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The Amiga 500 mini announced

Fredrik

Member
Wait what?
Is it true the Keyboard on this thing is just a dummy keyboard that doesn't actually work?!

If true then 👎
It’s like TheC64 mini, dummy keyboard and on-screen keyboard is available when needed, it works but going by C64 mini it might come with some hurdles for certain games that use many keys you need to access quickly.

The fullsize A500 with functional keyboard is when this beautiful era is truly revived. But the A500 is huge, might be hard to sell, I’ll get one day 0 though!

You can connect a USB keyboard anyhow, that’s how most issues are solved. Unless you run out of USB ports… (1)mouse, (2)joystick, (3)keyboard, (4?)USB stick?

I’m glad that someone want to do something with the Amiga but I feel like I have more questions now than before the announcement when a revived Amiga was just a fantasy in my head.
 

Agent X

Member
Wait what?
Is it true the Keyboard on this thing is just a dummy keyboard that doesn't actually work?!

If true then 👎

It's a miniature reproduction, similar to the NES Classic, SNES Classic, Sega Genesis Mini, etc.

The same company (Retro Games) produced similar self-contained systems based on the Commodore 64. They first released a mini console like this with a non-functioning keyboard, and then later released a full-sized version with a working keyboard.

For their Amiga 500 reproduction, Retro Games said that they decided to focus on a mini console first, and might release a full-sized version later.
 

Agent X

Member
You can connect a USB keyboard anyhow, that’s how most issues are solved. Unless you run out of USB ports… (1)mouse, (2)joystick, (3)keyboard, (4?)USB stick?

This is why I hope that TheA500 Mini will have four USB ports.

The biggest shortcoming of TheC64 Mini was that is only had two USB ports, which limited the number of devices you could connect simultaneously (unless you had a USB hub). TheC64 full-sized unit solved this by having four ports, but it also had a working keyboard, which essentially removed the need to use up a port for a USB keyboard.
 

Fredrik

Member
This is why I hope that TheA500 Mini will have four USB ports.

The biggest shortcoming of TheC64 Mini was that is only had two USB ports, which limited the number of devices you could connect simultaneously (unless you had a USB hub). TheC64 full-sized unit solved this by having four ports, but it also had a working keyboard, which essentially removed the need to use up a port for a USB keyboard.
They showed that the A500 mini prototype has three ports in the video, might change til the release I guess but otherwise a USB hub is needed here if you want more games on a USB stick for example.
Pi 400 also only have 3 ports (which was a surprise to me since Pi4 have 4 ports) but as you say with a functional keyboard it’s no real problem.
I want to know if a retronic design joystick adapter works. Works on Pi and PC but not on TheC64, unless they’ve patched it in lately.
 

Impotaku

Member
They showed that the A500 mini prototype has three ports in the video, might change til the release I guess but otherwise a USB hub is needed here if you want more games on a USB stick for example.
Pi 400 also only have 3 ports (which was a surprise to me since Pi4 have 4 ports) but as you say with a functional keyboard it’s no real problem.
I want to know if a retronic design joystick adapter works. Works on Pi and PC but not on TheC64, unless they’ve patched it in lately.
3 usb should be ok though as if one is taken up by a usb stick that leaves 2 free one for a keyboard then for the remaining one you can choose either controller or the mouse i can't see any reason why you'd need the controller & the mouse plugged in at the same time i can't think of any games that would need a setup like that.
 

Agent X

Member
They showed that the A500 mini prototype has three ports in the video, might change til the release I guess but otherwise a USB hub is needed here if you want more games on a USB stick for example.

Three ports is passable. Four would be better, of course, but I think I could live with three. That would at least allow you to connect a USB flash drive, mouse, and controller all at once. If you need a physical keyboard, then you could probably swap out one of the other devices, as there probably aren't many games that require joystick, mouse, and significant use of the keyboard at the same time.

Pi 400 also only have 3 ports (which was a surprise to me since Pi4 have 4 ports) but as you say with a functional keyboard it’s no real problem.
I want to know if a retronic design joystick adapter works. Works on Pi and PC but not on TheC64, unless they’ve patched it in lately.

Perhaps it depends on the adapter. I have one called Stelladaptor, which I purchased over 15 years ago. I haven't tried it with TheC64 Mini, as most of my old Atari/Commodore joysticks are packed away. For something like TheC64 Mini, it might be very limiting, since real Atari/Commodore joysticks usually only have one button function (a few have two buttons that are recognized differently). It would lack the additional buttons needed to work with TheC64 Mini's user interface, which are on the bottom of TheC64 Joystick.

A solution to this might be for someone to concoct an adapter with the standard Atari/Commodore 9-pin port, but also with the additional buttons to fully navigate TheC64 user interface.

In addition, it might also be good for Retro Games to update TheC64 user interface to allow some of the auxiliary functions (such as saving or loading save states) to be selected on-screen using the joystick, instead of requiring the extra buttons on the bottom of TheC64 Joystick. Hopefully, they will have some of these ideas in mind when designing TheA500 Mini user interface.
 

Fredrik

Member
3 usb should be ok though as if one is taken up by a usb stick that leaves 2 free one for a keyboard then for the remaining one you can choose either controller or the mouse i can't see any reason why you'd need the controller & the mouse plugged in at the same time i can't think of any games that would need a setup like that.
You’re right, it’s just what I’m used to. Some games require mouse to click on an icon to load but it might just be mouse games, I’ll have a look among my games. Either way, they said the controller could mimic the mouse so it should be alright if it’s just at the startup.
 

Fredrik

Member
Perhaps it depends on the adapter. I have one called Stelladaptor, which I purchased over 15 years ago. I haven't tried it with TheC64 Mini, as most of my old Atari/Commodore joysticks are packed away. For something like TheC64 Mini, it might be very limiting, since real Atari/Commodore joysticks usually only have one button function (a few have two buttons that are recognized differently). It would lack the additional buttons needed to work with TheC64 Mini's user interface, which are on the bottom of TheC64 Joystick.

A solution to this might be for someone to concoct an adapter with the standard Atari/Commodore 9-pin port, but also with the additional buttons to fully navigate TheC64 user interface.

In addition, it might also be good for Retro Games to update TheC64 user interface to allow some of the auxiliary functions (such as saving or loading save states) to be selected on-screen using the joystick, instead of requiring the extra buttons on the bottom of TheC64 Joystick. Hopefully, they will have some of these ideas in mind when designing TheA500 Mini user interface.
Yeah it sounds tricky to get an old joystick working. Bummer!
Regarding save states, that’s not working yet on the Pimiga so that’ll be an upgrade on the A500 Mini, maybe it would be possible to finally play through Shadow of the Beast 2 👍
 

Kadve

Member
Erik Schwarz screaming internally... because he know people won't stop shutting up about it to him.
 

Agent X

Member
Amazon US

US Amazon Link

I see that there's an ESRB RP (rating pending) symbol, so they're evidently doing a proper North American version.

I wonder if there will be any differences in the included games between the European and North American versions? TheC64 Mini and TheC64 changed several games for their North American releases. A few games also had their names changed to reflect the region change. For example, Nebulus was renamed to "Tower Toppler", which is the name that was used for the US release.

Will they rename Another World to "Out of This World", since that's the name that was used when Interplay released the Amiga version of the game in the US? Or, will they keep the "Another World" name, since that's the name that they've been using in all regions (including the US) over the last several years?
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Above all else, hope the conversion of Speedball 2 is up to the mark! Seeing as I missed out on it when it came on the Xbox 360...and to this day there is NOTHING like it...not sure if there ever will be...
 

Thanati

Member
It did work on A1200 - not full screen and with a horrible framerate, but still. I remember it even had some water effects.
Yeah, 3fps isn’t “it did work” (I don’t mean this in a facetious way either) :)
I know what you mean though, but I don’t think they’d want to bundle a game with such a frame rate. Didn’t you need an 060 accelerator to make it work properly?
 

Dr.Morris79

Member
Yeah, 3fps isn’t “it did work” (I don’t mean this in a facetious way either) :)
I know what you mean though, but I don’t think they’d want to bundle a game with such a frame rate. Didn’t you need an 060 accelerator to make it work properly?
I think you did.

Did you ever try and run this? That was a real 2 frames a second game.. :messenger_tears_of_joy:

HxJG2FU.jpg
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Be interesting to see where they get their ‘official’ games from - or you boot up Speedball 2 to be greeted with ‘Crystal Cracked’

And the crack for Gods where it makes all the baddies harder and people were ringing the bitmaps complaining saying it was too hard.
 
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pachura

Member
Does the amiga 500 have any good exclusive games?
Walker (!!!)
Roadkill
Banshee
Perihellion
Deluxe Galaga
Ruff N Tumble
Lionheart
Black Crypt
Elfmania
HOI
Shadow of the Beast 3

PS. Usually, if a game was released for Amiga and Atari ST in parallel, the Amiga version was better.
 










But most important is that there are a lot of multiplatform games where the Amiga version is the best version by far, like Turrican I&II (T2 got a good DOS port after 4 years but the main sprite looks ugly), It Came from the Desert, Lotus I&II, Shadow of the Beast I&II (Beast II for Sega CD has fairer difficulty but the main sprite looks horrible and the level graphics are too light-hearted), Stardust, Wings or Pinball Dreams (until that was ported to PSP).
 
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Dr.Morris79

Member










But most important is that there are a lot of multiplatform games where the Amiga version is the best version by far, like Turrican I&II (T2 got a good DOS port after 4 years but the main sprite looks ugly), It Came from the Desert, Lotus I&II, Shadow of the Beast I&II (Beast II for Sega CD has fairer difficulty but the main sprite looks horrible and the level graphics are too light-hearted), Stardust, Wings or Pinball Dreams (until that was ported to PSP).

Brilliant call John, and what a list of bangers. Honestly cant wait for the mini to hit.
 

Ozzie666

Member
The music is so special, it's like I am hearing it again from 1988. It's just magic and Chris H, is a god.
Whilst there are some exclusives worth mentioning up until 1992/3 most European games found inferior ST versions, Like Chaos Engine and Zool in 93.
But a lot of Amiga games received average or mixed Mega Drive versions and SNES, especially after 1992/92 and the Master system finally dying in Europe.

I would have loved to have seen a cartridge based Amiga system, to get rid of the level loads and limited memory. It would have also been interesting to see more European developers making 1M extended memory a requirement. I recall games like Wings being 1M for the North American Release and 512k for the European. But a lot of American and Canadian developers like Sierra, Lucas, SSI and Readysoft, frequently used 1M. Also not making more games 2 button or genesis pad ready, was a shame.

Actually looking forward to this mini.
Lotus 2 and 3
Super Cars 2
SWIV
Wolf Child, Pegasus, First Samurai, Arabian Knights, Chuck Rock 2, so many great titles. Post 92 on Amiga is really fascinating with the rise of Team 17 and Core Design really coming into their own.
 
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OldBoyGamer

Banned
need that KB to work otherwise it’s just another emulation box. I’m ok the usb mouse. Also needs an old competition pro joystick otherwise what’s the point? Sorry.
 

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
I played terminator 2 arcade, the or T2 game which had side scrolling and that top down motorbike chase level, rodland, zombie apocalypse, canon fodder, mk2 and others, will it have any of those?
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I played terminator 2 arcade, the or T2 game which had side scrolling and that top down motorbike chase level, rodland, zombie apocalypse, canon fodder, mk2 and others, will it have any of those?
Probably not but it doesn’t matter because you can load your own ADFs off of your SD card.

Any Amiga game you can think off, that’s not part of the 25, can be loaded via SD card.
 

Havoc2049

Member
The music is so special, it's like I am hearing it again from 1988. It's just magic and Chris H, is a god.
Whilst there are some exclusives worth mentioning up until 1992/3 most European games found inferior ST versions, Like Chaos Engine and Zool in 93.
But a lot of Amiga games received average or mixed Mega Drive versions and SNES, especially after 1992/92 and the Master system finally dying in Europe.

I would have loved to have seen a cartridge based Amiga system, to get rid of the level loads and limited memory. It would have also been interesting to see more European developers making 1M extended memory a requirement. I recall games like Wings being 1M for the North American Release and 512k for the European. But a lot of American and Canadian developers like Sierra, Lucas, SSI and Readysoft, frequently used 1M. Also not making more games 2 button or genesis pad ready, was a shame.

Actually looking forward to this mini.
Lotus 2 and 3
Super Cars 2
SWIV
Wolf Child, Pegasus, First Samurai, Arabian Knights, Chuck Rock 2, so many great titles. Post 92 on Amiga is really fascinating with the rise of Team 17 and Core Design really coming into their own.
The ST versions of The Chaos Engine and Zool were STE enhanced titles, so if you were rockin' an STE back then, you had enhanced speed, graphics and sound on those titles. The version of The Chaos Engine for the Amiga 500 mini is the enhanced AGA version, so that should be cool. I assume that version probably has native controller support as well.
 

Fredrik

Member
need that KB to work otherwise it’s just another emulation box. I’m ok the usb mouse. Also needs an old competition pro joystick otherwise what’s the point? Sorry.
Yup. I think people are going to find out the hard way that the Amiga 500 never was a gaming console. Many games are using the keyboard, for some games we should be able to remap keys to controller buttons but eventually we’ll run out of buttons and have to use a janky on-screen keyboard instead, or a plug-in USB keyboard making the whole thing seem badly planned.

But it is what it is. Personality I think it’s worse not having a joystick. I assume that they’ll let us use the C64 joystick though, it’s not a Tac 2 and the build quality isn’t the best but it’s a working alternative.
 
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OldBoyGamer

Banned
Yup. I think people are going to find out the hard way that the Amiga 500 never was a gaming console. Many games are using the keyboard, for some games we should be able to remap keys to controller buttons but eventually we’ll run out of buttons and have to use a janky on-screen keyboard instead, or a plug-in USB keyboard making the whole thing seem badly planned.

But it is what it is. Personality I think it’s worse not having a joystick. I assume that they’ll let us use the C64 joystick though, it’s not a Tac 2 and the build quality isn’t the best but it’s a working alternative.
I play Amiga emulation quite a bit and the lack of mouse and kb can be a killer.
 
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