Artisans then applied the design entirely by hand using a mix of traditional brushwork, a specialised sponge technique that adds texture and depth, and subtle blending with an airbrush.
To add extra celestial intrigue, the team introduces a subtle silver sparkle into the lacquer of all the Technical Fibre surfaces. Some of these surfaces also conceal hidden Easter eggs: the rear picnic table carries a metal 'Cheeky Alien' inlay on the upper surface, and engravers repeat the 8-bit motif on the hidden side of the front black chrome 'eyeball' air vent.
Every hallmark Rolls-Royce illumination appears in a fresh form for this commission, and each one pays tribute to the visual cues of early gaming. Designers subtly rework the Illuminated Fascia, a feature that debuted on Ghost, so it evokes the 'Laser Base' backdrops of many early games. It includes a gunship pattern made from 85 individual stars, and the constellations shift so the ship appears to surge through the starfield. Above, Black Badge Ghost Gamer carries a 'Pixel Blaster' Starlight Headliner. A formation of 80 bitmapped battlecruisers spans the canopy. Craftspeople create each one by hand, using fibre-optic lights. Engineers reprogramme the marque’s signature Shooting Star function to simulate laser fire, and beams of light pulse from the ships across the ceiling, adding nostalgic drama to the night sky.
The commission concludes with Bespoke Illuminated Treadplates, which become visible when the doors open. Designers engrave them in the same 8-bit graphic lettering as the seat embroidery, and they display classic arcade-game prompts: 'PRESS START', 'LOADING…', 'LEVEL UP' and 'INSERT COIN'. Rolls-Royce delivers this commission to a tech entrepreneur, and it shows how Black Badge responds to the passions, tastes and cultural codes of a new generation of luxury car collectors who dare to play differently.
