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The Amiga 500 mini announced

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Playing Cannon Fodder right now and It's still a masterpiece after all these years.

Shame that the IP is now owned by Codemasters and the third one is a piece of shit game. No wonder developed by a russian no name developer with no involevement from Jon Hare.
See how many mission you can keep Jools and Jops alive for.
 

AmigaHobo

Neo Member
My biggest gripe so far is the non-compatibility with the Speedlink Competition Pro joystick. That joystick is to the Amiga what peanutbutter is to jelly. The fact that it doesn't work properly is hopefully just an oversight that will be fixed soon, or I'm gonna have to go in and rewire the buttons, which is ridiculous when it would be so easy to just remap in software instead.

I haven't really tested it extensively, but it boots everything I've tried and runs seemingly beautiful. It's been too long since I actually played any real Amiga games to be able to tell if there is an input lag with games like Badlands and Speedball 2, but they did feel a bit sluggish.

Hopefully these are all teething problems that will go away with later updates.

Just found this, I don't know if it will solve the problem, but the description addresses the issues I just posted about earlier.


I mean, this was out April 1st so it shouldn't be hard to just release a firmware patch for the A500 mini that does the same thing.
 

AmigaHobo

Neo Member


There is always the option of re-mapping the buttons manually for each game while we wait for a firmware update. However, this only works for the USB games, a firmware patch that remaps the defaults would fix everything.
 

8BiTw0LF

Banned



Watch Out Reaction GIF by Music Choice
 

AmigaHobo

Neo Member


Whoa!! I love this!

Oh My Love GIF by WWE


So awesome how quickly new stuff is coming out for this console. I have another 6 weeks or so to wait for new firmware that will fix the issue before I give the mini away to my Amiga loving, though computer illiterate brother, as a surprise for his birthday, and I need it to not be too complicated. It looks like it comes with a nice little launcher that he would easily be able to use though, so I will definitely test it!

Great mod! Thx!
 
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Thanati

Member
Playing Cannon Fodder right now and It's still a masterpiece after all these years.

Shame that the IP is now owned by Codemasters and the third one is a piece of shit game. No wonder developed by a russian no name developer with no involevement from Jon Hare.
Agreed. I was playing it with my sons the other day and not only did I still love it but he got completely into it.

Amazing title!
 

Krathoon

Member
Does the A500 mini load the games fast? This FS-UAE take forever to load. I will have to find out how to disable the floppy drive sounds. They are starting to get annoying.
 

8BiTw0LF

Banned
Does the A500 mini load the games fast? This FS-UAE take forever to load. I will have to find out how to disable the floppy drive sounds. They are starting to get annoying.
Loads faster than RPi4 - and I think that had the fastest loading before A500mini released.
 
Don't know why Cannon Fodder always crashes after Mission 21.

Heard that there's a Bug If you have too many soldiers alive. I did it on purpose to restart the missions to finish the game with Jools Jops and Stoo. Fuck 😡😤
 
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8BiTw0LF

Banned
Don't know why Cannon Fodder always crashes after Mission 21.

Heard that there's a Bug If you have too many soldiers alive. I did it on purpose to restart the missions to finish the game with Jools Jops and Stoo. Fuck 😡😤
The Fairlight version works without crashing. Can't wait to to change and add all the superior versions of these games to the carousel. So close now.
 

AmigaHobo

Neo Member
I've spent the past few weekends with the A500 Mini now, it took me a while to get it to where I need it to be, but I got it there, and now I absolutely love it.

I'm setting this up for my brother, who is not a tinkerer to say the least, so it needs to work pretty much flawlessly. I also need it to work with two joysticks (Speedlink Competition Pro) and have a keyboard. When I first got this thing back in April nothing was working right because of the default joystick mappings that I've mentioned earlier in this thread. There was a way to fix that on a per game basis, but after it got announced that it would be patched, I decided to wait for that. The patch works great, and does exactly as advertised, the joysticks are working now, all though they've mapped the other buttons on the joystick a little strange. Like the second (right) button on the competition pro doesn't work, it should have been Fire1 (for a 1 button joystick) or Fire2, but instead it does nothing now, and Fire2 is assigned to one of the other buttons. This doesn't seem to cause any practical issues, but lefties might have an issue with it. I don't understand why they couldn't include a system default mapping tool for every device, like the mapping tool they have for the gamepad, only for other devices as well, and as a system default, not just per game. In any case, the joysticks are working properly now.

First thing I did was buy a powered USB hub and a keyboard, it doesn't need to be powered but I was hoping to power the Mini from the hub, but that just doesn't work even though they're all charging ports. So I bought an adapter, but I got a cheap one, and that produced a curious bug where the Mini would power up, but after having shut down it would not power back up until I had disconnected the USB-C, and plugged it back in. I used it like that until I tried a better adapter I had laying around (an old, but original samsung phone charger) and it worked great after that, so get a decent adapter, don't go super cheap.

The keyboard and everything else I plugged into the hub worked perfectly, but the gamepad would sometimes compete with the joysticks for priority when all three were plugged in. If I started a 2p game there would only be one joystick in addition to the gamepad to pick as controller, if one player picked the joystick, only the pad was left for the other player. You can set up the controllers you want to use in the game settings, and even if you specify that you want 2 joysticks, if all three devices are connected to the system it might see the gamepad as a joystick, and in the game you'll only have one joystick and the gamepad to choose from. The system doesn't support loading 3 different controllers, you can only have two, and it only happens with joysticks and gamepad, never the mouse and keyboard. I know that you can press Home+X on the gamepad to pass priority to the next device, but that only works if there is one other joystick plugged in. With two joysticks this only swaps one joystick for the next, you're still left with the gamepad and a joystick as controllers instead of two joysticks. To fix this you have to unplug the gamepad altogether.

I haven't tested this extensively, but I went at it for a good long while, and sometimes I was able to reset the priority by disconnecting the gamepad and the hub itself from the Mini, then reconnecting the hub and the pad. However, it didn't always work, and in the end I found it was easier to just have the gamepad disconnected when playing 2p games with two joysticks. The order in which devices are plugged in seems to matter, or possibly which port in the USB hub they're plugged in to. It probably has to do with how the Mini discovers the different USB devices. I assume this is why the gamepad doesn't necessarily take over one of the joysticks, but if you use the gamepad to navigate the menus and start the game it will always take priority over the joysticks (or one of them).

The keyboard works great for navigating the menus however, so you don't need the gamepad anyway, the keyboard has all the necessary buttons. Mouse+Keyboard+Joystick works well, the only thing I've found the gamepad useful for is having the "Home" button available for jumping back to the menu carousel if something crashes or hangs. You can quit most games by pressing either F10, 'Home' or * on the keyboard, but on some games you can't. For some games the only way to quit back to the menu is pushing "Home" on the gamepad, even if you have this button on the keyboard, some games will only accept a "Home" press from the gamepad (or a joystick I assume, if the joystick had a "home" button). When this happens, and the gamepad isn't connected you need to press the power button (not hold it) on the back of the Mini, this will bring it back to the menu carousel.

I tried the aminimiga Amiberry softmod (linked earlier in this thread), and at first I really liked this mod. It comes preloaded with almost the whole WHDLoad Games package with a library of uncompressed WHDLoad games as well as Demos. It gives full control over which devices to use, no priority issues, and I could adjust the clock speed of the cpu for games that ran way too fast, which turned out to be many. One problem I soon encountered was that very few games would run correctly out of the gate. After a while the amount of tinkering and setup I had to do to make each game work started to become a lot. WB (Workbench) needs to use the full speed that the cpu can deliver, and having to switch back and forth between the settings while going in and out of games got very tedious. I was not able to save and load different configurations either for some reason, that might have helped a lot because then you can easily switch between different settings, but I could never get it to work, not sure why.

I messed around with a ton of games, but many just wouldn't run right, either they ran too fast (even after having set the cpu to 7 MHz), or they had weird graphical glitches that just wouldn't go away no matter how much I tinkered with the settings. Some games, like 'North and South' and 'Defender of the Crown' have minigames in them that you need to play, and even if I could get the game itself to run correctly, the mini games would run away at breakneck pace. It was a mess, and I quickly got swamped with issues, so I went back to trying to use the default system launcher and compressed WHDLoad files. To my surprise almost every game I tried worked great with no glitches and running at the correct speed right out of the box, minigames and everything. The few exceptions were some games that still ran way too fast, but that had an easy fix, just add the line 'cpu_speed=real' to the .uae file. This, of couse, has to be done on a separate computer, but thankfully I only ran into this issue for a very few handful of games (Firepower, Defender of the Crown, F18 Intercepter, Hostages and a few others). Most games just came up flawlessly, and I tested a lot of them. Compared to the amount of issues I had in WB, this was tiny.

I had not reinstalled the WHDLoad package from retrogrames, but simply kept the one that came with the Amiberry WB, it comes with a much larger and more updated XML database. This is a newer package, and though unofficial, it seems to work much better. I didn't want to go back and test the old package against the new one just to see the difference, the system was finally working great! Also, I kept the demos that came with the aminimiga download, just compressed the folders to make them work in the system launcher. They're also available as separate downloads of course, like all the rest of the WHDLoad package.

So, to summarize, aminimiga WB is great if you want tools do to more with the system like browse, open or edit files, or load games and programs in ADF format, not so much if you want an out-of-the-box amiga gaming system just using WHDLoad (but definitely do get the 'unofficial' newer WHDLoad package with the updated XML database in any case). A USB hub with all your devices plugged in works great, but beware the gamepad vs joystick priority issues when using 2 joysticks. This is something that should easily be patched out in a later update, so hopefully that gets done. With the new WHDLoad package almost every game runs perfectly, with a few exceptions that need a 'cpu_speed=real' line added to the .uae config file, and since this can only be done by taking the USB stick out of the Mini and plugging it into and editing it on a different computer, it can be a bit of a hassle. In addition, whenever you enter the game settings, that .uae file gets overwritten, so you have to do all your settings before editing the .uae file, and then never go back to game settings, or else you have to do it all over again. So yeah, it's a hassle, and thankfully it doesn't apply to a lot of games, but this issue could also easily be patched out by simply adding a 'CPU Speed Real' check box in the game settings menu so that the system keeps that line in the .uae file.

Hopefully we'll get those minor issues fixed, and at that point I'll have nothing else on my wish list for this system, it works and it works great! Now this will go back in its original box to be given away as a birthday present and bring countless hours of childhood joy!
 

Mephisto40

Member
I don't get why these emulators have to have authentic loading. Surely, they can make the games load faster from floppy.
FS-UAE has a disk speed option which you can turn up to make the games load faster, you can set it to 2x, 4x 8x, turbo etc

It means you can run games from .adf disk files and they load almost instantly, it's best not to use the turbo disk speed option though as some games don't like it

Once the games loaded you can also just save a state and load it from the saved state every time you want to play it after that

I've done this with it came from the desert for instance, so I can just load the escape from hospital mini game and play it whenever i like without having to play through the game at all
 
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Krathoon

Member
FS-UAE has a disk speed option which you can turn up to make the games load faster, you can set it to 2x, 4x 8x, turbo etc

It means you can run games from .adf disk files and they load almost instantly, it's best not to use the turbo disk speed option though as some games don't like it

Once the games loaded you can also just save a state and load it from the saved state every time you want to play it after that

I've done this with it came from the desert for instance, so I can just load the escape from hospital mini game and play it whenever i like without having to play through the game at all
Ok. I will have to dig around in the settings.
 

Mephisto40

Member
It looks like there were Hero Quest games on the Amiga. Kinda interesting. Automated Hero Quest.
Hero Quest on the Amiga was a great game, it's basically just the board game but played on a computer, you can even play it multiplayer

Be warned though, it's a tough game, the first mission is designed to be one of the hardest in the game, but once you get through that first mission it becomes noticeably easier, weird design choice
 
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Krathoon

Member
I notice the sequel was only on the Amiga.
It does seem like the music is better in the Amiga Hero Quest games.
Does the FS-UAE save games to the game floppy or do you have to use another floppy? Not totally certain how that works.
 
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Mephisto40

Member
I notice the sequel was only on the Amiga.
It does seem like the music is better in the Amiga Hero Quest games.
Does the FS-UAE save games to the game floppy or do you have to use another floppy? Not totally certain how that works.
It saves the state within the emulator, it doesn't write to the disks, however you can still save to disk if the game supports it
 
Slightly off topic... Because I can't make thread topics due to my lack of privileges... But with single board computers like the Radxa, Latte and Raspberry becoming increasingly more widespread and cheap, do you think we'll ever get any enterprising companies coming along and releasing their own "personal computer" using the aforementioned parts?

I'm thinking of all these occasions where a Chinese manufacturer has released a "retro handheld"... Could we see a similar wave where we see companies release their own hardware computers that have their own distinct ecosystems?

I'm just thinking of the Raspberry Pi 400...

Couldn't a company release a "personal computer" that also acts as a "console" in this day and age?
 

Krathoon

Member
Well, I got it in the mail. I have not hooked it up yet.
I guess I will have to check into how to update it.
 

Krathoon

Member
The gamepad works for a few seconds and it stops working.
I tried one of my old Buffalo gamepads and it works fine.
So, I guess I need a replacement.
I am talking to Amazon now.

I already upgraded it. It will mess around with it before I get the replacement.
I returned it better than I got it.
 
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akimbo009

Gold Member
Just got mine. It's awesome and recalls so many memories.

I saw some comments on WB - what's the right way to load it onto the system. Also, looking for more RPGs.. let's share a few..

Lots of bards tale and dungeon master here - but folks for a few others? Off the beaten path or late gen stuff which really benefits from the improved hardware we now have...
 

Bullet Club

Member






Maria Renard's Revenge is an Amiga Castlevania fan game developed by Domkid using the Scorpion Engine.

You play as Maria Renard, she is a young vampire huntress, daughter of distant kinship with the House of Belmont, who has to traverse through dangerous landscapes and fight many monsters, while defending herself with the use of a bird that protects her from harm...

Beta 0.5 Version

System requirements

- Amiga 1200 or Amiga CD32 console with 1Mo FastRam
- The A500 Mini

vwNJC4p.png


DeUyBwu.png


UdFENv2.png


 

Havoc2049

Member
Just got mine. It's awesome and recalls so many memories.

I saw some comments on WB - what's the right way to load it onto the system. Also, looking for more RPGs.. let's share a few..

Lots of bards tale and dungeon master here - but folks for a few others? Off the beaten path or late gen stuff which really benefits from the improved hardware we now have...

Not sure of these RPGs have WHD versions:

Crystals of Arborea & The Ishar Trilogy - First person tile based open world RPGs. World maps available online so you don't have to map it out.
Amberstar and Ambermoon - Open world RPG with 2D over world and first person town and dungeons. Unique combat system.
Legends of Valor - Free roaming open world first person RPG. Elder Scrolls before Elder Scrolls.
Hired Guns - 1-4 player first person sci-fi dungeon crawler by DMA Design (became Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis. Had tons of good times with my friend, hunched around his Amiga playing Hired Guns.
Black Crypt - First person dungeon crawler by Raven Software and published by Electronic Arts. Raven Software's first game, before becoming famous in the the FPS genre.
Captive & Liberation: Captive II (CD32 Version) - First Person tile based sci-fi dungeon crawlers.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Not sure of these RPGs have WHD versions:

Crystals of Arborea & The Ishar Trilogy - First person tile based open world RPGs. World maps available online so you don't have to map it out.
Amberstar and Ambermoon - Open world RPG with 2D over world and first person town and dungeons. Unique combat system.
Legends of Valor - Free roaming open world first person RPG. Elder Scrolls before Elder Scrolls.
Hired Guns - 1-4 player first person sci-fi dungeon crawler by DMA Design (became Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis. Had tons of good times with my friend, hunched around his Amiga playing Hired Guns.
Black Crypt - First person dungeon crawler by Raven Software and published by Electronic Arts. Raven Software's first game, before becoming famous in the the FPS genre.
Captive & Liberation: Captive II (CD32 Version) - First Person tile based sci-fi dungeon crawlers.

Liberation was one UGLY game...not exactly the finest showcase of Commodore's answer to the Sega CD
 

8BiTw0LF

Banned
KMFDManic has begun doing his thing on the A500 mini! He's probably the biggest contributor to the NES/SNES/PSX/SMD mini community and has done some amazing stuff with optimizing cores for the mini consoles.

 
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pramod

Banned
Not sure of these RPGs have WHD versions:

Crystals of Arborea & The Ishar Trilogy - First person tile based open world RPGs. World maps available online so you don't have to map it out.
Amberstar and Ambermoon - Open world RPG with 2D over world and first person town and dungeons. Unique combat system.
Legends of Valor - Free roaming open world first person RPG. Elder Scrolls before Elder Scrolls.
Hired Guns - 1-4 player first person sci-fi dungeon crawler by DMA Design (became Rockstar North) and published by Psygnosis. Had tons of good times with my friend, hunched around his Amiga playing Hired Guns.
Black Crypt - First person dungeon crawler by Raven Software and published by Electronic Arts. Raven Software's first game, before becoming famous in the the FPS genre.
Captive & Liberation: Captive II (CD32 Version) - First Person tile based sci-fi dungeon crawlers.


Also just want to mention that most multiplatform RPGs that came out during that era, ie early 90s, probably all ran best on the Amiga with enhanced sound and graphics. This includes Dungeon Master, the SSI D&D games, Faery Tale Adventure, Might and Magic, etc etc
 
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