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The Amiga 500 mini announced

Bullet Club

Member
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THEA500® Mini

Now other classic consoles are just toys!

25 Amiga classics, including Worms, The Chaos Engine, Another World & Simon The Sorcerer all feature on the THEA500® Mini
Continuing the popular line of timeless classic consoles being given a new lease of life, today Retro Games announces the creation of THEA500® Mini, a fully licensed reimagining of the much-loved 16-bit home computer starring a plethora of classic Amiga games.

Due early 2022, THEA500® Mini is a homage to the 1980s heyday of 16-bit personal computing; inspired by the 1987 release of the Amiga 500, which featured a 16/32-bit CPU, 512Kb of RAM and an array of custom chips for producing best-in-class sound and video.

Play one of the included 25 classic Amiga games, selected from a simple to use carousel, including all-time greats Another World, Simon The Sorcerer, The Chaos Engine and Worms. Or side-load your own games via USB stick with full WHDLoad support and an array of options to choose from. Plus, save and resume your game at any time to help you finish those punishingly-difficult classics.

Developed by Retro Games Ltd. and distributed by Koch Media, the THEA500® Mini features the perfect emulation of, not only, the original A500 (OCS) and Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) of future revisions, but also the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) of the A1200.

The THEA500® Mini comes with the original style 2-button mouse and newly engineered 8-button precision gamepad, allowing you to choose your control method. To compliment the on-screen keyboard, you can plug in an external standard PC keyboard for additional functionality.

“In this initial mini version of THEA500®, we have created what we believe gaming fans will love, and will see as the evolution of mini games consoles”, said Paul Andrews, Managing Director at Retro Games.

“Retro Games have developed a truly unique product”, said Debbie Bestwick MBE, CEO at Team 17, “and I’m very excited to have our classic games represented in all their original glory”.

THEA500® Mini will hit the shops in early 2022 with a suggested retail price of GBP£119.99/ EUR€129.99/ USD$139.99/ AUD$199.99

To see the trailer -




THEA500® MINI ANNOUNCED GAMES LIST (12 of 25)

Alien Breed 3D, Another World, ATR: All Terrain Racing, Battle Chess, Cadaver, Kick Off 2, Pinball Dreams, Simon The Sorcerer, Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe, The Chaos Engine, Worms: The Director's Cut, Zool: Ninja Of The ''Nth'' Dimension. Additional games will be announced at a later date.
Included in the box with THEA500® Mini is a 1.8m (6ft) wired USB classic mouse, a 1.8m (6ft) wired precision 8-button gamepad, a USB-A to USB-C power cable (PSU not included) and HDMI cable (both 1.8m (6ft) in length) allowing full compatibility with all modern TVs. Other features include a save game function, selectable 50Hz or 60Hz screen refresh, CRT filter and multiple scaling options. Also upload your own files, games and firmware revisions via USB flash drive (not included).
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Welp, I know a forum that will explode at the news.

I’m mildly interested.
Then again, there’s been many a way to play Amiga games for a while and I never, ever felt the itch to try them, so...

EDIT: woof at the price. That’s a bit too steep for nostalgia.
Also, now that Zool remake makes more sense.
 
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Impotaku

Member
I love the amiga but i see some problems i'm hoping it has more than one version of workbench on the machine as some games only work on certain versions some only work on the older ones & some only on the newer ones. Been able to add in your own games means i could turn that thing into a point & click machine for lucasarts adventure stuff.
 

Bullet Club

Member
The UK preorder page is up on Game.


Hopefully EB will have one up for Australia soon.
 

old-parts

Member
Cool, the box design is really well done too.

The CRT filter briefly shown in the trailer doesn't look so hot, whoever is making this should really check out retroarch and its impressive collection of CRT filters, you want more than one as peoples memory skews what they recall as the look of a CRT.

I know this is super unlikely but given this is likely a linux Arm machine at heart a desktop mode skinned to look like Amgia OS would be neat, and arguably more useful than running an actual Amgia OS desktop given all the linux software available.

But anyway this is definitely a nostalgia trip for me, will be getting one.
 

Gaelyon

Gold Member
OMG ! i so loved my A500 and A1200 back in the days, i'll get that toy day one. The Chaos Engine was so cool, hopefully there'll be all the Bitmap Brothers jewels to download (Gods, Magic Pocket...). :messenger_smiling_hearts:
 

Null Persp

Member
The controller looks like the CD32 one.
Too bad the keyboard is non-functional, I bet they will make another model like they did for the C64.
 

Impotaku

Member
These guys need the Psygnosis back catalogue.
Well it can accept games via usb so that's pretty much anything that's been released in theory so if you can get the images/dump your own you can run them however compatability can be spotty for amiga stuff as there's many models and workbench versions, on the amiga emulators you usually have to tailor each game in a configuration, would be nice though to have a plug n play that does everything without that hassle.
 

Fredrik

Member
Cool!!
But no keyboard and no joystick but a controller? Can’t play most of the games unless you start mapping joy-up on a button and have a keyboard overlay.
 

Impotaku

Member
It says you can plug in external keyboards so all functionality should be retained but that does mean it starts to get a bit less compact once you start plugging in loads of other stuff, with it been usb i'm guessing generic usb joysticks would work too. Hopefully more info comes out as the months go by.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
This is the exciting bit where everyone that’s always gone on about that Moonstone game can now finally play it.

Even though I have an A1200 and also use WinUAE, I’m like a kid in a sweet shop with this announcement.
 
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