Remake of the Iconic Amigo 500 Launches Next Year

The A500 Mini is, as the name implies, a miniature remake of The Amiga 500. It’s a new system being worked on by Retro Games, the same company behind the brilliant C64 Mini, a miniature version of the Commodore 64, one of the most famous systems of its time. It comes with a neat classic 2 button mouse and an 8 button gamepad as well as a keyboard that’s solely for decorative purposes due to the device’s considerably smaller size, however, you can also plug in your own keyboard for proper functionality. It’s coming out with a total of 25 pre-installed games and as of right now, 12 of those have been confirmed. These include:

• Alien Breed 3D
• Another World
• ATR: All Terrain Racing
• Battle Chess
• Cadaver
• Kick Off 2
• Pinball Dreams
• Simon the Sorcerer
• Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe
• The Chaos Engine
• Worms: The Director’s Cut
• Zool 

  

While the other 13 games haven’t been known yet, it has been confirmed that you can plug in a USB stick and install your own ROMs into the device, it also features full WHDLoad support. Even though its form factor is inspired by the Amiga A500, the system emulates not only the A500’s OCS chipset but also the enhanced ECS chipset of the A500+ and the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) of the A1200, meaning even ROMs of A1200-only enhanced games should work on it. Additional features of the system include proper save-states, the option to choose between 50hz or 60hz Refresh Rates, a scaling option, and a CRT filter to emulate the nostalgia of the good ol’ days. The A500 is going to cost you about $139.99 / £119.99 and will be released in Early 2022.

While initially, it does come off as a rather rudimentary system, I believe this is the kind of stuff that collectors and fans of older gaming hardware would eat up almost immediately, not to mention it also serves as an admirable attempt at preservation of an industry at its very infancy despite the fact that you can experience most of what this system has to offer on your standard PC.