Which minis do you have and what's your use case for them?

◉◉maru

docky I love the Amiga but this selection of software is not doing it for me.

As with their previous effort, it should be noted that the console(!) is advertised as an open platform and not protected against people adding their own games via USB stick. It also claims to be compatible with Amiga 500, 600 and 1200 games.

Not sure about the control config, good question! I would have thought miserable controls and obstinacy to use up for jumps was a necessary part of the Amiga experience.

Also featuring Insert Credit’s nemesis Zool.

rejj

I just looked up the titles on the A500 mini:

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: Ninja Of The Nth Dimension

With another 13 yet to be announced.

Even though the Amiga was decently popular/successful here, I don’t have a lot of particular nostalgia for the A500 itself. A large number of the games on the Amiga were cross platform with IBM PC-Compatible, and while my some of my friends and neighbours had Amigas I played most of the same games on their DOS ports. Sure, these people would always tell me about how the Amiga version was better, and would constantly tell me about the “superior parallax scrolling” … but my real nostalgia hit for this era is for DOS and not the A500.

I hope some of those TBA 13 are Gods and Moonstone.

LeFish

It’s cool that this thing exists, or will exist. As a kid I only knew one person with an Amiga and whenever I went to his house we were always instead playing on his SNES or Saturn - I don’t think I ever actually played his Amiga!

I suppose, like rejj I ended up playing the DOS ports or other rereleases of these games, and don’t really have any inclination to want to revisit them or, for one reason or another, dip in and out of them for a not-insignificant £120. Other than what I have on contemporary systems I still have half of the Mega Drive Mini and most of the PC Engine Mine catalogues to go through, the latter I’m much more intrigued about exploring.

Kimimi

I’m happy to see the Amiga Mini exist but I’m holding off on buying one myself until the full game list’s been released. A £120 device filled with £20ish games isn’t great value when you’ve already got a working A500 at home - I could just use that money to buy (more) original Amiga discs - but if there’s at least one £100+ game on there then it becomes something I’d consider owning.

◉◉maru

Kimimi Isn’t it tricky to handle the 50Hz screen frequency of an original Amiga game from Japan? Did you bring the original CRT with you? Does this get resolved anyway by plugging old computers on more modern screens with adaptive frequency? _Do _you _live _in _a _magical _KimimiLand _where _you _have _access _to _thousands _of _games _and _voltages _and _frequencies _and _aspect _ratios _at _all _time _in _all _the _rooms _and _some _humanoid _rabbit _butler _brings _you _tea _when _you _snap _your _fingers?

Kimimi

◉◉maru I live in the UK, which instantly solves all of those potential 50Hz hurdles! I remember the A1200 we had as a kid had a 60Hz option in Workbench, although as I was young and most of the Amiga games we played were by Europeans and for European hardware it never really felt useful.

Oh and I do indeed live in a magical KimimiLand although the rabbit butler has been replaced by a man around my age of equal tea-bringing expertise :D

docky

Kimimi KimimiLand

Now imagining a ‘Super Kimimiland’ game which was only released on PCFX and sold exclusively as a curry promotion with CoCo Ichibanya.

gsk

Just based on the games that were featured on THEC64 Mini & non-Mini, I wouldn’t expect any extravagant licensing gets or deep cuts on the software side, but they might throw in a recent homebrew game or two.

rejj

Well dang, this sucks

JoJoestar

Does it have ENEMY otherwise I’m not interested

Nemoide

I have a bunch of minis: NES, SNES, and Turbografx all because I don’t own a lot of games for NES nor do I have a SNES/Turbografx at all and like having a simple plug & play solution with a curated collection of the best games with an authentic-style controller. The fact that I can use the Nintendo controllers with Wii Virtual Console was another big plus. Yes, I know I could build an emulation box but I usually get indecisive and freeze up if I see a list of 1000+ games, they have what I want to play the most and that’s good enough for me!

I have the Shonen Jump Famicom Mini because I just think it’s very cool even though the games are bad, unfortunately the tiny controller makes it a bit of a pain to play. It’s really dumb but I kind of love it for reasons that don’t make sense.
The Astro City Mini is similarly VERY COOL even though it’s a bit awkward to play on and has some emulation. I’ll probably never be able to get a REAL Astro City cab, but it’s a fun toy with some cool games.

The Sega Genesis Mini… I guess I mostly got it out of a sense of loyalty for Sega and curiosity about the official releases for Tetris and Darius. I realized after getting it that I vastly prefer playing on a real cartridge on my CRT though. But having a small Sega Genesis and a USB controller is neat.

Oh, I’ve also got the Game Gear Mini that came with the deluxe Aleste collection. It’s an impressive little toy but is also too awkward to play on seriously.

Hermon_Cone

Surprised to not see much discussion of the Astro City Mini!
I was thrilled to hold a new piece of Sega Plastic in my hands after all these years. (Even if it is “Sega Toys / made in China”)

The reason I had to have this is.. well, my Mac doesn’t run MAME too well for some reason and I’m really psyched to play the arcade versions of many of these games - Shinobi, VF, Revenge of Death Adder and Rad Mobile come to mind.

I’m lucky to have a friend in Japan that could snag the mini cab and arcade stick for me. The arcade stick is the real star here in my opinion.

Now that I think about it though, it’s been a while since I turned it on…

◉◉maru

Hermon_Cone Surprised to not see much discussion of the Astro City Mini!

Well, it wasn’t out when this thread had initially ended (July 2020). The Astro City Mini was announced on that same month and released in Japan in December 2020.

I ended up not playing the Astro City Mini very much. I bought it because I have fondness for the Astro City itself and I am a sucker for Sega but these were not the arcade games I grew up with, nor the titles I (nor really anyone should really) associate with the Astro City.

Regarding the games lineup, it’s mainly late 80s, System16 games and a few System32 titles. Many of these are great games but just a few years ahead of my arcade experience (F3, CPS, CPS-II, MVS, ST-V, Model 2, System22 etc.). I do know most of these titles thanks to the home ports on the Mega Drive, but the home ports ended up being very different games! So I don’t really feel nostalgia for the arcade versions, and I would argue some of the home versions were better games too (Shadow Dancer, E-SWAT especially).

Regarding the line-up’s lack of cognitive association with the Astro City, it’s not a huge deal but it slightly bothers me that very few of these games were actually played on the Astro City Mini. They would have made sense on an Aero City Mini. So that also doesn’t help. I did have a nice time playing those rarely seen System32 games and I am not giving up getting hardcore into Flicky one day or something random like that. The cabinet is still plugged on my office’s desk.

I think the Egret II Mini fixes both issues I had with the Astro City Mini. On a personal level, it has more arcade games that I knew and enjoyed back then. And It has way more games that were actually in operation when the Egret II was a thing. The optional panel is insane, and I love the effort of adapting the rotating CRT. So I am very confident in the Egret II despite my mixed experience with the Astro.

I also ended up not playing the Mega Drive Mini very much, mainly because of a very specific issue: I personally find their fake CRT filter unbearable compared to the other Mini consoles. I think I should just plug it to a smaller screen with an unfiltered image output but I don’t have any small HDMI screen at the present. It might also be the only console where I kinda “feel” a delay both in control input and sound output, but that wasn’t a deal breaker compared to the filter.

On the other hand, I still turn on the PC Engine Mini rather frequently. It’s my favorite of them all so far.

JJSignal

I love the Astro City Mini. It came in right before Christmas and I spent a full day just messing with the games on it. And recently pulled it down off the shelf again to play on it. Love the clicky button switches, the green light on the top when it’s on. Just a solid build over all, as expected after handling the Mega Drive Mini.

I also without hesitation pre-ordered the Taito EGRET II Mini once it was announced, though it’s just the base model. I’m considering upgrading the pre-order to the one with the dial control add-on and extra games.

It’s been a year now since I posted about the PCE and MD minis, and I’m still occasionally using them, especially now that I got another HDMI to Composite adapter.

Occasionally I’ll just have it going on in the background. The warm fuzzy sound of the TV speakers is comforting.

One thing that I’m still absolutely baffled about with the Astro City is how it doesn’t have an attract mode. Of all the minis, why is the arcade cab, which you’d expect to have an attract mode, be completely without one??

ttzop

JJSignal That is an incredibly cozy setup, what a great little TV!

docky

JJSignal I also without hesitation pre-ordered the Taito EGRET II Mini once it was announced, though it’s just the base model. I’m considering upgrading the pre-order to the one with the dial control add-on and extra games.

I was very close to preordering the Egret II Mini because it has such an amazing set of games!! The dial controller package is definitely the way to go. It’s cool to think that dial might be usable on PC too!

TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee

A few thoughts on my increasing collection of minis:

I have four now (though I’ve kind of turned my Gamecube into a mini of itself) and each is probably my primary way of interacting with those libraries. I find myself quite regularly going back to each of them.

The NES and SNES minis are my favorite way to go experience classics I never played (Mario 3, Final Fantasy 6) with a matching controller. The SNES mini gets an extra point for being slightly easier to hack; I actually put a ROMHack of FF6 on there which does nothing but fix bugs from the original release.

The Genesis mini fills an interesting niche for me, since I own so many compilations of Genesis games already. The Genesis Mini managed to have a bunch of weird ones on there I didn’t already have though! Both the Genesis and Nintendo minis allow me to easily play things from my couch as well, which is nice.

The Astro City Mini feels like an entirely different device. It is, of course, wonderful in its presentation and build quality, but also a way for me to dip into games I hadn’t even considered. I’d never even heard of Ninja Princess before the ASM but I’ve played a heck of a lot of it now. I’m probably gonna get that Taito Egret Mini as well!

In short: The mini consoles enable me to try out both games I never got around to and titles I never would have played with very little friction, which is worth the price of entry for me.

antillese

TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee I actually put a ROMHack of FF6 on there which does nothing but fix bugs from the original release.

What’s the name of that ROMHack, because I’m interested in it?

gsk

My big issue with the Astro City Mini is that the emulation for some of the more intensive games can be shaky: lots of dropped frames if not entirely lowered framerates, input lag, etc. There’s also an emulation bug in one game (Quartet 2) that renders it unbeatable. It’s also a bummer that the external stick didn’t end up being console-compatible, as it’s too nice to be shackled to a desk toy.

I do wonder who’s handling the emulation for the Egret II Mini: Taito’s typical go-tos are M2 and Gotch, and given that Taito has a second reissue series in the works for Switch with Gotch as the developer, it’s presumably not them.

◉◉maru

gsk Astro City Mini and Game Gear Micro were Sega Toys projects designed in partnership with Zuiki (who handled all production) so one big question is who had the responsibility of overseeing the emulation quality for the devices, Sega or Zuiki. Also there is a strong possibility that the emulation issues are not entirely due to the developer’s competence but linked to the ARM SoC chosen for the hardware.

All fingers point to Zuiki being once again in charge of production for the Egret II, so they might go through the same emulation company and use the same SoC. In which case, I hope their F3 emulator performs well…

Syzygy

Sega themselves have previously had a good track record of just contacting the authors and using the proven fan emulators, though as you say it could be a hardware issue.

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