No, your eyes do not deceive you! The 80’s gaming powerhouse & icon, the Commodore Amiga 500 is finally receiving its own mini console! After the NES, SNES and PS1 Mini Classics, it was only a matter of time until the Amiga joined the mini fray!
Much like its aforementioned competitors, the Amiga 500 classic is a smaller imitator of the original 80’s computer with a selection of classic Amiga games already installed within it.
The Amiga 500 stood out amongst the console titans of the late 80s & early 90s for not being a console at all but a home computer that excelled in running videogames.
Whilst not hugely successful in Japan or America, this funky home computer was hugely popular in Europe, rivaling both the Mega Drive and SNES in terms of sales. However, due to its lack of worldwide success, it’s sadly become more of an overlooked and underrated retro classic in recent years.
Personally, as massive Amiga 500 fans, we’re overjoyed that this gaming gadget is finally receiving the recognition it deserves, with its new mini iteration storing an impressive library of some of the best and most beloved Amiga titles: from Worms and Battle Chess, to ATR: All Terrain Racing and even Another World, one of the many games which we’ve covered in our Button Bashers series of videos where we explore (almost) the entire Amiga 500 library.
This announcement comes as yet another piece of recent Commodore-related news, given the recent Turrican Compilation and Zool remaster appearing this year.
The Amiga 500 mini is being developed by Retro Games, the same company which brought us the C64 Mini!
The original Amiga 500’s sound chips and custom graphics were incredibly impressive for the time it came out, and the A500 Mini looks set to faithfully emulate the Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) of the later A500 models, as well as the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) chip of the A1200 model.
The mini console comes set with a 2-button mouse and an 8-button gamepad and you’ll even be able to plug a PC keyboard into it too, as the keyboard that comes with the mini console is purely just cosmetic.
25 games are planned for inclusion in the A500 mini library, with 12 already announced; not including the 4 titles already mentioned above, the console will also include Speedball 2, Kick Off 2, Alien Breed 3D, Cadaver, Kick Off 2, Pinball Dreams, Simon The Sorcerer, The Chaos Engine and Zool: Ninja Of The “Nth” Dimension.
Anyone who’s watched our Button Bashers series will know that we’re very eager to hopefully see the likes of Lionheart, Bubble Bobble, Chuck Rock, Pang and Magic Pockets join the list too! Though we’re also praying that titles like James Pond hopefully get left behind in the voids of obscurity.
The Amiga 500 Mini will be released in early 2022 for £119.99. More announcements and games are expected to be announced later throughout 2021!
Will you be getting yourself an Amiga 500 Mini? What other Amiga classics do you want to see make it into the mini version? Let us know in the comments below!
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