Introduction
Retro games ltd has been teasing an Amiga Maxi/full size Amiga ever since there A500 mini System was released. Speculation initially was that the system would be a full size A500 Amiga system, but at GameCon 2025 (August 2025) it was finally announced that the system would actually be based on the Amiga A1200 system. Like the A500 mini, the system is missing Commodore and Amiga branding, this is likely to reduce legal issues and cost of licensing these brands. Indeed, for a short while it seem like the system had been delayed and would not come out due to the continued legal dispute on AmigaOS ownership between Amiga parties and Hyperion.
The system will be the same size and design of the A1200 and feature a full size working Amiga style Keyboard, it looks from the photos that the Disk Drive will be filled in (it was very unrealistic that a disk drive would be shipped with the device anyway). It be cool however if the Disk Drive button was say a working button, that could be either the power button or rest to menu button. But all this is speculative at the moment.
Prototypes of the system are below
So far the only confirmed software title included is the new port of Settlers 2 Gold Edition, (that is due soon and you can pre-order here ). It is not know if previous A500 mini title will be included or whether or not AmigaOS or Serious software / Demo scene will be represented on the system.
Specs
- unknown, likely ARM based
- HDMI Port (likely)
- USB-C ( For Power ) (likely)
- Full size Keyboard
- RRP £unknown
In the Box (likly)
- The A1200 Computer
- USB Mouse (Tank Mouse)
- USB GamePad (CD32 pad)
- HDMI Cable
- USB-C Power Cable
- Quick Start Guide
- Due: 2026
Unlike the A500 mini, this is meant to be a relpica of the A1200 system will be likly the same size. It will feature a working keyboard. The system will likly features an HDMI port and outputs at 720p 50/60Hz with multiple scaling options and CRT filters.
It also be advertised to comes with the same 8 button controller as the A500 mini, similar in style to the CD32 controller and an optical mouse in design like the one that would come with an original A500 Amiga, sometimes referred to as the “Tank Mouse”.
Picture below (Branding will feature The GAMEPAD, not A500)
The accessories will also be available to buy separately, in the UK the price of the Mouse will be £19.99 and the GamePad £19.99, interestingly the GamePad will be in black CD32 colours, unlike the white colour of the one included.
The system will also likly support third party controllers (PlayStation / Xbox), joysticks, mouses and usb keyboards.
The Product is very likely to be ARM based system
The A500 mini, featured an All Winner H6 chip which is a CPU ARM Cortex A53, this is the same chip that powers Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi Zero 2. It's unknown the clock speed, but it's also stated that the system is faster than a Pi 3B+ which was clocked at 1.4ghz. A53 chips can run up to 2Ghz.
The GPU is an ARM Mali-T720 MP2 which complies with OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.1. This should easily emulate all classic Amiga titles. Thanks to druzil28 we now have the SysInfo for the system ( a popular Amiga benchmark tool ), left shows default settings, with JIT off, the right side picture show the effect of JIT on.
For context the Pi3B with JIT on ran Mips at 159.86 and Dhrystone 153148, but take these setting and benchmark with a pitch of salt as different version of Amiberry and emulation settings can easily effect these numbers. (pi3 benchmark)
THIS IS ALL UNKNOWN, Retro Games Ltd have yet to confirm Specs of the system, it could even be FPGA based, who knows?
WHDLoad
Its likly at the very least the system will come with support for WHDload again. WHDload, which put very simple turns Amiga disk based games into a simple "slave" file that can run more reliable on different Amiga setups and on hard drive based systems.
Basically old games like adventures games could come on as many as 8 disks or more, and you would have to change disks during game play, you might have had to have the original manuals to enter passwords protection stuff, it might only reliable run on OCS A500 original hardware and not run on the later ECS/AGA based Amiga like the A1200, and it might not of ran from the Amiga desktop, or different versions of AmigaOS etc WHDLoad aim is to fix all this and makes it much easier to deal with games like this.
There are plenty of tutorials on how to use WHDLoad on the internet, but Retro Games ltd wanting this to be a simple experiences as possible you will be able to simple just download a .lha file (which is basically Amiga version of zip files) of your fav game and drag the lha over to a USB stick and load into the game. (NOTE: THIS IS HOW THE A500 mini does it and could be different for the new system)
You will need a USB stick that is formatted to FAT32 MBR filesystem and then visit this site https://retrogames.biz/support/thea500-mini/whdload/ this has instructions and files you will need to place on the stick. Then simple visit these great websites listed below, It should go without saying that you should only download games you own or legally allowed to be shared.
WHDLoad Website
https://www.whdownload.com/ - Loads of Amiga games and goodies ready to go.
http://whdload.de/ - Official WHDLoad website
https://mega.nz/folder/gdozjZxL#uI5SheetsAd-NYKMeRjf2A - Retroplays WHDload
https://archive.org/details/Amiga_WHD_Games - Achive.org collection
http://www.whdownload.com/demos.php - WHDLoad Amiga Demoscene
https://archive.org/details/super-skidmarks-v-2.2-cd - WHDload 2Gb A500 mini collection
Hacks / Mods / Distros for the A1200
Its likly previous mods and distros developed for the A500 mini will work for THE A1200.
https://www.aminimiga.com/ - AMiNlMiga was the first of many Pre-Config Workbench setup designed for the A500mini, by Jimmy Johansson, join the discord group (https://discord.gg/rFv8a2CB) for more details.
https://github.com/emuchicken/pandory-a500/releases - Pandory500 is the ultimate mod tool and basically opens up the system so you can run many emulators and consoles from the 80s and 90s.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1144009169831106 - Amiga Game Selector, a 32Gb file of a lot of Amiga games, demos that likely been the most well-developed for the system (also this Distro is available on Raspberry Pi and WinUAE systems, to find out on AmigaOS Distro Page.)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/992594308047121 - A Facebook group setup just to highlight and cover hacks.
If you hack the system to have full access to Amiberry however, I see no reason why any Pre-Config Workbench config won't work. For different systems / setup, visit here.
Links
https://retrogames.biz/ – Official Home Page of the Developers
Retro Game Facebook - Loads of posts of info
https://www.facebook.com/groups/571357397366882/ - Facebook A500 mini user group
Discuss further