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The Amiga 500 mini announced

kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
They should have made it a CD32 instead of a 500. Those fake keys aren't doing it for me.

My Pi400 at least has a functioning keyboard allowing me to play stuff that requires text input.

Not necessarily, the Amiga is an absolute pain in the arse to emulate on some devices. Having it all working in mini form is a god send for me..

With WHDLoad playing Amiga games is not any harder than loading a SNES rom.
 
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RAIDEN1

Member
Sure but I'll wait until there's a full sized replica, it won't add much to my Amiga experience as it is now.
Doubt they'll be doing a full-size replica anytime, soon, maybe 10 years from now, look how long it took just to get this, more than 20 years....The A500/1200/CD32 weren't exactly the bleeding edge of technology in the 90s compared to the competition which meant it took so long to get a mini. I am glad the joypad in this mini looks to be of a better quality than the ORIGINAL CD32 pad, as an early adopter of that system, what surprised me was that whatever cover they had used on top of the D-Pad, was starting to come off, (poor build quality from the get go..)
 
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Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Used A500 prices are mental. Not just the prices its the shitty yellow condition they seem to be in. I know you can retro-bright them but its not the same.
 

Dr.Morris79

Gold Member
Yeah I would :p Used A500s have shot up from 50-80 Euro to 150-350 around here in the last couple of years. I gave away an A2000 with an accelerator card when I moved countries a few years ago because it wasn't worth much, now I'd be looking at €1500 to replace that :/
Holy crap! :O
 

Bullet Club

Member
In Australia, EB are sending a 4GB floppy disk shaped USB stick with pre-orders of the Mini.

The manual and game guides are up on the Retro Games site for the Mini. People will need it for Dragon's Breath.



There's also a bonus game available to download: Citadel. And it looks like more will be added.

 

Impotaku

Member
The price that both the original hardware & the games cost in 2022 i'll take the emulation box thanks. Refuse to pay the retro markup on old hardware long gone are the days of £40 computer bundles finds, a small compact mini that can pretty much play all amiga stuff is far more appealing than having to deal with old hardware & games that have no guarantee of running as magnetic media is over 30+ years old by now.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
People listing them (original hardware) on eBay for 200+ each but they aren’t selling.

I just got 2 A500s off facebook market place for £100.
 

Bullet Club

Member
Those are just the LHA installers - you need original disks for those - they don't contain a disk image.
Oh OK I thought they were the full games due to the size of them.

Funnily enough, the place I got most of mine is WHDownload and they seem to include the games and have everything, so people should Google that instead.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Yep - those are the full games the second place you mention. Just put those on the USB with the mandatory software you need from the official product website and you will be golden.
 

Bullet Club

Member
This guy has just the creepiest voice that never fails to unnerve me every time I hear it.

Honestly, I had unsubscribe from the channel, because I didn't want to hear it anymore....Only the fact that he has an uber fit missus, kept me watching as long as I did. :messenger_grinning_smiling:
He does have an interesting voice. He's done voiceover work in Star Wars movies and other things.

When I first started seeing his videos he had some chick from Walmart in them.

 
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Darak

Member
I wish those machines included an FPGA with a hardware implementation of the original chips, instead of being crappy Linux boxes with an emulator. I would still purchase a maxi version with a full keyboard, but I find little use for what essentially is a Raspberry Pi but much slower, more expensive, and closed.

I wonder why nobody does something similar with the PC. There is no decent PC emulator while x86 compatible SoCs are dirt cheap, and with a small FPGA implementing things like VGA or SB16 you could have something with extremely high compatibility which could easily run anything from early PC/XT games to Doom/Duke3D and Windows 3.1. I think there is a place for such a thing, as old 386/486 prices are extremely high nowadays (and the hardware is prone to failure). It also makes more sense to have such a thing in a small box resembling an early PC tower, compared to a non-working miniature keyboard, IMHO.

Obviously MS-DOS licensing would be an issue, but I think FreeDOS has reached the point when compatibility is essentially 100% (at least for software of that era), and there are also free BIOS replacements available.
 

8BiTw0LF

Banned
I find little use for what essentially is a Raspberry Pi but much slower, more expensive, and closed.
Same thing were said about all the mini consoles, but they gained massive popularity and a community adding to features and better emulation.
SNES Classic is a better emulation box for many systems than an RPi - cause games has been individually optimized for SNESC.

Give the A500 mini a half year and you'll see what the community can do with inferior hardware.
 

Darak

Member
Same thing were said about all the mini consoles, but they gained massive popularity and a community adding to features and better emulation.
SNES Classic is a better emulation box for many systems than an RPi - cause games has been individually optimized for SNESC.

Give the A500 mini a half year and you'll see what the community can do with inferior hardware.

I don't think retro consoles are directly comparable to retro computers, as the target market is different, and so is the brand power. I don't have numbers for the minis and maxis C64 they did before the Amiga, but they obviously are nowhere near the classic SNES/NES (which I'd argue are disgraceful products which sell on brand power alone, but their success can't be denied).

By the way, if a game has to be optimized for a particular emulator, then that's a bad emulator. Games are already optimized for the original hardware and the only way you need to modify them is when the emulator does a bad job.
 

DrCheese

Member
He does have an interesting voice. He's done voiceover work in Star Wars movies and other things.

When I first started seeing his videos he had some chick from Walmart in them.



haha he did. After that his wife started appearing, I took it as that she was jealous and didn't want him hanging about with the woman from Walmart :p
 

8BiTw0LF

Banned
I don't think retro consoles are directly comparable to retro computers, as the target market is different, and so is the brand power. I don't have numbers for the minis and maxis C64 they did before the Amiga, but they obviously are nowhere near the classic SNES/NES (which I'd argue are disgraceful products which sell on brand power alone, but their success can't be denied).
Maybe not in the US, but in EU the Amiga is a selling brand and there's still a huge community based around it. I'm in no doubt we'll see some awesome things for the A500 mini within half a year and beyond.

By the way, if a game has to be optimized for a particular emulator, then that's a bad emulator. Games are already optimized for the original hardware and the only way you need to modify them is when the emulator does a bad job.
You can say that, but Retroarch is based on cores and especially KMFDManic has done some tremendous work on optimizing cores for the mini consoles - so much they (in many cases) perform better than RPi's.
 

Grechy34

Member
I wish those machines included an FPGA with a hardware implementation of the original chips, instead of being crappy Linux boxes with an emulator. I would still purchase a maxi version with a full keyboard, but I find little use for what essentially is a Raspberry Pi but much slower, more expensive, and closed.

I wonder why nobody does something similar with the PC. There is no decent PC emulator while x86 compatible SoCs are dirt cheap, and with a small FPGA implementing things like VGA or SB16 you could have something with extremely high compatibility which could easily run anything from early PC/XT games to Doom/Duke3D and Windows 3.1. I think there is a place for such a thing, as old 386/486 prices are extremely high nowadays (and the hardware is prone to failure). It also makes more sense to have such a thing in a small box resembling an early PC tower, compared to a non-working miniature keyboard, IMHO.

Obviously MS-DOS licensing would be an issue, but I think FreeDOS has reached the point when compatibility is essentially 100% (at least for software of that era), and there are also free BIOS replacements available.

Yeah but I think in that case you're likely better just buying a Mister or even real hardware if you can get your hands on it. I know in Australia these things are actually getting quite expensive as well. I think these mini consoles are more for the collectors and somewhat casual experience. From all the reviews it appears it's actually emulating quite well. I like the fact that this is coming with the actual CD-32 controller as well.
 

pramod

Banned
How well does this thing handle RPGs? The emulators I tried on PC were horrible, most of the time the game crashes whenever I tried to save to disk.
 

Bullet Club

Member
My Amiga Mini has been shipped!

m7HkKf6.gif
 
I wish those machines included an FPGA with a hardware implementation of the original chips, instead of being crappy Linux boxes with an emulator. I would still purchase a maxi version with a full keyboard, but I find little use for what essentially is a Raspberry Pi but much slower, more expensive, and closed.

I wonder why nobody does something similar with the PC. There is no decent PC emulator while x86 compatible SoCs are dirt cheap, and with a small FPGA implementing things like VGA or SB16 you could have something with extremely high compatibility which could easily run anything from early PC/XT games to Doom/Duke3D and Windows 3.1. I think there is a place for such a thing, as old 386/486 prices are extremely high nowadays (and the hardware is prone to failure). It also makes more sense to have such a thing in a small box resembling an early PC tower, compared to a non-working miniature keyboard, IMHO.

Obviously MS-DOS licensing would be an issue, but I think FreeDOS has reached the point when compatibility is essentially 100% (at least for software of that era), and there are also free BIOS replacements available.

The weeCee is an example of such a thing, using an embedded x86. It only falls short of Win98 era 3d hardware acceleration.

 

RAIDEN1

Member
When it comes to the point and click games, from the 90s it isn't worth getting them on the mini as far superior versions are out there.....ie Beneath a Steel Sky, Monkey Island, Simon the Sorcerer..
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
How well does this thing handle RPGs? The emulators I tried on PC were horrible, most of the time the game crashes whenever I tried to save to disk.
Well it has save states as opposed to trying to save to an emulated floppy but nobody will know until they get the machines and try one out.
 

p_xavier

Authorized Fister
The yellow tint is a deal breaker for me and I havenearly all the mini consoles from all regions.
 

TLZ

Banned
I want to get this but I keep backing out because of not many interesting games. The last video I checked someone adding 25 more and most of them were point and click and tbh I don't have much interest in them.

Are there many good platformers or action games for this that I can add, to justify the purchase?
 
This guy has just the creepiest voice that never fails to unnerve me every time I hear it.

Honestly, I had unsubscribe from the channel, because I didn't want to hear it anymore....Only the fact that he has an uber fit missus, kept me watching as long as I did. :messenger_grinning_smiling:

What? He's awesome.

He was also in Episode 1
 

Mephisto40

Member
I want to get this but I keep backing out because of not many interesting games. The last video I checked someone adding 25 more and most of them were point and click and tbh I don't have much interest in them.

Are there many good platformers or action games for this that I can add, to justify the purchase?
Turrican 2, basically the best platformer from that gen
Syndicate
Superfrog
Rodland
Moonstone
Ruff 'n' Tumble
Frontier Elite 2, if you like space games
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I want to get this but I keep backing out because of not many interesting games. The last video I checked someone adding 25 more and most of them were point and click and tbh I don't have much interest in them.

Are there many good platformers or action games for this that I can add, to justify the purchase?
Harlequin
Rainbow Islands
Leander
Wolfchild
Addams Family
Fire and Ice
Gods
Rodland.
 
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