To get some retro-feeling I connected an 8x8 LED matrix to an Arduino Duemilanove and converted the original C-64 character ROM into HEX-data. After modyfing/extending the scrolling text example from Arduino Playground - DirectDriveLEDMatrix I got the following result:
Commodore 64 scrolling text messages on an Arduino Duemilanove - YouTube
Code, schematic and instructions can be found on my project page at http://sites.google.com/site/ghoelzl/arduino/c64scroll.
Have fun! 