Amiga 500 mini console announced with Worms and Chaos Engine

The Amiga 500 finally returns (pic: Retro Games)

It’s been a long time coming but the Commodore Amiga is finally getting its own mini console, including some of its top games.

If you were into video games in the UK during the late 80s and early 90s then there’s a good chance you don’t own a console at all, but instead an Amiga 500 or Atari ST.

These home computers were not particularly popular in the US, and all but unknown in Japan, but in Europe they were hugely successful and just as important as the Mega Drive and SNES. But because of their lack of worldwide success, they’ve been increasingly forgotten even as retro gaming in general has become bigger and bigger.

They’ve not been entirely wiped from history though, thanks to the recent Turrican compilation, the upcoming Zool remaster, and now something fans have been hoping for, for a long time: an Amiga mini console.

There have been mini ‘consoles’ of home computers before, but only the 8-bit Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64. The A500 Mini has just been announced by Retro Games, who made The C64 Mini, and is a fully licensed version of the original 1987 Amiga 500, which boasted a 16/32-bit CPU and a now comical 512KB of RAM.

The Amiga’s custom graphics and sound chips punched well above their weight class though and the A500 Mini will also emulate the Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) of later variants and the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) chip of the A1200 model.

The console will also come with a replica 2-button mouse and an eight-button gamepad, although at the time most people would’ve just been using a one-button joystick. It’s not clear yet how much functionality it will have beyond playing games but you can plug in a PC keyboard as the mini one is just for show.

The console will include 25 games, of which 12 have been announced so far. There are some classics on there, like Speedball 2, Another World, and Kick Off 2 but naturally there are plenty of others that fans will be hoping for, like Rainbow Islands, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder, Flashblack, Sensible Soccer, Lotus Turbo Challenge, and Starglider 2.

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If there are any glaring gaps you can upload your own files, games, and firmware but that starts to get into legal grey areas that are the bane of retro gaming, especially for obscure formats like this.

The A500 Mini will be released in early 2022 for £119.99 and we’ll have more on it as the other games are announced.

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MORE : Amiga classic Zool is getting a modern day remaster this month

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