A500 mini Review - Part 1
It has been 1 week now
since it’s official release which has given a lot of people a lot
of time to review the A500 mini. We have seen a lot of very
professional YouTube video makers in their offices, workrooms and
studios make exceedingly good videos containing a great deal of
content, I have watched Dan Wood, Retro Recipes just to name 2 and
read a lot of very good blogs, now it is my turn.
What type of technology
is this, a computer, a console or a toy? Well you can attach a
working keyboard therefore it must be a computer however you can
attach Xbox or PlayStation controllers therefore it must be a console
or you could say it is light enough to be taken round to a friends
house to play with for a while in which case it’s a toy. Whatever
label you give it it will surely offend someone but delight many.
I see the word “Amiga”
attached to this in so many searches online but can we really call it
that? I’m not going to try and make my way through trying to guess
who owns the name at this moment but I run emulation of many types a
lot on one of my laptops, Amiga Forever, AmiKit and recently a PS3
emulator, none of this makes my laptop an Amiga or a PS3 or does it?
I have another laptop, E.M.M.A. (Emulated Machine, My Amiga). which
boots directly into Amiga OS4.1fe and I call this my Amiga laptop.
Whether it’s an
officially licensed Amiga product or not I believe most can agree
that it will always be called an Amiga mini.
I can say I was very
excited to open the nice package that I received and was very eager
to review, however life got in the way as usually does with this sort
of thing, not to worry though here it is now with many photos
including, what seems to have become a very important photo, the one
of the serial number underneath.
I can honestly say I
have not played with it endlessly and tried to get Workbench and
Deluxe Paint working, I have just played some of the games and
downloaded over 200 WHDLoad games to see how they played.
But first, lets start
with what’s in the box, once out of the brown paper I found a bold
and nicely printed box closely resembling the “Cartoon Classics”
bundle from 1992, could this be a nod to a 30 year anniversary? On
opening the box the machine is immediately visible covered with a
nice transparent, moulded piece of plastic. My heart is now racing
and I want to dig deeper.
Lifting the keyboard
out and the tray that it sits on I find two red boxes one with a
outline of a tank mouse and one with an outline of a joypad, each box
contains that which is printed, one mouse and one joypad, I also
found an HDMI lead and a USB to USB-C lead. I also had a lovely flash
drive in the shape of a floppy disc.
I can't wait to spend
more time with this beautiful machine and play more with the 263
WHDLoad games I've already downloaded. My short time using it I have
already found that I am not keen on a controller with a D-Pad and
much prefer a thumb stick or a joystick so I need to find an
appropriate controller or a joystick.
More to follow once I
have spent more time with the right controller that suits me. Also plenty of pictures to add.
Michael Holmes
