Getting started with the Amiga 500 Mini: an attractive tribute to a revolutionary machine


5

New representative of the current trend of retro-mini machines, the A500 Mini is aimed at a public of connoisseurs who remember the graphic and visual revolutions that the machine brought to the video game of the 1980s.

Retro Games The A500 Mini (Amiga 500 Mini)

Introductory price €129.99

  • AmazonAmazon

    129.99

  • Fnac.com marketplaceFnac.com marketplace

    129.99

  • RakutenRakuten

    130.00

  • Amazon MarketplaceAmazon Marketplace

    149.86

  • Amazon MarketplaceAmazon Marketplace

    149.86

  • eBayeBay

    155.14

How the pricing table works

Warning: if you want to respect the rules, do not call it Amiga 500 Mini, but simply “The A500 Mini”. It is that since the agony of Commodore in the mid-1990s, the rights relating to the intellectual properties of the company have been scattered to the four winds, like a puzzle which today has become extremely difficult to collect all the pieces. However, this is what the manufacturer Retro Games has undertaken to do, specializing as its name suggests in revivals of pieces of video game history, in order to launch this Mini version of the Amiga 500 on the market on April 8, 2022. And too bad if that involves some curious legal pirouettes, such as this use as parsimonious as possible of the Amiga brand: the machine well deserved such a tribute.

Launched in the spring of 1987, the Amiga 500 was one of Commodore’s last big hits, before a failed shift into the nascent world of “PC compatible” that would precipitate the company’s downfall. At the heart of the machine was the revolutionary Motorola 68000 processor, whose graphics and audio capabilities totally unprecedented for the time (up to 4096 colors displayed simultaneously thanks to the HAM technique, four mixed sampled audio tracks, etc.) made it a machine dream for the video game – even though it was in absolute terms a multifunction computer, and not a device dedicated to the game.

A surprisingly authentic reproduction

It is indeed this multifunction essence that the keyboard integrated into the machine evokes, which the A500 Mini strives to reproduce with stunning authenticity. This is of course a dummy keyboard; the tiny size of the keys would have made it unusable anyway. But, like the mini-machine as a whole, it shows a finish whose color and texture are incredibly close to the original.

This cosmetic quality is complemented by a fairly rich contingent of inputs/outputs: a USB-C port for power supply (no mains adapter is supplied, but the machine is content with 5 V/1 A to operate and can therefore be powered by any standard USB port), an HDMI output and three USB-A ports to which the supplied mouse and gamepad can be connected, and even a “real” keyboard if you want to save time. use of the on-screen virtual keyboard.

25 pre-installed games and very solid emulation

On the software side, the little beast comes with a very decent selection of 25 preinstalled games, including cult titles like the avant-garde Another World by Éric Chahi, the football game Kick Off 2or even the essential Worms: The Director’s Cut. There are also fascinating curiosities such as Pinball Dreamsthe very first game from the Swedish studio Digital Illusions, which we know today as… DICE (series Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, Mirror’s Edge).

© RetroGames

All these games are presented by means of an overall irreproachable emulation, perfectly paying homage to their visual and sound cachet. The machine even has the decency to offer a video output at 50 Hz (in 720p), coming as close as possible to the experience given by the PAL version of the original. After all, it was in Europe that she had most of her success. Added to this are the usual small visual options, such as pixel smoothing to soften the image a bit, and a “cathode filter” emulating the typical scanning lines of a tube screen.

© RetroGames



Smoothing + cathode filter


No treatment

All Roads Lead to ROMs

Much less usual on the other hand for a machine of this kind, the A500 Mini also offers the possibility of playing any Amiga game stored in the form of ROM (in LHA format) on a USB key in FAT32. The most amazing thing is that this is not even a hidden feature, but a perfectly official feature, touted by the manufacturer on the box. Obviously, the legal tweezers are out: “games must be obtained legally”, can we read in the very captivatingly naive legal inscriptions. But from a purely practical point of view, we wouldn’t dare complain that the possibility is there, especially since the games run in this way benefit from the same emulation quality and the same visual options as the pre-installed games.

On arrival, the A500 Mini therefore ticks almost all the boxes of the fan service ; and after all, it is exactly what one expects from a product of this kind. So, of course, as often, it is better to avoid asking the question of the quality/price ratio: more than 100 € for some ancient games and an emulation certainly of good quality, but offering nothing fundamentally unique compared to an emulator PC is not the deal of the century. But considered as a collector’s item for an enthusiast, its charm is undeniable.

For more information on the A500 Mini, we invite you to consult the complete test of our comrades from gamekult.



Source link -98