The Commodore 64 Mini, announced earlier this year as a half-sized remake of one of the most famous personal computers of all time, will hit store shelves in North America on October 9. The system comes with a retro-styled joystick (because that's how we did it back then), 64 pre-installed games, and C64 Basic, enabling its use as a "fully functional home computer."
There is one catch: If you want to return to those heady days of manually typing in programs from the pages of a magazine, you'll need to connect a standard USB keyboard. The C64 Mini has two standard USB ports, as well as an HDMI output capable of 720p resolution at 60Hz, supporting a 4:3 aspect ratio and even a "CRT filter," to give it an era-appropriate crappy look.
There's no cassette or floppy drive available, but FAT32-formatted USB sticks (up to 64GB) can be accessed just like an old 1541: Label the stick THEC64-drive8.d64, copy your "legally obtained C64 programs" onto it, and then give it the ol' "LOAD “NAME”,8,1," followed by the "Run" command. For those who prefer convenience over authenticity (and shame on you for it), an "easier and more powerful" loader will be provided in a future firmware update.
The full list of preloaded games:
- Alleykat
- Anarchy
- Armalyite – Competition Edition
- Avenger
- Battle Valley
- Boulder Dash
- Bounder
- California Games
- Chip's Challenge
- Confuzion
- Cosmic Causeway
- Creatures
- Cyberdyne Warrior
- Cybernoid II: The Revenge
- Cybernoids: The Fighting Machine
- Deflektor
- Everyone's a Wally
- Firelord
- Gribbly's Day Out
- Hawkeye
- Heartland
- Herobotix
- Highway Encounter
- Hunter's Moon
- Hysteria
- IO
- Impossible Mission
- Impossible Mission II
- Jumpman
- Mega Apocalypse
- Mission AD
- Monty Mole
- Monty on the Run
- Nebulus
- Netherworld
- Nobby the Ardvark
- Nodes of Yesod
- Paradroid
- Pitstop II
- Ranarama
- Robin of the Wood
- Rubicon
- Skate Crazy
- Skool Daze
- Snare
- Speedball
- Speedball 2 – Brutal Deluxe
- Spindizzy
- Star Paws
- Steel
- Street Sports Baseball
- Summer Games II
- Super Cycle
- Temple of Apshai Trilogy
- The Arc of Yesod
- Thing on a Spring
- Thing Bounces Back
- Trailblazer
- Uchi Mata
- Uridium
- Who Dares Wins II
- Winter Games
- World Games
- Zynaps
There's still no price listed for the C64 Mini, nor are any retailers in North America specified. Hopefully we'll have information on both coming soon. For now, you can find out more about what's being offered at thec46.com.
