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The Amiga 500 mini announced

Alebrije

Member
Scalpers

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kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
It's nice but not as nice as Famicom or PC Engine mini iterations.

When I emulate Amiga on my Pi 400 I have at least a working keyboard built in.
 

Nickolaidas

Banned
Why are they shipping it with a controller instead of joystick?
Nobody played with a controller on A500. Should’ve made a Tac-2 replica.
Probably so that you can be ready to play CD32 games. There were a few Amiga 500 games that supported a controller too, mainly those who were CD32 ports, or got ported to consoles, like Leander, WolfChild and LionHeart.

I wonder how easy it is to emulate a hard drive in order to avoid virtual disk swapping. I never managed it on WinUAE.
 

T-Cake

Member
Dayum, that's some pure nostalgia. I'm not sure I would ever revisit Amiga though. I have such fantastic memories of it and I'm not sure the games from then would have the same impression on me nowadays. It's why I've never been particularly interested in Amiga emulation on Windows. Never say never though.
 

Patrick S.

Banned
Probably so that you can be ready to play CD32 games. There were a few Amiga 500 games that supported a controller too, mainly those who were CD32 ports, or got ported to consoles, like Leander, WolfChild and LionHeart.

I wonder how easy it is to emulate a hard drive in order to avoid virtual disk swapping. I never managed it on WinUAE.
Desert Strike even had support for more than two buttons, IIRC.
 

Lupin3

Targeting terrorists with a D-Pad
Nice. May be the first mini I'm actually considering buying. Went straight to Amiga 500 and 1200 from NES. Sweet childhood memories!
 
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Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
What's, umm .... *cough* (looks to his right, speaks in a low, embarrassed voice) what's WHDload support?

And you see of course some kind people have already gone to the hassle of WHDLoading every Amiga game in existence. So it’s a case of sticking them on a SD card or running the actual ADFs if needs be. I’m sure it’ll have extra drive support like WinUAE.
 
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Agent X

Member
That's a very good bunch of games that they've announced for TheA500 Mini, and they haven't even revealed the full list yet!

Why are they shipping it with a controller instead of joystick?
Nobody played with a controller on A500. Should’ve made a Tac-2 replica.

I also used a Suncom TAC-2 (among other joysticks) with my Amiga 500 many years ago, but in terms of modern usability, the joypad might be a better alternative, for reasons described by other users above.

It wouldn't surprise me if you could use their TheC64 Joystick with TheA500 Mini, since these products are from the same manufacturer.

Likewise, you'll probably be able to use the joypad from TheA500 Mini with TheC64 Mini, TheC64, and TheVIC20.

I'd like to know how many USB ports this has. TheC64 Mini only had two, which was somewhat limiting. Their later release of TheC64 (full size) had four ports. I hope that this has at least four ports.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I was thinking that. The one that came with the full size C64 was much better build quality competition pro and hopefully can be used.
 

Nickolaidas

Banned
That's a very good bunch of games that they've announced for TheA500 Mini, and they haven't even revealed the full list yet!



I also used a Suncom TAC-2 (among other joysticks) with my Amiga 500 many years ago, but in terms of modern usability, the joypad might be a better alternative, for reasons described by other users above.
Seriously. I can't imagine myself playing with an Amiga joystick TODAY. Which is weird, because I thought I could never handle a PSX gamepad once I got my hands on one, believing the Amiga joystick was the perfect way to play.
 

Nickolaidas

Banned
Nitty_Grimes Nitty_Grimes , the list - while extensive - is not 100% perfect. I just did a quick check and it lacks a couple of games that crossed my mind, Top Wrestling, Professor Moriarti and Legends II.

Still, an amazing library nonetheless.
 
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Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Yeah there’s probably one or two (several) exceptions but you’ll be able to get the ADFs for those. There’s one or two that I want that haven’t been WHD’d to be fair.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Even worse the first CF card reader I had was a shitty no brand one and it got that hot it overheated and fucked the CF card so had to buy another multi card reader and start again.

Benefits of a pandemic and working from home I suppose.

Made the CF card an Amiga hard drive and used WinUAE then copied them all from the pc using DOPUS ;)

Then just used a CF to IDE adaptor in the A1200 bobs your uncle, fannys your aunt.

But I’m still having this mini.
 
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kurisu_1974

is on perm warning for being a low level troll
Nitty_Grimes Nitty_Grimes , the list - while extensive - is not 100% perfect. I just did a quick check and it lacks a couple of games that crossed my mind, Top Wrestling, Professor Moriarti and Legends II.

Still, an amazing library nonetheless.

Professor Moriarti is at least there but it's called Mad Professor Moriarti (not familiar with the game so sorry if it's not the right one).

Amiga_WHD_Games directory listing (archive.org) is another great resource.
 

Agent X

Member
Seriously. I can't imagine myself playing with an Amiga joystick TODAY. Which is weird, because I thought I could never handle a PSX gamepad once I got my hands on one, believing the Amiga joystick was the perfect way to play.

Same here. I was so accustomed to joystick controllers for years, beginning with the Atari 2600 in 1981. Aside from a couple of handhelds (Lynx and Game Boy), all of the other computers and game consoles that I had for the next 11 years were various Atari and Commodore machines, and I always used joysticks with them.

I still think a joystick might be preferable for certain arcade-style games, such as Pac-Man, Dig Dug, or Donkey Kong. After years of playing on a joypad, though, I've gotten good enough at playing those games that it doesn't concern me anymore.

I'm sure there will be some way to connect a USB joystick (either TheC64 Joystick, or something else) for people who prefer to play that way.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Its mainly the music I was interested in. The games I wasn't too hot about. There are some classics, a lot of shitty ports (avoid anything from US GOLD), and some frustrating as fuck games such as Zool, Superfrog and Assassin. Body Blows is near unplayable.

I liked Supercars 2, Brutal Football, Speedball and Alien Breed.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Its mainly the music I was interested in. The games I wasn't too hot about. There are some classics, a lot of shitty ports (avoid anything from US GOLD), and some frustrating as fuck games such as Zool, Superfrog and Assassin. Body Blows is near unplayable.

I liked Supercars 2, Brutal Football, Speedball and Alien Breed.
That’s a good point as you can use ADFs you‘ll be able to load the Amiga demos - the likes of Jesus on E’s and State of The Art etc.
 

Fredrik

Member
Probably so that you can be ready to play CD32 games. There were a few Amiga 500 games that supported a controller too, mainly those who were CD32 ports, or got ported to consoles, like Leander, WolfChild and LionHeart.

I wonder how easy it is to emulate a hard drive in order to avoid virtual disk swapping. I never managed it on WinUAE.
Yeah but if it’s focused on CD32 games it should be a CD32 mini.

I’ve played Amiga 500 games with controllers via emulators and they’re always awkward controlwise unless you remap the controls. And if they have remapped UP to A by default you have to remap UP to UP once you play a game with 8-directional joystick controls. I just think it’s a strange choice to not go with a joystick by default. To get proper Amiga 500 nostalgia from A500 mini you need to plug in a retronic design USB to dsub converter and an Amiga joystick plus often a keyboard as well.
 

Agent X

Member
If this is set up similar to TheC64 Mini, then you should be able to create a custom profile for each game (or directory), so that you can remap the controller inputs in the emulator for only that game (or for all games in a particular directory).

It was a bit of a pain on TheC64 Mini, because you had to go into a text editor on your computer to create or customize a CJM file. It would be nice if TheA500 Mini would allow you to create a custom profile within TheA500 Mini itself.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Our fam never had a C64 or Amiga. But played C64 at friends houses and our school had an Amiga in the arts room.

Got to say Amiga was awesome compared to the beep beep shit we had as an Apple II clone in the 80s and then a 8086 clone in the late 80s. I dont know what graphics settings PCs had at the time but I remember EGA was the best we could do. I'm pretty sure we didnt get VGA quality graphics till we got a 386 in like 1991. I dont think we had a 286.
 
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SkylineRKR

Member
I beat Chaos Engine by using the code TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT on the title screen where it gives you more money than you’ll ever need. So you can easily get to my avatar…

Wish I knew that cheat lol. Game was damn frustrating as is. But it was one of those games that became more lenient the more you upgraded.
 

Fredrik

Member
That's a very good bunch of games that they've announced for TheA500 Mini, and they haven't even revealed the full list yet!



I also used a Suncom TAC-2 (among other joysticks) with my Amiga 500 many years ago, but in terms of modern usability, the joypad might be a better alternative, for reasons described by other users above.

It wouldn't surprise me if you could use their TheC64 Joystick with TheA500 Mini, since these products are from the same manufacturer.

Likewise, you'll probably be able to use the joypad from TheA500 Mini with TheC64 Mini, TheC64, and TheVIC20.

I'd like to know how many USB ports this has. TheC64 Mini only had two, which was somewhat limiting. Their later release of TheC64 (full size) had four ports. I hope that this has at least four ports.
I broke the stick on my TheC64 joystick after like a month… You know I’m a fan of TheC64. But the joystick is of incredibly low quality compared to something like Tac-2 or Wico Command Control. Or used to be at least, I don’t know if they changed the design after the founders batch I got.

And I really don’t see any problem with usability or understand what you don’t like about it, it’s a joystick and the most logical control method ever, actually took me forever to get used to a Dpad 🙃
 
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