C64 Mini

[Betagam7]

Anyone getting one of these. I've just taken the plunge for £64.99

It'll have to get delivered to the UK so I'll not be able to pick it up until later in the year (when it'll no doubt have better firmware for playing Roms). I'm not really understanding all the bashing of the line-up that's pre-installed. I recognise a great deal of these games and am pleasantly surprised to see things like Hunter's Moon and Herobotix which I played a lot as a kid. I'm guessing that because a lot of the reviewers are American they maybe didn't experience or don't have the nostalgia for the included games but it seems a decent line-up to me, even if it is missing some choices that i thought would have been certs as they appeared on the Wii VC (Last Ninja).

Anyway, any thoughts?

[Jagosaurus]

What's the controller/KB/M situation with this guy? Any messing around with the old OS or just boot right into games. Have done no research on it but thunk it'd be cool

[Betagam7]

What's the controller/KB/M situation with this guy? Any messing around with the old OS or just boot right into games. Have done no research on it but thunk it'd be cool

Two USB sockets. A joystick is supplied modeled after the c64 DTV that came out several moons ago. Sadly it is not micro-switched. I presume that regular controllers would work fine since the C64 only ever had one button. The keyboard is a non-functional shell so you need to use either a USB keyboard or an onscreen virtual keyboard for games that need that. I can't think of any C64 games that ever used a mouse.

Basic is included so you can programme and save your created games to one of four save game slots. (each of the regular games has four slots like the SNES mini)

It's possible to load in ROMs from a USB stick but only one at a time (though up to four can be saved on the aforementioned slots). Apparently this may be improved with a future firmware update.

[Jagosaurus]

Interesting. Will look into this more.

Appeals to me more than a SNES mini, etc bc old computers can be a pain to emulate at times due to the old OS within the emu.

For mouse games I immediately thought of Maniac Mansion & Lemmings, but turns out the list is fairly short:

Games
Advanced Space Battle
Arkanoid
Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh
Brickout
Centauri Alliance
Heuristic Chomp
Landmine
Lemmings
Lords of Doom
Maniac Mansion (Mercury Version)
Maniac Mansion (GOLD Version)
Minesweeper (CP-Verlag)
Operation Wolf (US-Version)
Space Lords
The 15-Puzzle
The Faery Tale Adventure
The House
The Ultimate Wormgame

[Jmustang1968]

Idea is cool, but I believe it is just a pi board inside a c64 looking case. Also reading that the joystick is meh. Unfortunate...

[samsonlonghair]

Idea is cool, but I believe it is just a pi board inside a c64 looking case. Also reading that the joystick is meh. Unfortunate...

Couple thoughts here...

The c64 mini doesn’t run on a raspberry pi; rather it runs on a proprietary glob-top chip.

As for the joystick, Human-interface-devices have progressed significantly since the early 1980s. A mediocre joystick today is WORLDS away better than the stock joystick that shipped with the original c64.

For that matter, the Apple ][e and the Texas Instruments TI94/a also had terrible joysticks. Practically any cheap, bargain bin joystick you can buy today is better than the original joysticks to these computers.

If it were up to me, I would just plug in a generic usb controller into the c64 mini and play the way I like.

[fastbilly1]

Has anyone got their hands on one of these yet?

[samsonlonghair]

This guy gave a pretty thorough review:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/0 ... ni-review/

He tried to swap in a better controller. Xbox one controller didn’t work at all (no surprise there). PlayStation 4 controller responded, but the button mapping was off.