Thanks for watching! Update: For games that run too fast I believe the JIT CPU switch I showed will solve that. Also WHDLoad is free for personal use. Have fun!
Any idea why there are more unpopulated spots for capacitors on the board? Anyway, there are many people who looked forward to this, at least there are some good news/nice things, these times!
@@thomashenden71 its probably cause the way the boards has been designed, most boards have extra stuff but when the board is finalised it does not need that part of the board, or things have changed from how the prototype board was to this version of the board, THEC64 board is the same, its nothing major.
At 26:53.. You say `You have to pay for WHDLoad, it use to cost 15 Euro but now its free for non commercial use, I did register it years a go... easy mistake... :) You could use it for free but it would come up with a notice about it ever time you ran a WHDLoad game, I still use my key file on my version of WHDLoad so I see my name come up and handy if you want to use a older version too, Registed to: xxxxxx, you can see it if you install a older version of WHDLoad, the reg screen will appear, I think v12 or v13, can not remember what version became free, latest version has no reg screen now, look at video 27.30, try it on a another amiga and you will see... :)
It's worth noting that the retail version of the A500 Mini does NOT come with the ring bound manual, most reviews don't mention this. You just get a four page quick guide. The full manual is available as a PDF from the website.
I got mine! I had an amiga as a kid. I'm now severely disabled with brain damage but I've managed to set this up fine and have been having fun! It's a great little device and I'm very happy with it!
Thanks for the review, you've shown enough to warrant me keeping my amazon order as I've been on the fence about this having other options for Amiga including a real A1200 and MiSTer but for sheer plug and play simplicity and the save states along with the hardware and perfromance I think it looks well worth it and it can be a permanent fixture on the main TV without having to move stuff around.
Watched this in anticipation of my own A500 mini arriving (yes I am very, VERY late to the party. 😂). From age 11 to 16 i gamed on an A500 then an A500+ while most of my friends had Mega Drive’s and SNES’s, but there was that core group of us who had Amiga’s. Trips to one another’s houses with a pack of blank floppy disks in one hand and X-Copy in the other were common, but now the Mini has ADF support I can finally once again enjoy signing Melli and Cantona for Milan in Champ Man Italia 93 and running absolutely riot. Great review, great pace, very informative with a dose of good British sarcasm/humour thrown in.
After all the show it is amazing that the floppy drive is immediately recognized. A minus could be that there is not a "workbench" mode like the "basic" mode in the thec64. Thank you for the very deep analysis with your usual irony together with high technical details (latency, comparisons ecc.).
He didn't demonstrate it actually working. it just popped up with a qr code. So not sure if it could actually load an original game from floppy or not.
Workbench would be nice have, but that virtual keyboard would be a pain in the butt to keep bringing it up constantly.. just to show the entire area of the screen.. I suppose you can't do it any differently
Awesome review. Thanks RR for getting into all the details. Never thought we'd have so many options for the settings. Now there are only 17 days left and the magic is back. It's going to be a real hit.
I love the fact that these are coming out so us old farts can elive our youthful computer days. Never owned an amiga, I had an Atari 1020ST after my commodoe 64 was finally retired, tho. these 16 bit systems were so ahead of everything at the time. Thanks for this.
The ST was a great machine! Too bad its build-quality was cheapened to the point of suspicion. It could've been the next Windows of its day if it managed to attract some serious business apps.
I LOVE this video! Whilst I am not really a fan of the style used to present videos on this channel (the cartoon speech bubbles and general silliness, (I know most fans will hate that I have said this!), I do appreciate the time taken and skill required in editing to achieve the end result is commendable). I have watched the entire video and I am really impressed with the thoroughness of this review. The genuine love this guy has for the Amiga platform is obvious and is a joy to watch. His knowledge of the platform and his overall technical knowledge is truly impressive and the DoubleJoy mod is fantastic! I am now adding Retro Recipes to my subscription list :)
Input latency of around 50ms will affect gameplay, you might not notice the lag directly, but controls can feel more sluggish and action games will be harder since they were designed for a system with less latency. Modern systems have higher input lag but games for those system take that lag into account, so a direct comparison can't be made. The A500 Mini latency seems to be in the same ballbark as a Raspberry Pi and the SNES/NES Minis, so if you are ok with those, you should be ok with the A500 Mini, latency wise.
snes classic is very very good.. its 43ms not 50ms.. you need to be accuarte.. this is still better than amiga on retroarch.. I will be getting the a500 mini when its released and i cannot wait
@@baarrywilliams3606 Lag will be around 50ms if you have a screen with lowish latency. I'm not saying it's bad, just that it is enough to affect gameplay to some degree. I like the fact that this thing will bring more attention to the Amiga and I hope all of you who buys one will enjoy it and all the great games available.
Great job. I forgot how the Amiga made the mouse the best input device for games at the time. You are stepping up your product. I really love the Amiga, It represented the future of computers to me in '84-.. until Windows 3.1 and all that. Amiga was my first earned computer that I bought myself after my beloved C64 and introductory Timex/Sinclair 1000 (still have it working). I researched so hard with the Atari ST, Apple Macintosh, and Apple IIgs being rivals at the time. I worked as IT/CS help for students using DEC workstations and Apple IIgs workstations. I loved the Amiga like you wouldn't believe. The Amiga was the one computer with EVERYTHING at the time.
Why bundle a CD32 gamepad with A500 since no A500 game supports more than 2-3 buttons. Turrican 2 support 2 buttons. When it comes to 5+ button support, they are CD32 and A1200/4000 games.
@@V3ntilator The A500 mini supports Amiga 1200 games, that might be why? Also, a controller like this might be cheaper (my guess) to make than a proper microswitch joystick and takes up less space (fact)
I hope that Retro Games releases a firmware update for the A500 Mini to include Workbench as a bonus just like how they included Basic on the C64, C64 Mini, and VIC20. It would also be cool if Retro Games allowed USB floppy drive support for the A500 Mini to allow users to play their original Amiga floppy disk games on the A500 Mini.
I want to buy it and get the extra mouse and have me and my older brother play like in the 90s . settlers split screen on our fathers Amiga. We got 1 hour of computer game time a week if we did all our homeworks so we played alot of co-op because it was 2hours of fun that way , good memories 😋
Kind of ironic that many Amiga users back in the day looked down on the ARM based Acorn Archimedes computers and here we are today Acorn's ARM architecture is alive and well here we are with the A500 mini using the ARM Cortex A53 cpu.
@MultiMidden I believe the reason the Arc was looked down on was that it was another competitor that just divided up what was already a small chunk of the market (although it really didn't do much). It was a decent enough system (I worked with them and I've own two of them) but the only real advantage it had was it was fast at math. It's software library was sorely lacking and most of its best games were very late conversions from the Amiga with little to nothing to differentiate them. It's OS was clunky and had several rather expensive upgrades (Most of the OS is on multiple ROMS) And if you think programming in MC/Assembly on a 680x0 for the Amiga was a pain, programming on the ARM RISC chip was a whole new level of pain. I think the biggest/best game that came from the Arc to the Amiga was Top Banana, a game that is best expressed as meh. Now don't get me wrong it had potential but it was hard work for what was a very very small part of the market.
I was an Amiga user back in the day and never looked down on Archimedes. I would have loved to get one, but they were beyond my budget as a teenager. Now, as an adult, I enjoy using the Archimedes core on my MiSTer and also experimenting with RISCOS on my Raspberry Pi.
Really nice detailed review. For those who say that it is basically the same as a Raspberry Pi the big difference is that this is a plug-and-play product aimed for those who don't want (or don't know how to) set up and configure one of the many emulators that are available for the Pi. A huge percent of people still thinks that Linux is hard to use / unreliable and they still don't know any other distros than Ubuntu and sadly this applies to IT professionals too so these people would not take the effort to set up a Raspberry for retro gaming. One of the many good things about emulating on a Raspberry is that you can wire up your old 9-pin joysticks (or build a brand new one for it) to the GPIO port to have the real retro controls.
This is so good thank you 😭 I'd been planning for years to make a Raspberry Pi Amiga and for once my procrastination has utterly paid off. This will be a day one buy for me.
@@meneerjansen00 It's the same reason when I collect Transformers I buy the official Hasbro or Takara models over unofficial third party models. The branding is part of the experience. I also appreciate the plug & play nature of this product. While I appreciate the nostalgic shape, to be honest I would have been happier with an all-new design that is reminiscent of old Amiga computers without trying to reproduce it. But I will be getting this product just the same.
Just a tip about WHDLOAD. At 27:05 "Is still a very current piece of software you have to pay for to use". WHDLOAD is provided *FREE* to the community for personal use, the "Pay for" part is because A500Mini is a COMMERCIAL product, which caused a bit of friction between Wepl (The author of WHDLOAD) and Retro LTD. As such this was resolved recently before actual launch, with terms of agreement kept under wraps between them both. Stands to reason if WEPL gets paid a fee for each unit sold. Just wanted to mention this because the wording in this video seems to imply that WHDLOAD is a paid for product, which it is not.
@@RetroRecipes I still have my own WHDLOAD key as well, but from day 1, WHDLOAD was fully functional without a registered key for majority of titles, but a few games required a registered key to run, of which I believe Dragon's Breath was one, but eventually WEPL removed the necessity of a key for all games, but if you have a key, WHDLOAD will still recognize the presence and still display "Registered to" in the start up screen.
Awesome second video! Please do a workbench video whenever you can, would love to see that as well! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one! Now, let's hope for a LARGE version, just like with the C64. 💓💓💓
Just ordered one can not wait for it to arrive. I already have Four real Amiga's plus other retro computers all mine from new been a avid fan of your channel for years 👍
Great review. Happy to see how high a mark you gave it. Have had this on pre-order since it was announced, never owned an Amiga but played a friend's many times. Looking forward to it!
Fantastic video and makes me super pleased I preordered one to live with my A500, A600, A1200, CD32, A1500, CDTV and of course my C64c (and The C64 Maxi). You can never have too much Commodore!
im 43 and started at a young age, ahhhh the 80 and 90s , always collected the old stuff and sold some of it,. ive recently decided to pick up every single mini console out,. well im blown away , love them all, and yes i do own the originals , most consoles. but have to say , these minis are ace
You know, it's wonderful that this A500 mini is being released. The Amiga interest is obviously still there. What would do it for me though would be a new full sized Amiga with a working keyboard that's actually a PC inside. Call it "The A500 2". All the Amiga stuff could be run through emulation and yet you could actually use it as a PC to run modern software, browse the internet with Chrome, play Amazon Prime and Netflix movies etc. How cool would that be? Disclaimer. I've already pre-ordered my A500 mini.
Well... just buy a broken amiga (preferably the motherboard that's broken) remove the motherboard, get a usb adapter for the keyboard and the rest.. you can do whatever you want.. raspberry pi? Sure!, A mini Itx pc... maybe, one of those mini pc's? oh yes! just remove the casing and mount it somewhere and route some of he ports with some extension cords.
Or, you can just buy a pc and use an emulator to play Amiga games. Outcome is the same. Today my Amiga mini arrives. I showed a few games already on Amiga Forever I installed on my pc to my kids. They were not impressed lol
Now that's an awesome in-depth review. Got my a500 mini on saturday and i'm amazed how great it works, when compared with emulators on pi/xbox/pc. Got my son into Cannon Fodder and Desert Strike, and maaaaaan, he is enjoying the hell out of it :D
It would be even cooler if it had an SD-slot where the floppy drive is or at least provided an upgrade path for one. Given the effort they went through to mimic the keyboard, it might have been worthwhile to make the keys actuate even if they don't register. The assembly would add to the cost, but I would leave it up to the customer.
It's amazing the amount of mini consoles and computers that are coming out now. I really enjoyed your presentation of this video, your voice is very soothing and your dogs are very cute! 😍 😊 🐕
Brilliant video. I was gifted at christmas just gone TheA500 MINI from my amazing and kind wife. It has joined my collection (So far) of my Commodore C16, my TheC64 MAXI and my own build of what i like to call my A1200 "FrankenPi". Your review is both informative and well presented. Awesome stuff :)
I've become pretty interested in the technical aspect of displays in recent years and even bought a lag tester (I sell TVs and like to know their lag results just for the sake of knowing). You raised a very good point here which I'd never considered before. Obviously a CRT has to draw the frame, which as you point out, takes around 8ms to draw to the centre at 60Hz (where lag results are taken). Many CRT enthusiasts will say CRTs have zero latency (in milliseconds) but they don't account for the time it takes to draw a frame. So if you take a flat panel with 16ms latency at 60Hz (pretty respectable), they'll present it as being 16ms slower than the CRT, not 8ms. I'm actually kind of annoyed now, partially at myself for not realising this sooner and also at CRT enthusiasts for presenting information in a way that's misleading and exaggerates the benefit of gaming on a CRT. If sub 20ms response is acceptable for head mounted displays so as not to feel any disconnect (which leads to nausea) 8ms should be right at the limits of human perception and many complaints are more than likely a result of placebo. It's like people that complain about guitar modellers and how they're difficult to play when they have 2ms lag, yet they have no issue playing a real amp when you ask them to take two steps backwards (sound travels at approximately 1 foot per millisecond). All that said, it would be nice if they managed to get it down to two frames just to bring the total under 40ms. I do like to keep latency as low as possible as much for peace of mind as anything else. While I'm not claiming to detect very small amounts of latency, I do acknowledge the fact that any amount of lag does reduce the amount of time you have to react and that it's cumulative. I try to avoid Bluetooth controllers because it's one way to easily cut out a source of latency. I don't share the deep hatred for cables that the whole world has seemingly developed over the past couple of decades and it's one less thing I have to charge.
Remember though with pretty much all flat panel lcd/tft displays, that latency listed is for certain colours only. Also latency is much worse when something is moving on screen or you have a scrolling image. Also at anything other than native resolution latency goes quite a bit up as well and on some tvs or monitors that latency is very high. There is so much more that affects actual real life latency on those flat panels.
@@bloxyman22 Aren't you more talking about pixel response and motion resolution rather than input latency? CRTs certainly have better motion resolution because flat panels use sample and hold rather than continuously drawing alternating scan line fields like a CRT does. CRT isn't without its issues though. On high contrast images you can get phosphor trails and the geometry on most consumer sets isn't great whereas it's pretty much perfect on flat panels. I mentioned that I have a lag tester. Every TV I've tested has showed less than a milliseconds difference between 720p and 1080p resolutions when the TV is in game mode. Most results I've seen posted online cover 1080p and 4K performance (my tester doesn't do 4K) and there's normally very little difference. I think there was probably a time when upscaling incurred a bigger penalty, but it seems that it's not really an issue with most modern TVs (in game mode). Deinterlacing makes a difference and analogue inputs take longer due to conversion. Perhaps upscaling from lower resolutions than 720p would take longer, but I'd personally avoid it if possible anyway and use an external scaler because modern TV upscaling algorithms don't seem well suited to upscaling very low resolutions, especially retro games. In theory, you could design a self emissive display like an OLED or micro LED that draws its image in a similar manner to a CRT (though you'd still have the scaling limitation of a fixed pixel grid). Due to the near instant pixel response times, you'd have a display that has CRT like motion resolution without the issue of phosphor glow (though you could emulate it if desired). I'm just not sure how difficult it would be both physically and processing-wise to achieve this and I doubt TV manufacturers have any interest because it would likely only appeal to a niche crowd.
Yeah, the whole "CRT has no latency" thing comes from the early days of Flatscreens when they had quite a bit more latency to them. They also had more issues with the displaying black back then as well However, Flatscreens have gotten much better. That being said, I do still have a CRT, as most of the complaints against CRT's aren't that valid either I do also prefer wires to wireless... as there is an upper limit to how much wireless devices you can have in a single area... and I've gone above that limit as a constant thing to being done. There isn't a word for it--and calling it "collision domains" or "cross talk" just has people thinking you are crazy... even though, you put enough devices operating on a wireless connection of sort (be it IR, Blueray, WiFi, etc.) next to each other--and they will generally stop working
emulation will always exhibit some kind of lag and this is low enough for me.. with the easy customisation this will be a very good system.. hoping retroarch comes to it also
Only thing to add is that for older games and sytems (not Amiga probably), 'racing the beam' was a something developers would do. This can give you lower latency, as you know where the beam is on the screen, and you can then blit to areas of the screen just below that.
this is becoming my favorite channel, my amiga 500 and c128 got stolen when someone broke into my house in the late 90s have to raise a family and pay bills so I cannot afford an amiga mini yet, I want one really bad, I'll get there, I got the c64 mini though, it was only 40 bucks, this one is like 130 imma go to orange county to the micro center soon though and see if they have one just to see and see how much they are.
What an awesome machine. I bought my Amiga 500 back in 1990. If you compared the Amiga with a standard PC at the time, the Amiga easily stood out as the far superior PC. Is that a working 1084S monitor? Also, the Amiga was the first computer I had that had a harddrive. I remember paying an eye-watering $600+ US for a 20 Megabyte harddrive. Awesome un-boxing and review!!
Amiga was 10 years ahead of the competition with a preemptive multitasking os. I have great memories of this era. And this was my first steps into assembly programming, playing with copper bars, star fields, scrolltexts and background MOD music :) I still have one 68k assembly listing lying around.
kinda strange... you see new tech like HDMI on a A500 mini connect using an adapter to original Amiga CRT screen for that 'nostalgic-ness', yet when you don't have HDMI at the source, you want to upscale it to get HDMI output 😆 i like how people go for that.
Mine came in yesterday. I was so excited! It only lasted about 25 minutes until something let the smoke out. 😞 Replacement arriving Friday. 😎 Great review, BTW. Thanks for showing the insides.
Great review, informative & your love of anything Commodore always shines through but I know you will give a balanced review. As much as I like these reviews & your recent content I do have to say I'm regretting the apparent move away from what made this TH-cam channel great. I am talking about the refurbs, fixing old kit, creative builds & solutions, the nuts & bolts stuff. Just seeing you with an open computer & a soldering iron. Like I said the newer content is good but it feels like you are putting things like the KITT episodes & more presenter show format stuff (monthly recipodes etc) before the content that got the channel famous. Not criticism & I'm obviously aware that things need to evolve & I'll always be a subscriber, just a wish to see you doing your stuff like refurbs more often again. 👍
I think from recent donations we will have at least one C128 restoration/resurrection coming up. I'm liking the retro content, the name is on the front page. Next up: a life sized folding Optimus Prime Transformer truck 👍 just try to recreate that odd transforming sound they used. Or substitute eee-ooo-eee-ooo-eee-ooo in its place.
It was my birthday yesterday, and being in my late 50's the amiga, spectrum and zx81 will always be a great memory. I think I know what I'm going to buy myself out of my birthday money....Shame I'll have to wait till April 8th in the UK for delivery but can see myself being excited as you were when it arrives.
The "with bluetooth gamepad" on the PC latency is important here. Bluetooth has lots of latency. The comparison cable vs cable would be a bit (haha) more fair. That being said, the A500 Mini is still an amazing mashine!
Great video. I’ve come straight over from the 8-Bit Guys video of the retail unit. Looks good, great attention to detail but I do think it’s a little overpriced compared to other single board computer options. I suppose I’m spoiled by the OG A1200 I still have. It will be very interesting to see how well Workbench 1.2/1.3 work on the system, I suppose it would depend on what kickstart ROM(s) they have on the system.
I feel like if they ever do an actual full size one like for the C64, it would definitely need to have a non hacky way to boot into Workbench and include more than just games. Games alone don't do the Amiga justice
The Amiga 500/500+ was never meant to be a games console.. but if you keep the mini with these 'limitations' on games only as 'marketed for', you only pushing more people towards proper emulation anyway like WinUAE with fuller feature sets. The only limitation to that is, you don't have HDMI that is plug and play.
My favourite Amiga game was the platformer Leander by Psygnosis, but it seems to be quite obscure now. I remember a very happy Christmas 91 with it (my mate having had a magazine demo of it first) - I still have the intro music on my (aging) iPod Nano - it's fantastic. Happy days indeed. I'm a bit older than you, but I too get the nostalgia difference between 8 and 16 bit. How quickly I moved on to the SNES, a 486DX33 PC and then the PlayStation etc. (having sold my Amiga 500 in 93), but I get the nostalgia fizz and that's why I watch. Thanks for the in-depth vid sir.
Even though I've got an original A500 and recently bought a console super X pro 256mb for retro nostalgia..I'm definitely getting one of these Chris..great memories of hours playing IK+..buggy boy..speedball 1 & 2 & Vvroom by Lankor my fav racing game..great vid mate and keep up the good work from East Yorkshire.. 👍
I really want one of these but my nostalgia with the A500 is graphics not so much gaming so this, being generally aimed at gaming doesn't really hold my interest as much. I need something that'll give me a complete emulated 1.3wb experience. Edit: I look forward to the Workbench LHA video, I broke down and preordered one. My nostalgia won out, I miss my A500 and after just losing 2 of my kitties in the last week to two different, and sudden unrelated issues, I need a win.
I loved this video so much and i can not wait to get my own Amiga Mini. As soon as you ran GODS that music took me right back and gave me a super big smile the Starglider tune was also so good to hear as well. Am also so happy you can up your own games on to the system b/c the one game i so want to try is Frontier: Elite II b/c lets all be honest this did not run very well at all haha. Great video as always guys and am looking forward to the workbench hack so until then take care and have a great week.
Heretical as it may be to say it, the PC version of Frontier was better. It actually had texture mapping on the ships, unlike the Amiga, albeit they tended to make it look like a mad fashion designer had carpeted the ship's exteriors!
I always love your Deep baritone voice. It’s like an old school news anchor like a Walker Cronkite, Dan Rather, or Peter Mansbridge. So many guys these days have these high-pitched voices these days, especially when they talk fast, but I like listening to your channel because you’ve got that old school smooth deep announcer style voice! Cheers! 👍✌️😊
Would love to see a deluxe version that takes SD cards through the "floppy drive". Or maybe that could be an option when they come out with the mini Atari ST.
I *highly* doubt we'll see one of those. I'm certainly not aware of any projects There's just so little interest outside of us niche loonies. Even though so many people had STs back then. :'( Case would look (even) better though!
I had 2 spectrums then the Amiga 500 and 500+, getting proper nostalgia from this, one thing I'm wondering is can it be connected to a laptop and played through the laptop screen?
Excellent review of what looks like a great product. A side note: The definition of an expert. An ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure!
A very excellent and very in-depth review indeed. I saw the length of this one and though, "Oh, wow! This is going to go into all aspects. Fantastic!" Metal Jesus and The 64-Bit Guy did their initial reviews and both were great, but this is head and shoulders above. Also, that Amiga game, Straighter 2, looks really fun! I reminds me of a cross between Star Wars the Arcade game (I don't know if you have ever played that one or not- it's alright 😎) and Shockwave Assault (Sega Saturn, PS1, PC, MAC). Definitely, one can see the difference between the Mini and a Pi and not just the obvious included mouse and controller. When you fired up Operation Wolf I was amazed because I recall playing that game in the arcade and playing it without a light gun is terrible. The mouse is not a light gun by any means, but it levels the playing field and makes the game playable. Thank you for diving deeply into this great machine for us. I know you had fun and it gave you a great dose of nostalgia, but to those of us that were C64 guys and never went beyond, it opens up some gaming doors. I am going to really try to get my hands on one of these. A side note: I had the Atari 2600 when I was about 9 or 10, then Colecovision, then the C64. After that I was interested in girls and began to play with one in particular in high school. (Imagine that!) So, I didn't own any other game systems until 1993, when I bought a Sega Genesis and a SNES. Then my journey to the Dark Side was complete! (I didn't give up the girls though- I just converted them to the Dark Side too! Buhahahahahahaaaaaaaa!)
Best thing you can do (beside the real thing) atm is a Raspberry Pi400 (the one with keyboard and mouse) and the Pimiga 2.0 system image. It has almost everything Workbech, WHDLOAD, ADF support over USB STicks... Even Fasttracker and Deluxe Paint. And you have a working keyboard and mouse. Of course its not "official". ;-)
I will certainly be buying this later on. For now I can see there are still some software issues to sort out, most notably with game timing. Damocles demonstrates that the hardware seems to have the horsepower to exceed the original Amiga's ability to do vector graphics, but Speedball was illustrating that the bitmap processing is slower than a native Amiga. You can clearly see the gauntlet tapping the thigh in the Latency vs Amiga section is noticeably faster on the native Amiga. I really enjoyed the Maxi C64 once the software had matured, so I'll wait similarly for the Amiga to pass through its beta phase.
Thanks. What were the results like playing ADoom and what were the Sysinfo results? Operation wolf played way too fast. Is there the option in advanced to enable 'Exact cycle' or something similar which slows it down to A500 / A1200 speed so it plays accurately?
I'm quite impressed by the integration level. If you can get an external USB floppy drive to work with it, I need the reference of it. I no more have my genuine Amiga but I still have the floppy disks :)
I'm pleased with mine, my favourite game is F16, I played it loads on the original Amiga and am happy it was put on the mini. Along with pinball, speedball 2 and stunt car racer.
Can’t wait for 8th of April here in Australia!! Great review and a big help in getting it out of the box and playing all that nostalgia as soon as possible!
I really wish they'd go with a cycle accurate FPGA implementation instead of emulation via the ARM CPU. I'd like to see how this runs with more demanding games (like the Psygnosis titles, etc). ?
Cost, the investor-backer will ultimately be calling the shots as they're footing the bill, an FPGA solution right now just isn't cost effective comparably to the mountains of low cost ARM-SOC solutions.
They might have made tie experience more authentic by using the "disk drive" as a micro-SD reader. You would be doing the same motions as if you were inserting a disk
Hope the full size version has workbench on it but this looks great so far. It shows what can be done if the idiots stop fighting over rights and fire their lawyers and work on a true future Amiga at some point. Can't wait to get mine ... now if only they make a Video toaster mini :D
The video toaster/ flyer I believe the code is public domain would be great if somebody wrote an emulator and compile the code. Real nostalgia! Plus some interesting old school NTSC effects!
Spotted the joystick you were using near the end for the latency test! I remember my mate getting the Konix Speedking joystick for his C64, that thing was a gamechanger! Absolutely fantastic joystick, so next gen compared to what we had at the time!
Fantastic review mate. This is by far the best review I've seen on the A500 mini. ....it's also the only one I've seen. But then, it's possibly the only one I need to see as well (given I have one on pre-order so it doesn't make any difference lol). Love your approach, and I whole heartily share your thoughts on some peoples reasons for not getting one. I've used PiMiga on a Pi400 and Chris Edwards has done an amazing job with it, but.....that's not what the A500 mini is about. As you said, it's about playing games. Set and forget. Perfect for the big TV. I'm very interested in how they've mapped controls for F16 Combat Pilot though. Have you tried it yet? It's a very complex sim with about 32 keyboard commands required so I'm not sure how they've pulled that off.
OMG, even more excited now! This is 100% living up to expectations. My ONLY regret is that the keyboard doesn't work. I would happily pay another $100 for a mod that makes the keyboard work. Also I have a USB adapter to plug in my original Kempston joystick! I really hope that works!
I have the machine and i can only say wow. I really like it. The construction materials are really good and everything just works. Well worth the money imho . The only thing i miss are some options to switch machines. I know you have the extra ram and all that but i would have liked to see something like in THE64 that you can just say switch to a VIC20. So switch from the 500 to the 1200 things like that. I would love to see the full size version and it would be even more awesome if they made extras for it like the harddrive and things like that. Full size 1200 anyone?
Just a little update for the ones that don´t know. The latest firmware now permits the use of ADF files . So i used my old wb1.3 floppys and created some ADF files from it (wb,Extra) . Runs great from it. Ah and also if you use ADF files you can actually choose the type of machine you want to run it on. (a500,a1200)
I came here as a new subscriber, I stayed for the shameless promotion of yet another tiny retro console! I smiled very broadly when I thought to myself yeah starglider 2 is great but the sample at the beginning of the original is where it’s really at! Then it was played…I salute you sir!🤣🤓
Growing up I wanted an Amiga, cartoon pack I think but parents couldn’t afford it so it was a Spectrum +2 for me! Love the video and let out a girlie squee when seeing the same joystick I had!! I reckon the best controller ever!
After getting the Amiga 2000 Remake motherboard almost a year ago and having issues trying to get parts, I decided to bite the bullet and ordered the A500 Mini recently. Can't wait for it to arrive, apparently the release date here in Australia is March 25th. I have used a Raspberry Pi and WHDLoad to play Amiga games on, and the funny thing is my nephews who are 13 and 16, and who grew up with the XBox and PC Gaming play the Pi when they come to visit me. I think something with the simplicity of the games of the 80's and early 90's draws people to it, even for those who were not around then.
I was RIGHT THERE with you on the Starglider intro, lol. I remember the first time I ever heard that, and was amazed (it was on my ST, not an Amiga though, and had never heard it play a digital file before that day).
35:23 that is a sigh of nostalgic love I know that feeling when I first got into emulated games, just took me back to a time as a kid. I got the same when I played Pinball Fantasies....
8:32 I bought my Amiga used. I had never used a mouse before. After awhile the mouse wasn't tracking right. I opened the bottom and took the ball out. The metal rollers were covered in gunk but I thought that it was like a rubber coating that was supposed to be there. It looked uneven though so I apprehensively scraped and pulled it off with tweezers. Luckily that fixed it lol.
@@RetroRecipes Hehe yeah. Did you ever beat Starglider 2? I did but I don't know how I figured it all out. I had that retail box with the floppy and the cassette of the music too, but I don't think it came with a manual.
@@Dethmeister I know I played it a ton but I don’t remember if I beat it. I was thinking of making a video called Stargliding: In search of space whales, where I might try to find them and beat the game again.
@@RetroRecipes I was just flying around exploring but I think what got me started on the game story was that I randomly tractor beamed in one of the little red speeder cars on a planet. I don't think it has to be a specific one, just the first one you get there will be a scientist driving it and he will then give you your missions that will move the game along. At least that's how I remember it.
Thanks for watching! Update: For games that run too fast I believe the JIT CPU switch I showed will solve that. Also WHDLoad is free for personal use. Have fun!
Any idea why there are more unpopulated spots for capacitors on the board?
Anyway, there are many people who looked forward to this, at least there are some good news/nice things, these times!
@@thomashenden71 its probably cause the way the boards has been designed, most boards have extra stuff but when the board is finalised it does not need that part of the board, or things have changed from how the prototype board was to this version of the board, THEC64 board is the same, its nothing major.
At 26:53.. You say `You have to pay for WHDLoad, it use to cost 15 Euro but now its free for non commercial use, I did register it years a go... easy mistake... :)
You could use it for free but it would come up with a notice about it ever time you ran a WHDLoad game, I still use my key file on my version of WHDLoad so I see my name come up and handy if you want to use a older version too, Registed to: xxxxxx, you can see it if you install a older version of WHDLoad, the reg screen will appear, I think v12 or v13, can not remember what version became free, latest version has no reg screen now, look at video 27.30, try it on a another amiga and you will see... :)
@@thomashenden71 For the future keyboard maxi version perhaps…
Support of usb joysticks like monster joysticks and simple single button digital sticks that work with UAE on PC? Liked the review.,
It's worth noting that the retail version of the A500 Mini does NOT come with the ring bound manual, most reviews don't mention this. You just get a four page quick guide. The full manual is available as a PDF from the website.
I got mine! I had an amiga as a kid. I'm now severely disabled with brain damage but I've managed to set this up fine and have been having fun! It's a great little device and I'm very happy with it!
Awesome review. I also recommend awesome video *Echa Ekranu* 😊👍
Thanks for the review, you've shown enough to warrant me keeping my amazon order as I've been on the fence about this having other options for Amiga including a real A1200 and MiSTer but for sheer plug and play simplicity and the save states along with the hardware and perfromance I think it looks well worth it and it can be a permanent fixture on the main TV without having to move stuff around.
Watched this in anticipation of my own A500 mini arriving (yes I am very, VERY late to the party. 😂). From age 11 to 16 i gamed on an A500 then an A500+ while most of my friends had Mega Drive’s and SNES’s, but there was that core group of us who had Amiga’s.
Trips to one another’s houses with a pack of blank floppy disks in one hand and X-Copy in the other were common, but now the Mini has ADF support I can finally once again enjoy signing Melli and Cantona for Milan in Champ Man Italia 93 and running absolutely riot.
Great review, great pace, very informative with a dose of good British sarcasm/humour thrown in.
After all the show it is amazing that the floppy drive is immediately recognized. A minus could be that there is not a "workbench" mode like the "basic" mode in the thec64.
Thank you for the very deep analysis with your usual irony together with high technical details (latency, comparisons ecc.).
He didn't demonstrate it actually working. it just popped up with a qr code. So not sure if it could actually load an original game from floppy or not.
I also recommend awesome video *Echa Ekranu* 😊👍
Workbench would be nice have, but that virtual keyboard would be a pain in the butt to keep bringing it up constantly.. just to show the entire area of the screen.. I suppose you can't do it any differently
Awesome review. Thanks RR for getting into all the details. Never thought we'd have so many options for the settings. Now there are only 17 days left and the magic is back. It's going to be a real hit.
I love the fact that these are coming out so us old farts can elive our youthful computer days. Never owned an amiga, I had an Atari 1020ST after my commodoe 64 was finally retired, tho. these 16 bit systems were so ahead of everything at the time. Thanks for this.
The ST was a great machine! Too bad its build-quality was cheapened to the point of suspicion. It could've been the next Windows of its day if it managed to attract some serious business apps.
After the Commodore I moved on to the Super Nintendo until 1999 when I got a PC to play Aliens vs Predator 2 and Star Trek DS9: The Fallen.
I had a cpc464 and my friend had an Amiga 500, it was insane, like having an arcade for the time.
@@KlingonCaptain Aliens vs Predator 2. One of the best games ever.
@@TheJalister Not only that but there were tons of fantastic custom fan made maps posted online. Endless game play.
I LOVE this video! Whilst I am not really a fan of the style used to present videos on this channel (the cartoon speech bubbles and general silliness, (I know most fans will hate that I have said this!), I do appreciate the time taken and skill required in editing to achieve the end result is commendable). I have watched the entire video and I am really impressed with the thoroughness of this review. The genuine love this guy has for the Amiga platform is obvious and is a joy to watch. His knowledge of the platform and his overall technical knowledge is truly impressive and the DoubleJoy mod is fantastic! I am now adding Retro Recipes to my subscription list :)
Thank you for your constructive feedback! 👍🕹️
Input latency of around 50ms will affect gameplay, you might not notice the lag directly, but controls can feel more sluggish and action games will be harder since they were designed for a system with less latency. Modern systems have higher input lag but games for those system take that lag into account, so a direct comparison can't be made. The A500 Mini latency seems to be in the same ballbark as a Raspberry Pi and the SNES/NES Minis, so if you are ok with those, you should be ok with the A500 Mini, latency wise.
snes classic is very very good.. its 43ms not 50ms.. you need to be accuarte.. this is still better than amiga on retroarch.. I will be getting the a500 mini when its released and i cannot wait
@@baarrywilliams3606 Lag will be around 50ms if you have a screen with lowish latency. I'm not saying it's bad, just that it is enough to affect gameplay to some degree. I like the fact that this thing will bring more attention to the Amiga and I hope all of you who buys one will enjoy it and all the great games available.
@@wmcmick and only with certain games.. Not everything is has lag,, in fact quite the opposite, in cases I also wished i had my Action Replay Slo-Mo..
Great job. I forgot how the Amiga made the mouse the best input device for games at the time. You are stepping up your product. I really love the Amiga, It represented the future of computers to me in '84-.. until Windows 3.1 and all that. Amiga was my first earned computer that I bought myself after my beloved C64 and introductory Timex/Sinclair 1000 (still have it working).
I researched so hard with the Atari ST, Apple Macintosh, and Apple IIgs being rivals at the time. I worked as IT/CS help for students using DEC workstations and Apple IIgs workstations.
I loved the Amiga like you wouldn't believe. The Amiga was the one computer with EVERYTHING at the time.
I would GLADLY have paid 20 quid extra to be able to put an SD card into the disk slot of the A500, who's with me on this for the next iteration?
Yes that to me, is the 1 missed opportunity.
Why bundle a CD32 gamepad with A500 since no A500 game supports more than 2-3 buttons.
Turrican 2 support 2 buttons.
When it comes to 5+ button support, they are CD32 and A1200/4000 games.
@@V3ntilator The A500 mini supports Amiga 1200 games, that might be why? Also, a controller like this might be cheaper (my guess) to make than a proper microswitch joystick and takes up less space (fact)
I agree - and it wouldnt have cost 20 quid to do :)
@@V3ntilator Many buttons on the pad are mapped to keyboard keys by the emulator.
I hope that Retro Games releases a firmware update for the A500 Mini to include Workbench as a bonus just like how they included Basic on the C64, C64 Mini, and VIC20. It would also be cool if Retro Games allowed USB floppy drive support for the A500 Mini to allow users to play their original Amiga floppy disk games on the A500 Mini.
and Action Replay MKIII support.
I want to buy it and get the extra mouse and have me and my older brother play like in the 90s .
settlers split screen on our fathers Amiga. We got 1 hour of computer game time a week if we did all our homeworks so we played alot of co-op because it was 2hours of fun that way , good memories 😋
Kind of ironic that many Amiga users back in the day looked down on the ARM based Acorn Archimedes computers and here we are today Acorn's ARM architecture is alive and well here we are with the A500 mini using the ARM Cortex A53 cpu.
@MultiMidden I believe the reason the Arc was looked down on was that it was another competitor that just divided up what was already a small chunk of the market (although it really didn't do much). It was a decent enough system (I worked with them and I've own two of them) but the only real advantage it had was it was fast at math. It's software library was sorely lacking and most of its best games were very late conversions from the Amiga with little to nothing to differentiate them. It's OS was clunky and had several rather expensive upgrades (Most of the OS is on multiple ROMS) And if you think programming in MC/Assembly on a 680x0 for the Amiga was a pain, programming on the ARM RISC chip was a whole new level of pain. I think the biggest/best game that came from the Arc to the Amiga was Top Banana, a game that is best expressed as meh. Now don't get me wrong it had potential but it was hard work for what was a very very small part of the market.
I was an Amiga user back in the day and never looked down on Archimedes. I would have loved to get one, but they were beyond my budget as a teenager. Now, as an adult, I enjoy using the Archimedes core on my MiSTer and also experimenting with RISCOS on my Raspberry Pi.
and mobile phones... what the hell were WE thinking...
Really nice detailed review. For those who say that it is basically the same as a Raspberry Pi the big difference is that this is a plug-and-play product aimed for those who don't want (or don't know how to) set up and configure one of the many emulators that are available for the Pi. A huge percent of people still thinks that Linux is hard to use / unreliable and they still don't know any other distros than Ubuntu and sadly this applies to IT professionals too so these people would not take the effort to set up a Raspberry for retro gaming. One of the many good things about emulating on a Raspberry is that you can wire up your old 9-pin joysticks (or build a brand new one for it) to the GPIO port to have the real retro controls.
This is so good thank you 😭
I'd been planning for years to make a Raspberry Pi Amiga and for once my procrastination has utterly paid off. This will be a day one buy for me.
What's the added value of this over an R. Pi for you? The enclosure that looks like the Amiga?
@@meneerjansen00 It's the same reason when I collect Transformers I buy the official Hasbro or Takara models over unofficial third party models. The branding is part of the experience. I also appreciate the plug & play nature of this product.
While I appreciate the nostalgic shape, to be honest I would have been happier with an all-new design that is reminiscent of old Amiga computers without trying to reproduce it. But I will be getting this product just the same.
Ordered my 2 weeks ago. It arrives today. I’m hyped
Just a tip about WHDLOAD. At 27:05 "Is still a very current piece of software you have to pay for to use".
WHDLOAD is provided *FREE* to the community for personal use, the "Pay for" part is because A500Mini is a COMMERCIAL product, which caused a bit of friction between Wepl (The author of WHDLOAD) and Retro LTD. As such this was resolved recently before actual launch, with terms of agreement kept under wraps between them both.
Stands to reason if WEPL gets paid a fee for each unit sold.
Just wanted to mention this because the wording in this video seems to imply that WHDLOAD is a paid for product, which it is not.
Thanks. Yeah I paid for it but that’s good to remember.
@@RetroRecipes I still have my own WHDLOAD key as well, but from day 1, WHDLOAD was fully functional without a registered key for majority of titles, but a few games required a registered key to run, of which I believe Dragon's Breath was one, but eventually WEPL removed the necessity of a key for all games, but if you have a key, WHDLOAD will still recognize the presence and still display "Registered to" in the start up screen.
There Is certain charm in your videos, which I can describe as cozy, warm familiar feeling of nostalgia 😊👍
Awesome second video! Please do a workbench video whenever you can, would love to see that as well! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one! Now, let's hope for a LARGE version, just like with the C64. 💓💓💓
Just ordered one can not wait for it to arrive.
I already have Four real Amiga's plus other retro computers all mine from new been a avid fan of your channel for years
👍
Have fun!
Great review. Happy to see how high a mark you gave it. Have had this on pre-order since it was announced, never owned an Amiga but played a friend's many times. Looking forward to it!
Fantastic video and makes me super pleased I preordered one to live with my A500, A600, A1200, CD32, A1500, CDTV and of course my C64c (and The C64 Maxi). You can never have too much Commodore!
Ha ha ha, I was also lip-syncing the Starglider 'from Rainbird'!
im 43 and started at a young age, ahhhh the 80 and 90s , always collected the old stuff and sold some of it,. ive recently decided to pick up every single mini console out,. well im blown away , love them all, and yes i do own the originals , most consoles. but have to say , these minis are ace
You know, it's wonderful that this A500 mini is being released. The Amiga interest is obviously still there. What would do it for me though would be a new full sized Amiga with a working keyboard that's actually a PC inside. Call it "The A500 2". All the Amiga stuff could be run through emulation and yet you could actually use it as a PC to run modern software, browse the internet with Chrome, play Amazon Prime and Netflix movies etc. How cool would that be?
Disclaimer. I've already pre-ordered my A500 mini.
Well... just buy a broken amiga (preferably the motherboard that's broken) remove the motherboard, get a usb adapter for the keyboard and the rest.. you can do whatever you want.. raspberry pi? Sure!, A mini Itx pc... maybe, one of those mini pc's? oh yes! just remove the casing and mount it somewhere and route some of he ports with some extension cords.
Or, you can just buy a pc and use an emulator to play Amiga games. Outcome is the same.
Today my Amiga mini arrives. I showed a few games already on Amiga Forever I installed on my pc to my kids.
They were not impressed lol
@@kelteel probablhy coz they seen AF already.?
Now that's an awesome in-depth review.
Got my a500 mini on saturday and i'm amazed how great it works, when compared with emulators on pi/xbox/pc.
Got my son into Cannon Fodder and Desert Strike, and maaaaaan, he is enjoying the hell out of it :D
It would be even cooler if it had an SD-slot where the floppy drive is or at least provided an upgrade path for one. Given the effort they went through to mimic the keyboard, it might have been worthwhile to make the keys actuate even if they don't register. The assembly would add to the cost, but I would leave it up to the customer.
with the floppy eject button connected via a simple rocker bar to the SD pushes it outward and pushing it in forces the SD back out?
@@LuciferStarr Yes! In fact, a full size SD card even looks like a small 3 1/2 floppy.
It's amazing the amount of mini consoles and computers that are coming out now. I really enjoyed your presentation of this video, your voice is very soothing and your dogs are very cute! 😍 😊 🐕
Brilliant video. I was gifted at christmas just gone TheA500 MINI from my amazing and kind wife. It has joined my collection (So far) of my Commodore C16, my TheC64 MAXI and my own build of what i like to call my A1200 "FrankenPi". Your review is both informative and well presented. Awesome stuff :)
I've become pretty interested in the technical aspect of displays in recent years and even bought a lag tester (I sell TVs and like to know their lag results just for the sake of knowing). You raised a very good point here which I'd never considered before.
Obviously a CRT has to draw the frame, which as you point out, takes around 8ms to draw to the centre at 60Hz (where lag results are taken). Many CRT enthusiasts will say CRTs have zero latency (in milliseconds) but they don't account for the time it takes to draw a frame. So if you take a flat panel with 16ms latency at 60Hz (pretty respectable), they'll present it as being 16ms slower than the CRT, not 8ms.
I'm actually kind of annoyed now, partially at myself for not realising this sooner and also at CRT enthusiasts for presenting information in a way that's misleading and exaggerates the benefit of gaming on a CRT. If sub 20ms response is acceptable for head mounted displays so as not to feel any disconnect (which leads to nausea) 8ms should be right at the limits of human perception and many complaints are more than likely a result of placebo. It's like people that complain about guitar modellers and how they're difficult to play when they have 2ms lag, yet they have no issue playing a real amp when you ask them to take two steps backwards (sound travels at approximately 1 foot per millisecond).
All that said, it would be nice if they managed to get it down to two frames just to bring the total under 40ms. I do like to keep latency as low as possible as much for peace of mind as anything else. While I'm not claiming to detect very small amounts of latency, I do acknowledge the fact that any amount of lag does reduce the amount of time you have to react and that it's cumulative. I try to avoid Bluetooth controllers because it's one way to easily cut out a source of latency. I don't share the deep hatred for cables that the whole world has seemingly developed over the past couple of decades and it's one less thing I have to charge.
Remember though with pretty much all flat panel lcd/tft displays, that latency listed is for certain colours only. Also latency is much worse when something is moving on screen or you have a scrolling image. Also at anything other than native resolution latency goes quite a bit up as well and on some tvs or monitors that latency is very high.
There is so much more that affects actual real life latency on those flat panels.
@@bloxyman22 Aren't you more talking about pixel response and motion resolution rather than input latency? CRTs certainly have better motion resolution because flat panels use sample and hold rather than continuously drawing alternating scan line fields like a CRT does. CRT isn't without its issues though. On high contrast images you can get phosphor trails and the geometry on most consumer sets isn't great whereas it's pretty much perfect on flat panels.
I mentioned that I have a lag tester. Every TV I've tested has showed less than a milliseconds difference between 720p and 1080p resolutions when the TV is in game mode. Most results I've seen posted online cover 1080p and 4K performance (my tester doesn't do 4K) and there's normally very little difference. I think there was probably a time when upscaling incurred a bigger penalty, but it seems that it's not really an issue with most modern TVs (in game mode). Deinterlacing makes a difference and analogue inputs take longer due to conversion. Perhaps upscaling from lower resolutions than 720p would take longer, but I'd personally avoid it if possible anyway and use an external scaler because modern TV upscaling algorithms don't seem well suited to upscaling very low resolutions, especially retro games.
In theory, you could design a self emissive display like an OLED or micro LED that draws its image in a similar manner to a CRT (though you'd still have the scaling limitation of a fixed pixel grid). Due to the near instant pixel response times, you'd have a display that has CRT like motion resolution without the issue of phosphor glow (though you could emulate it if desired). I'm just not sure how difficult it would be both physically and processing-wise to achieve this and I doubt TV manufacturers have any interest because it would likely only appeal to a niche crowd.
Yeah, the whole "CRT has no latency" thing comes from the early days of Flatscreens when they had quite a bit more latency to them. They also had more issues with the displaying black back then as well
However, Flatscreens have gotten much better. That being said, I do still have a CRT, as most of the complaints against CRT's aren't that valid either
I do also prefer wires to wireless... as there is an upper limit to how much wireless devices you can have in a single area... and I've gone above that limit as a constant thing to being done. There isn't a word for it--and calling it "collision domains" or "cross talk" just has people thinking you are crazy... even though, you put enough devices operating on a wireless connection of sort (be it IR, Blueray, WiFi, etc.) next to each other--and they will generally stop working
emulation will always exhibit some kind of lag and this is low enough for me.. with the easy customisation this will be a very good system.. hoping retroarch comes to it also
Only thing to add is that for older games and sytems (not Amiga probably), 'racing the beam' was a something developers would do. This can give you lower latency, as you know where the beam is on the screen, and you can then blit to areas of the screen just below that.
this is becoming my favorite channel, my amiga 500 and c128 got stolen when someone broke into my house in the late 90s have to raise a family and pay bills so I cannot afford an amiga mini yet, I want one really bad, I'll get there, I got the c64 mini though, it was only 40 bucks, this one is like 130 imma go to orange county to the micro center soon though and see if they have one just to see and see how much they are.
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️ Dewit!
What an awesome machine. I bought my Amiga 500 back in 1990. If you compared the Amiga with a standard PC at the time, the Amiga easily stood out as the far superior PC. Is that a working 1084S monitor? Also, the Amiga was the first computer I had that had a harddrive. I remember paying an eye-watering $600+ US for a 20 Megabyte harddrive. Awesome un-boxing and review!!
Amiga was 10 years ahead of the competition with a preemptive multitasking os. I have great memories of this era. And this was my first steps into assembly programming, playing with copper bars, star fields, scrolltexts and background MOD music :) I still have one 68k assembly listing lying around.
kinda strange... you see new tech like HDMI on a A500 mini connect using an adapter to original Amiga CRT screen for that 'nostalgic-ness', yet when you don't have HDMI at the source, you want to upscale it to get HDMI output
😆 i like how people go for that.
Mine came in yesterday. I was so excited! It only lasted about 25 minutes until something let the smoke out. 😞 Replacement arriving Friday. 😎 Great review, BTW. Thanks for showing the insides.
Wow sorry to hear that!
Great review, informative & your love of anything Commodore always shines through but I know you will give a balanced review.
As much as I like these reviews & your recent content I do have to say I'm regretting the apparent move away from what made this TH-cam channel great. I am talking about the refurbs, fixing old kit, creative builds & solutions, the nuts & bolts stuff. Just seeing you with an open computer & a soldering iron. Like I said the newer content is good but it feels like you are putting things like the KITT episodes & more presenter show format stuff (monthly recipodes etc) before the content that got the channel famous. Not criticism & I'm obviously aware that things need to evolve & I'll always be a subscriber, just a wish to see you doing your stuff like refurbs more often again. 👍
I think from recent donations we will have at least one C128 restoration/resurrection coming up.
I'm liking the retro content, the name is on the front page. Next up: a life sized folding Optimus Prime Transformer truck 👍 just try to recreate that odd transforming sound they used. Or substitute eee-ooo-eee-ooo-eee-ooo in its place.
It was my birthday yesterday, and being in my late 50's the amiga, spectrum and zx81 will always be a great memory. I think I know what I'm going to buy myself out of my birthday money....Shame I'll have to wait till April 8th in the UK for delivery but can see myself being excited as you were when it arrives.
The "with bluetooth gamepad" on the PC latency is important here. Bluetooth has lots of latency. The comparison cable vs cable would be a bit (haha) more fair. That being said, the A500 Mini is still an amazing mashine!
So cute! I can't wait to see someone get Workbench running on it.
Great video. I’ve come straight over from the 8-Bit Guys video of the retail unit. Looks good, great attention to detail but I do think it’s a little overpriced compared to other single board computer options.
I suppose I’m spoiled by the OG A1200 I still have.
It will be very interesting to see how well Workbench 1.2/1.3 work on the system, I suppose it would depend on what kickstart ROM(s) they have on the system.
I was thinking about it since it was announced. But this video made me go and finaly order one! Thanks
I feel like if they ever do an actual full size one like for the C64, it would definitely need to have a non hacky way to boot into Workbench and include more than just games.
Games alone don't do the Amiga justice
Pro Tracker 2.0
The Amiga 500/500+ was never meant to be a games console.. but if you keep the mini with these 'limitations' on games only as 'marketed for', you only pushing more people towards proper emulation anyway like WinUAE with fuller feature sets.
The only limitation to that is, you don't have HDMI that is plug and play.
My favourite Amiga game was the platformer Leander by Psygnosis, but it seems to be quite obscure now. I remember a very happy Christmas 91 with it (my mate having had a magazine demo of it first) - I still have the intro music on my (aging) iPod Nano - it's fantastic. Happy days indeed. I'm a bit older than you, but I too get the nostalgia difference between 8 and 16 bit. How quickly I moved on to the SNES, a 486DX33 PC and then the PlayStation etc. (having sold my Amiga 500 in 93), but I get the nostalgia fizz and that's why I watch. Thanks for the in-depth vid sir.
To slow down the games, turn off JIT. That's what speeds them up beyond playability sometimes
Even though I've got an original A500 and recently bought a console super X pro 256mb for retro nostalgia..I'm definitely getting one of these Chris..great memories of hours playing IK+..buggy boy..speedball 1 & 2 & Vvroom by Lankor my fav racing game..great vid mate and keep up the good work from East Yorkshire.. 👍
I really want one of these but my nostalgia with the A500 is graphics not so much gaming so this, being generally aimed at gaming doesn't really hold my interest as much. I need something that'll give me a complete emulated 1.3wb experience.
Edit: I look forward to the Workbench LHA video, I broke down and preordered one. My nostalgia won out, I miss my A500 and after just losing 2 of my kitties in the last week to two different, and sudden unrelated issues, I need a win.
So sorry about your kitties. I know exactly what you mean. Lost one recently after an illness and another has me worried right now. Distractions help.
I loved this video so much and i can not wait to get my own Amiga Mini. As soon as you ran GODS that music took me right back and gave me a super big smile the Starglider tune was also so good to hear as well. Am also so happy you can up your own games on to the system b/c the one game i so want to try is Frontier: Elite II b/c lets all be honest this did not run very well at all haha. Great video as always guys and am looking forward to the workbench hack so until then take care and have a great week.
Heretical as it may be to say it, the PC version of Frontier was better. It actually had texture mapping on the ships, unlike the Amiga, albeit they tended to make it look like a mad fashion designer had carpeted the ship's exteriors!
I've never really been interested in the mini range; but this one... Must have!
I always love your Deep baritone voice. It’s like an old school news anchor like a Walker Cronkite, Dan Rather, or Peter Mansbridge. So many guys these days have these high-pitched voices these days, especially when they talk fast, but I like listening to your channel because you’ve got that old school smooth deep announcer style voice! Cheers! 👍✌️😊
Would love to see a deluxe version that takes SD cards through the "floppy drive". Or maybe that could be an option when they come out with the mini Atari ST.
I *highly* doubt we'll see one of those. I'm certainly not aware of any projects There's just so little interest outside of us niche loonies. Even though so many people had STs back then. :'( Case would look (even) better though!
@@MagikGimp Never say never. The C64 mini sold well enough to justify them making the Maxi version. Anything is possible.
I would like that mini St
I just love your vids so much. Just pre-ordered the A500 5 days ago, this video came perfect :)
I had 2 spectrums then the Amiga 500 and 500+, getting proper nostalgia from this, one thing I'm wondering is can it be connected to a laptop and played through the laptop screen?
Excellent review of what looks like a great product.
A side note: The definition of an expert. An ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure!
A very excellent and very in-depth review indeed. I saw the length of this one and though, "Oh, wow! This is going to go into all aspects. Fantastic!" Metal Jesus and The 64-Bit Guy did their initial reviews and both were great, but this is head and shoulders above. Also, that Amiga game, Straighter 2, looks really fun! I reminds me of a cross between Star Wars the Arcade game (I don't know if you have ever played that one or not- it's alright 😎) and Shockwave Assault (Sega Saturn, PS1, PC, MAC).
Definitely, one can see the difference between the Mini and a Pi and not just the obvious included mouse and controller. When you fired up Operation Wolf I was amazed because I recall playing that game in the arcade and playing it without a light gun is terrible. The mouse is not a light gun by any means, but it levels the playing field and makes the game playable. Thank you for diving deeply into this great machine for us. I know you had fun and it gave you a great dose of nostalgia, but to those of us that were C64 guys and never went beyond, it opens up some gaming doors. I am going to really try to get my hands on one of these.
A side note: I had the Atari 2600 when I was about 9 or 10, then Colecovision, then the C64. After that I was interested in girls and began to play with one in particular in high school. (Imagine that!) So, I didn't own any other game systems until 1993, when I bought a Sega Genesis and a SNES. Then my journey to the Dark Side was complete! (I didn't give up the girls though- I just converted them to the Dark Side too! Buhahahahahahaaaaaaaa!)
Excellent Review Perifractic! I already pre-ordered one. I can't wait for it to arrive.
Best thing you can do (beside the real thing) atm is a Raspberry Pi400 (the one with keyboard and mouse) and the Pimiga 2.0 system image. It has almost everything Workbech, WHDLOAD, ADF support over USB STicks... Even Fasttracker and Deluxe Paint. And you have a working keyboard and mouse. Of course its not "official". ;-)
Yours is THE most comfortable channel on youtube ! Thank you for that ! 😊
It would be interesting to see Amiga demos run on the Amiga Mini... throw some Space Balls at it! 😁👍
Another superb Video again!! well put together everything just flowed and you make it so interesting, Keep up the good work! Best review yet !
Thank you for your kind words! Means a lot 👍🕹️
Love it!
It would have been cute to have a SD card reader in the floppy drive.
Shadow of the Beast is what sold me on buying an Amiga 500.
I have an A1200 but my first Amiga was an A500, I am holding out for an A500 Maxi. Hope they do one of those!
They said some time back, if the mini sells well enough there will be a Maxi, hopefully Koch media stands by the product.
@@leeboy2k1 Fingers crossed, I got TheC64 Maxi, would be nice if more systems came out. I would be collecting the lot!
I will certainly be buying this later on. For now I can see there are still some software issues to sort out, most notably with game timing. Damocles demonstrates that the hardware seems to have the horsepower to exceed the original Amiga's ability to do vector graphics, but Speedball was illustrating that the bitmap processing is slower than a native Amiga. You can clearly see the gauntlet tapping the thigh in the Latency vs Amiga section is noticeably faster on the native Amiga. I really enjoyed the Maxi C64 once the software had matured, so I'll wait similarly for the Amiga to pass through its beta phase.
Thanks. What were the results like playing ADoom and what were the Sysinfo results?
Operation wolf played way too fast. Is there the option in advanced to enable 'Exact cycle' or something similar which slows it down to A500 / A1200 speed so it plays accurately?
Thanx for the great review as always, now looking forward even more for April when my mini arrives 🤓
I'm quite impressed by the integration level. If you can get an external USB floppy drive to work with it, I need the reference of it. I no more have my genuine Amiga but I still have the floppy disks :)
I'm pleased with mine, my favourite game is F16, I played it loads on the original Amiga and am happy it was put on the mini. Along with pinball, speedball 2 and stunt car racer.
The Amiga has always been amazing :-) Hopefully there will be a version which supports Workbench in the future.
Surprised it doesn't really considering the C64 supports basic. I would love to mess about with the text to speech of the A500 again. :P
Sadly, the Amiga's kernel was very unreliable, hence the dreaded "Guru meditation error."
Can’t wait for 8th of April here in Australia!! Great review and a big help in getting it out of the box and playing all that nostalgia as soon as possible!
I think they should've put an SD card slot (full-sized) where the "floppy drive slot" is.
I am so hyped for this I keep coming back to rewatch this video! lol
I really wish they'd go with a cycle accurate FPGA implementation instead of emulation via the ARM CPU. I'd like to see how this runs with more demanding games (like the Psygnosis titles, etc). ?
I would love to see them do that with the maxi. Also love if it was possible to use original input devices.
Cost, the investor-backer will ultimately be calling the shots as they're footing the bill, an FPGA solution right now just isn't cost effective comparably to the mountains of low cost ARM-SOC solutions.
11:30 BTW, what you hear is Björk. She was once interviewed and talked about the marvels of the computer/circuits.
They might have made tie experience more authentic by using the "disk drive" as a micro-SD reader. You would be doing the same motions as if you were inserting a disk
I can’t wrap my head around why this wasn’t done. Let’s hope they do it for any maxi that might be released.
I've ordered one. Love Worms, and Project X. I used to work on Amiga games. I was a graphic artist for a lot of the Activision games.
Nice review! I'm curious as to how it behaves with some demoscene productions. Have you tried any?
Loved the video so much. Thankyou for posting. Nice to see someone else experiencing the same nostalgia :)
Hope the full size version has workbench on it but this looks great so far. It shows what can be done if the idiots stop fighting over rights and fire their lawyers and work on a true future Amiga at some point. Can't wait to get mine ... now if only they make a Video toaster mini :D
The video toaster/ flyer I believe the code is public domain would be great if somebody wrote an emulator and compile the code. Real nostalgia! Plus some interesting old school NTSC effects!
Spotted the joystick you were using near the end for the latency test! I remember my mate getting the Konix Speedking joystick for his C64, that thing was a gamechanger! Absolutely fantastic joystick, so next gen compared to what we had at the time!
Fantastic review mate. This is by far the best review I've seen on the A500 mini. ....it's also the only one I've seen. But then, it's possibly the only one I need to see as well (given I have one on pre-order so it doesn't make any difference lol). Love your approach, and I whole heartily share your thoughts on some peoples reasons for not getting one. I've used PiMiga on a Pi400 and Chris Edwards has done an amazing job with it, but.....that's not what the A500 mini is about. As you said, it's about playing games. Set and forget. Perfect for the big TV. I'm very interested in how they've mapped controls for F16 Combat Pilot though. Have you tried it yet? It's a very complex sim with about 32 keyboard commands required so I'm not sure how they've pulled that off.
Thanks! F16 is well mapped 👍🕹️
Straight away I love that the HDMI cable is Amiga beige 😊
Brilliant video 😀👍I'm going to buy the A500 mini. I also recommend a video on my channel *Echa Ekranu* 😀👍
Awesome video, looking forward to.mine coming tomorrow and playing Stunt Car Racer!
When you measure the latency, you should also consider the latency of the RS232USB converter.
I did. It’s 0.2ms. Not even worth factoring.
I got mine yesterday, it's awesome. I'd love to see a dedicated video from you about setting up Workbench. :D
This is my first time discovering you channel and I very much enjoyed this video
Welcome!
This is the review I've been waiting for! Thank you so much!
I'm actually friends on facebook with the guy that did the music for the worms games as well as alien breed, incredible musician and great guy
Bjorn? Yep he actually helped out on a video. Search up my Witchwood video. Amazing musician.
OMG, even more excited now! This is 100% living up to expectations. My ONLY regret is that the keyboard doesn't work. I would happily pay another $100 for a mod that makes the keyboard work.
Also I have a USB adapter to plug in my original Kempston joystick! I really hope that works!
Stay tuned!
@@RetroRecipes Already subbed and waiting in anticipation :)
Awesome video I can’t get over how good it looks getting mine soon can’t wait 🤗
I have the machine and i can only say wow. I really like it. The construction materials are really good and everything just works.
Well worth the money imho . The only thing i miss are some options to switch machines. I know you have the extra ram and all that but i would have liked to see something like in THE64 that you can just say switch to a VIC20. So switch from the 500 to the 1200 things like that. I would love to see the full size version and it would be even more awesome if they made extras for it like the harddrive and things like that. Full size 1200 anyone?
Just a little update for the ones that don´t know. The latest firmware now permits the use of ADF files . So i used my old wb1.3 floppys and created some ADF files from it (wb,Extra) . Runs great from it. Ah and also if you use ADF files you can actually choose the type of machine you want to run it on. (a500,a1200)
I came here as a new subscriber,
I stayed for the shameless promotion of yet another tiny retro console!
I smiled very broadly when I thought to myself yeah starglider 2 is great but the sample at the beginning of the original is where it’s really at!
Then it was played…I salute you sir!🤣🤓
Growing up I wanted an Amiga, cartoon pack I think but parents couldn’t afford it so it was a Spectrum +2 for me! Love the video and let out a girlie squee when seeing the same joystick I had!! I reckon the best controller ever!
After getting the Amiga 2000 Remake motherboard almost a year ago and having issues trying to get parts, I decided to bite the bullet and ordered the A500 Mini recently. Can't wait for it to arrive, apparently the release date here in Australia is March 25th. I have used a Raspberry Pi and WHDLoad to play Amiga games on, and the funny thing is my nephews who are 13 and 16, and who grew up with the XBox and PC Gaming play the Pi when they come to visit me. I think something with the simplicity of the games of the 80's and early 90's draws people to it, even for those who were not around then.
I think the Australia date got pushed back to April 8th. At least on EB it says 8th now
Your dog adores you, look at him looking at you ☺️Man’s best friend.
Brill review 👍
I was RIGHT THERE with you on the Starglider intro, lol. I remember the first time I ever heard that, and was amazed (it was on my ST, not an Amiga though, and had never heard it play a digital file before that day).
35:23 that is a sigh of nostalgic love
I know that feeling when I first got into emulated games, just took me back to a time as a kid. I got the same when I played Pinball Fantasies....
How did you connect the old monitor thru hdmi?
8:32 I bought my Amiga used. I had never used a mouse before. After awhile the mouse wasn't tracking right. I opened the bottom and took the ball out. The metal rollers were covered in gunk but I thought that it was like a rubber coating that was supposed to be there. It looked uneven though so I apprehensively scraped and pulled it off with tweezers. Luckily that fixed it lol.
A monthly job that!
@@RetroRecipes Hehe yeah. Did you ever beat Starglider 2? I did but I don't know how I figured it all out. I had that retail box with the floppy and the cassette of the music too, but I don't think it came with a manual.
@@Dethmeister I know I played it a ton but I don’t remember if I beat it. I was thinking of making a video called Stargliding: In search of space whales, where I might try to find them and beat the game again.
@@RetroRecipes I was just flying around exploring but I think what got me started on the game story was that I randomly tractor beamed in one of the little red speeder cars on a planet. I don't think it has to be a specific one, just the first one you get there will be a scientist driving it and he will then give you your missions that will move the game along. At least that's how I remember it.