THE A500 Mini Review: Little Amiga for Retro Fans

We take a closer look at the little Mini Amiga. Source: Koch Media; vintage games

It doesn’t help, we gamers are also getting old and the days of our peaceful childhood in the game are numbered. What remains are, among other things, memories of the glorious games of yesteryear. Depending on his own age, it is not at all unlikely that the inclined reader has also delved into the world of video games with an Amiga. It’s even more gratifying that manufacturer Retro Games is continuing its round of old retro machines after the Mini-C64towards THEC64 and the THEVIC20 has now added another mini console: The THE A500 Mini it is the replica of one of the most popular toy boxes of the 80s. As one of Commodore’s best-selling devices, the small home computer even surpassed the legendary. Atari ST and can be found in a number of living rooms and especially children’s rooms.

Even if it’s not allowed to carry the “Amiga” name for technical licensing reasons, the A500 Mini is a deceptively real replica of the original, just on a smaller scale. The hardware, which is stylishly packaged in an artificially yellowed box, emulates the games of that era. The keyboard is just decorative and has no function, but the device comes with its own controller, which is somewhat reminiscent of the time. friend cd32 Pendant remembered and of course with an angular mouse. The latter, however, has been modernized and uses a laser instead of balls. If you need more, you can connect compatible devices to one of the USB slots. There are three connections in total. Additional mice and drivers are also available individually from the manufacturer, but not all third-party peripherals work flawlessly. Fortunately, they let you remap the buttons so you can find settings that work for you.

Power is supplied via a USB-C connection, but a power supply is not included in the package. 720p 50Hz or 60Hz image is easily transmitted to TV or monitor via HDMI cable. 25 games from that era are pre-installed. Here you can find some flowers and a lot of filler material. After so much time, it doesn’t seem so easy with licenses either, so you can find glorious titles like Another world, worms, simon the sorcerer, paradroid either chaos engine, but some other major representatives would also have represented the Amiga era at the time. For example, titles like turrican, Xenon Mega Burst 2, type R or the popular Cannon fodder. Here, however, tastes differ and everyone will ultimately have had their own favourites. At that time, for example, I had on my PC stunt car racer, F16 Y battle chess loved – fortunately these titles are included.

THE A500 Minigames

These Amiga games are included:

• Alien race 3D model
• Alien Breed: Special Edition 92
• Another world
• play pool
• ATR: All Terrain Racing
• battle chess
• Body
• california games
• dragon breath
• F-16 fighter pilot
• start 2
• paradroid 90
• pinball dreams
• Project X: Special Edition 93
• qwak
• simon the sorcerer
• Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
• stunt car racer
• Supercars II
• chaos engine
• the lost patrol
• the sentinel
• titus the fox
• Worms: Director’s Cut
• Zool: Ninja of the “nth” dimension

Install custom games: In principle, other games can be adapted via a USB stick. The manufacturer Retro Games is already participating Citadel a first additional title available, other titles may follow. Since it’s an emulator that works on the device, it can theoretically feed other software images as well, but you have to have the original if you don’t want to be processed. This is then done using the well-known Amiga tool. WHDLoad. (There are direct instructions for this in retro games.)

All games are displayed via a carousel menu on the screen, as you know from other miniconsoles. Additional information about the games is also displayed in the overview, further reinforcing the charm of the museum. Of course, games have aged differently and you have to have a preference for retro titles to still be able to get something out of simple software today. This is how you quickly click on most titles. But if you do get stuck on a game, you’ll be happy with the console’s convenience features, for example, you can save and pause games at any time.

The included gamepad is nice, but certainly not a real competitor to the one that was popular at the time. professional competition Joystick. The D-Pad feels a bit spongy and even if the emulation works perfectly, you probably won’t be able to get old high scores with it. The three USB slots can also get a bit cramped quickly if you want to add extra software and maybe plug in an extra controller to play together.

The detailed pictures of A500 Mini:

conclusion

All in all, Retro Games has managed to create a nice little console with The A500 that you can use to reminisce about the old days. The beautifully designed device also looks good in the shop window and doesn’t take up as much space as the original either. Every retro fan has to decide for himself whether the 120 or 130 euros for a little flashback is worth it. We definitely enjoyed this little trip to the past.

Pros and cons:

You can buy the A500 Mini here:

Further away retro news:

vintage games

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