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Anybody own the C64 Mini? Impressions?


Spike Danton

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I'm picky as fuck still unacceptable heap of shit with that amount of lag

Spend the time money effort on real hardware with a good display and you won't have to put up with unplayable bullshit

See it wouldn't be so bad IF

 

peripherals ports

 

You mean like serial, User Port, etc.? That was not the target of this device, obviously. You can buy something like the 64Reloaded or the Ultimate 64 if that is your target.

 

joystick 1 and 2 ports worked correctly without fucking around

Minor issue and a throw-back to the old days of the same problem. The solution is pretty clever, actually.

 

a keyboard

A built-in keyboard, again, was not a target for this rendition. Extra USB ports would have been nice, I will concede, but likely would have changed the aesthetics and cost -- not for the good. Including an external keyboard would have increased cost and, again, not the target.

 

as many game images as you want on usb without fucking around

Or why not just let me put an entire TOSEC collection on USB and play that? So many options.

 

easy to use to load multiple disk games

I suspect this was a second thought as comparable products like the Atari Flashback and the NES/SNES Classics do not have this ability. That they decided to include the functionality is a huge bonus for the price, again on-par with comparable non-expandable systems. They have also committed to fixing the multi-disk game issue, so I am chill until that becomes vaporware.

 

Along with this notion of a second thought, I also suspect including BASIC was not originally intended for programming but to use the TheC64_Drive8.d64 method for loading games, which is still referenced in the support site.

 

came with it's own psu

 

I give this a minor deficiency, but then I found the NeoGeo Mini also comes without a PSU. Take that with a grain of salt as previous NeoGeo ventures in the modern era are apparently known to not hold a high level of quality.

 

joystick wasn't a cheap and nasty turd

 

Yeah, I never like the Competition Pro, either. I would not call it "cheap," though. At least not yet with only tens of hours of play on it. Some other controllers work with it, which is nice. A few years back I bought a home-brew DE9-to-USB joystick adapter with different firmwares available for different devices. I do plan to test that with the C64 Mini as soon as I can, though it will lack necessary menu controls. I do see that as a problem.

 

and seeing as it's on WinVice why not add add the VIC20/C16/PLUS4/C64/128 MODES

 

coz they are cheapskate bastards who only care about cashing in on the retro band wagon

The SNES and NES Classics are both the same hardware, so why did they make them separately? I would hazard to say it was a market-based decision. Combining the two would introduce a higher price as two types of controllers would be needed, and a combination unit, more expensive or not, would not be as attractive to those who are only familiar or want a single system.

 

Same with the C64 Mini: market. It is built and colored like a Commodore 64. Not a VIC-20. Not a Commodore 128. Not a Plus 4. It would lack the same aesthetics or evocation of nostalgia if those modes were included. Fret not as I am certain it will not be long before some enterprising hacker figures out how to enable those extra modes, assuming they are even available as they may have been stripped out to try to stream-line the system in the first place.

 

I do find it amusing how people will complain because of packages having unused stuff and want a-la-carte options, then people will complain because they have to purchase things individually. Point being, you cannot make everyone happy.

 

In any case, the product does seem to be still evolving and taking full advantage of the ease of firmware updates which back-in-the-day would have required a lot more surgery and potential cost. Plus, they are not charging for upgrades or a subscription for upgrades like so many are doing these days. (C64 Mini micro-transactions... perish the thought!)

 

But, enough of that. I wanna go play some Atari 2600 games on my NES Classic :D

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I still wouldn't give the steam of my urine for this rubbish

It' so cheap and tacky you can rub print off the keys

Can't believe anybody in their right mind wants to use the awkward to use on screen keyboard

250 usb game limit sucks

If you want two joystick ports with a real keyboard that's more expense of two good usb joysticks/usb keyboard and usb hub with a mess wires

 

C64 mini sucks donkey cock for £70/$70 when WinVice totally free

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We had a discussion about emulating a TI-99/4A on a Pi before over the in TI forums, but the conclusion is the hardware is under-powered for the task.

 

I think it depends on which Pi model you're using and the quality of the emulator. Generally it is said that a RPi 3 is capable of doing SNES/MD and a good deal of the PS1 games except for the most advanced ones. It stutters on N64 though, not sure about Saturn. If the TI-99/4A turns out to be more complex or powerful than a PS1 to emulate, you have one hell of a power computer under the hood, unfortunately castrated by Texas Instruments to deliver only a fraction of what it can do.

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I have not experienced any lag, I honestly think a lot of comes down to the TV. I have a friend who has to go find low lag TV's to play fighting games on. Some TVs are better.

 

I was really hoping the 8 Bit Guy was going to mention that. I am just using a cheap sanyo TV and it works great. When I ran my classic video game store, we saw lag on real C64, Amigas, NES, SNES, Genesis, etc all of the time. On one TV you have lag and on others you have little to no lag.

 

I wished this unit would have also allowed analog AV/Component/SVideo type port for options.

 

In any case if anyone here is a fan of the C64, you may want to give it a shot and see how it works for you.

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Video game visual reflex record is like 120ms, so I have trouble seeing 10ms being significant for 99% of the demographic. If your into big money competitions or something, then you need the carbon fiber bicycle equivalent of professional bicyclers. Camaros are good, Corvettes are better, Ferraris are better yet, but then you get into the competion cars.

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I still wouldn't give the steam of my urine for this rubbish

It' so cheap and tacky you can rub print off the keys

Can't believe anybody in their right mind wants to use the awkward to use on screen keyboard

250 usb game limit sucks

If you want two joystick ports with a real keyboard that's more expense of two good usb joysticks/usb keyboard and usb hub with a mess wires

 

C64 mini sucks donkey cock for £70/$70 when WinVice totally free

 

I know. I used to shit up threads with my cynicism.

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I wished this unit would have also allowed analog AV/Component/SVideo type port for options.

 

In any case if anyone here is a fan of the C64, you may want to give it a shot and see how it works for you.

 

I don't see the point in wasting $100 bucks on a turd when I can get a real c64 for around the same price.

 

All c64s will handle svideo and the picture quality is outstanding on a nice CRT. Especially the 64c models & c128 where the video quality was improved significantly.

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I don't see the point in wasting $100 bucks on a turd when I can get a real c64 for around the same price.

 

All c64s will handle svideo and the picture quality is outstanding on a nice CRT. Especially the 64c models & c128 where the video quality was improved significantly.

 

Why do Shriners drive those miniature cars?

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I don't see the point in wasting $100 bucks on a turd when I can get a real c64 for around the same price.

 

All c64s will handle svideo and the picture quality is outstanding on a nice CRT. Especially the 64c models & c128 where the video quality was improved significantly.

 

I don't see the point in wasting $100 bucks on something I don't have room for when I can get a C64Mini for around the same price.

 

All C64Minis will handle HDMI and the picture quality is outstanding on a nice LED. And maybe in the future there will be upgrades which will improve overall quality significantly.

Edited by Torr
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I don't see the point in wasting $100 bucks on something I don't have room for when I can get a C64Mini for around the same price.

 

All C64Minis will handle HDMI and the picture quality is outstanding on a nice LED. And maybe in the future there will be upgrades which will improve overall quality significantly.

Sorry, not a fan. As already mentioned above. If you need to use a real keyboard for any reason then it’s going to consume even more desk space, in that case you’re better off using a real machine or stick with an emulator like WinVice.

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I had mentioned it in the past but I think my favorite feature is the ability to use some switches or a small config file to make the machine go into PAL / NTSC and the ability for me to map any of the buttons on the included or my USB Sega Saturn style pad to letters of the keyboard. I really am enjoying games that used the space bar or some other buttons on one controller now.

 

I do however want to hack a controller one day to take the Joy 1 on a real C64 and map the fire button (space bar) to a player 2 controller like an arcade stick.

 

I was playing Nemesis and the button to activate the power up was the CTRL Left button, oy some games like to be different. It was however no problem on the mini.

 

Anyone who likes VICE and other means, is great, but for me I like the form factor, and I am looking forward to the bigger one. I just hope they include 4 USB ports, SD Card slot and an ability to play multi disk games easily.

 

Still am waiting for an easy way to play multi disk games on the mini.. I see that as its biggest issue currently.

 

I have to say in the world of Direct to TV / Mini consoles, it really does a lot more than most of them on the market without having to hack the system.

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Uridium is included on the USA version and I think it plays very fast and smooth, having said that I am just as terrible at it today as I was when I was a teenager playing it the first time.

 

Having a real C64 is awesome! I love mine too! I just don't think I will ever give it up.

 

My mini is mostly because of travel, small easy to play with, lots of images on it and can be plugged into a hotel or friends TV no problem.

 

Yeah I am hoping they don't mess up the full size one as I am hoping for something pretty good.

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  • 1 month later...

From the support site:

 

  • Adds a complete new game for free to the GAMES CAROUSEL! Galencia for the Mini is licensed from Jay Aldred and is the winner of the Reset64 Magazine 2017 Commodore 64 Game of the Year Award. It is a colourful, highly polished, Galaga inspired single-screen shoot-em-up
  • Introduces the Virtual Joystick. You can now select all options on THEC64 Mini and even play games just using a USB keyboard. See Virtual Joystick for further information
  • Improves the File Loader to allow multiple programs to be configured at once. See Setting a Default Configuration for Multiple Programs for further information
  • Improves the general performance of THEC64 Mini screens and menus

 

Still does not say anything about working with multiple-disks.

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Yeah, getting multi-disk games to run in a easier manner is what I was hoping for with this update as well.

Hopefully they are working on it... don't emulators handle it reasonably? I don't know, cause I've always had trouble with C64 emus, and the simplicity of the C64 mini is one reason I like it so much... maybe the simplicity is whats holding back multi-disk games? I dunno...

 

But if they really plan to release a FULL size C64, they're gonna have to get multi-disk games running smoothly first I think.

 

And last but not least, that new game they added is great. Does the author hang around here?, they did well, it's easily one of the best games in the collection, and has inspired me to seek out more C64 homebrew work. Any suggestions?

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For instance VICE works with something called Flip Lists, where you assign a number of disk images to the list and then use a key combination to select the next image. That is a functionality also found in various SD card based devices. Exactly what is preventing them from setting up a similar functionality here is unknown to me, but to be honest very few C64 games that I run span over several disk images. Some demos might of course. Perhaps the majority are playing the built-in games or add single sided games so the functionality is not prioritized?

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Still a heap of shit after new update lots reasons for this

Anything other then a real CRT = lag

USB hub if you need one = lag

USB keyboard = lag

Need two or more USB joysticks or joy pads = lag

USB loading device = lag

 

Other options

 

For casual gaming download WinVice it's free or use plenty of C64 games in a web browser

 

or

 

Buy a reconditioned or refurbished C64 = no lag

Buy a CRT TV or monitor = no lag

 

At least real hardware will perform as it should do and will hold value of money over time unlike a cheap shitty turd

Edited by 256 colors
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