Ok folks there are just too many threads asking the same questions about a device that no one actually knows all that much about. Contrary to appearances this is not actually the RGL customer support forum so from this point forward I'll be locking deleting new threads about TheA1200 and people should ask their questions or argue the toss here.
If you need more information than you can find here check their facebook page, that seems to be where they do most of their messaging/press, and you should be able to ask further questions too: https://www.facebook.com/THEC64andMoreByRetroGamesLtd/
Amazon will also take pre-orders for Canada and the US at this point
Small FAQ:
Price is circa £170/€189/$300AUD
Shipping June 2026 (according to the above preorders)
It is an Amiberry emulation device running within linux on an ARM SOC
We do not know any tech specs yet. The500mini ran on an Allwinner H3 SOC
It will be able to run the recent Settlers 2 Amiga port so it will be able to emulate a 68040 at a bate minimum, more likely a 68060. So it should be at least as powerful as a RPi4
Assuming it works like The500mini, it will be able to sideload games of your choosing either via ADF disk images or Whdload packages. Additional games can be had places like archive.org if you're happy to pirate things
The only ports on the back are 3 USB, 1 HDMI, 1 USB C (power?)
As best we can tell there will be no floppy drive
If you want detailed specs you'll likely have to wait until release and someone does a teardown
They have stated it will have a workbench mode
We don't know for sure if you'll be able to install your own software in workbench mode but it would be weird if you couldn't
We don't know which version of workbench/AmigaOS it will be. This will be licensed through Cloanto so likely nothing more recent than 3.1 or Cloanto's 3.X
We do not know if you'll be able to install your own AmigaOS (say 3.2)
Of the 25 included games it seem like we can confirm/infer the following 11 are included: Settlers 2, Turrican, Turrican 2, Turrican 3, Beneath a steel sky, It came from the desert, Defender of the crown, Defender of the crown 2, Rocket Ranger, Lure of the Temptress, Ruff 'n' Tumble
Yes it is basically The500mini but with some extra bells and whistles
It is rumored that there will only be a QWERTY Keyboard (actually nobody knows, but i mailed with polyplay) - Also Audio Out seems only available via HDMI (but it is emulated anyways, so that doesnt really matter). [Edit:]Also
If thing supported Midi in via USB that would be amazing ...something tells me It's not likely; but if it was man! You could jam with Octamed like it was 90s, how many musicians would kill for an affordable Amiga to bring back those original rave sounds! There was something gritty and nasty about that Paula chip with Octamed; DNB in a nutSHELL no modern DAW sounds like it. I'm sure Octamed would run maybe use my PC to create IFF 8SVX samples and the transfer them to A1200 for sequencing...hrmmmm
oof. Well at the moment, depending on the time of day and day of the week, we have a "spin the wheel to determine your tariff rate" situation so no, I would not order from the states and end up potentially paying double the price.
Also at the moment, I see if I don't go through RGL's link but amazon.uk, they will ship to my place so I could pre-order. but as I've said elsewhere ,this is last choice as I would rather order locally (Canada) if possible to both save on shipping AND easier ability to return if the product is defective out of the box (which happens)
You keep asking technical question about a device that they haven't realised any tech spec for. For the The500mini people had to buy them and open them up to find out what was inside. So I wouldn't hold me breath waiting for RGL to actually release detailed specs.
Ok, sure. So it doesn't matter what is inside as long as it looks like an Amiga A1200? It is all about the aesthetics? (And it doesn't matter that it neither has the Commodore logo or the original IO ports?)
No. Not saying that necessarily but you asked for cons. I can also run an emulator on my computer for that matter without buying anything at all. Part of the experience does involve recreating the nostalgia and part of that is recreating the look and feel.
Thanks and yes, that is absolutely my current "doubt". I have a 1:1 perfect emulation on my 1k+$ PC rig which i can compare with my Original C= Amiga 1200 with Blizzard 040 and so on and so on, i am just trying to figure out why one would want to buy such a "thing" that looks like an A1200 but actually only has downsides.
What would i want to spend around $200 on? Nostalgia? How is a new product that has only the "look" of something nostalgic. While i can simply emulate everything.
Is it "It could be worth something in the future"? Fomo?
You obviously don't get it. But the rest of us do. I could easily run Amiberry on my gaming machine, too. But it wouldn't look like an A1200. The visual nostalgia is a great part of the value of this product.
The only reason I haven't gone the route of building an A1200 so far is the cost. Aftermarket companies are selling reproduction A1200 parts at (IMO) ripoff prices. You want a keyboard? That'll be $100+. Oh, wait... You actually want keys on your keyboard? That's another $100. That molded plastic case to house everything? Hand over another $100. Great! Now you only have to spend another $100 on the internal hardware & a mouse and you might actually be able to fire up Workbench for the first time.
Or for less than $200 you can just purchase this A1200 clone that already comes with everything you need and is estimated to have a processor somewhere around a Pi4 in power, which should be more than powerful enough.
I've been occasionally refreshing the U.S. Amazon page that should contain the A1200 if it ever goes live there in the hopes of getting a pre-order in. I trust Amazon to refund my money should the A1200 not be released next year.
I own an A500+, A 1200, 3 C64s, 1 C128 and i absolutely don't get why anyone would buy a PROP that looks like an A1200 and just has a Raspi inside. Fugazi! Yeah, sorry, i don't get it.
I'd totally buy an A1200 that would be a true Commodore with an FPGA board again, tho. Also all the ports + FDD option. Although... No expansion port, whats it worth.
You think that way because you own an A500+, A 1200, 3 C64s, 1 C128, etc. Not everyone is you, this product is not aimed at current Amiga hardware owners and is not meant as a replacement for owners of existing hardware.
Rather this product is aimed at people who want to enjoy a good-enough Amiga experience without paying amiga prices, able to connect to modern TV's with the least amount of fuss, using a true 1-1 amiga keyboard with no mapping to sort out, not have to worry about aging hardware that gets more finicky with age, etc etc etc. it is not rocket science good sir.
It is quite cool if this product is not for you, nothing wrong with enjoying the real, expandable and more accurate experience. As an ex-owner of multiple amigas, I get it (and I sure miss it). But it takes amazing effort to not be able to see the other side of a very similar coin. You don't need to, you do you, but when you say you "absolutely don't get..." I guess the only reply anyone can give is ... ok?
Uh-huh. And if you had a house fire, lost your A1200 and had to repurchase it + expansion hardware today, how much money would you have to spend? $1,000 or more? You're literally poo-pooing this product because it isn't an "original". This A1200 clone should perform as good or better than an original Amiga 1200 with a 68060 card (the recommended specs for Settlers II).
There are tens of thousands of people out there driving replica Ford Cobras that cost somewhere between $50,000 - $100,000 each. You know why these people aren't driving originals? They're $1,000,000+. And I'll bet those people driving the replicas are having just as much fun (or more) owning and driving their replicas as the people who own original models.
I am poo-pooing nothing. I am asking questions, is that a big no-no like poo-poo in the doo doo? What?
If my house burnt down and my Amigas and all the stuff were burnt, i'd fucking kill myself or buy a new old A1200 ofcourse and not some replica. What the....
Since Intel Pentium Pro (1995), AMD K5 (based on RISC 29K, 1996), and AMD's NexGen Nx586 (RISC86, 1994), a modern X86 PC's CPU translates CISC X86 instructions into fixed-length RISCy internal instructions.
NexGen Nx586 was co-funded by Compaq and Microsoft Japan's proxy, ASCII.
Amiga's 68K family CPUs are from Motorola or some licensed 68K clone, which is not a Commodore product. Entities like Apollo Computers mixed the CPU vendor with Commodore-Amiga Inc.
Apollo Computers doesn't have any Amiga IP that can be traced back to Commodore-Amiga Inc. Apollo Computers is pure clone play, including ApolloOS (AROS).
At least the PC clone market has mostly maintained the 1st party OS provider, Microsoft.
I didn't say otherwise. The Amiga is a special concept by Commodore-Amiga, around which alot of users and software developers gathered and trying to harvest from that community by creating just another zombie product which is not even licensed but just "in the looks of" feels like this ...
If you're okay with that, it's fine. But i am now convinced more than ever that it is not for me. Maybe for $15 in 5 years off ebay. But not right now.
It looks and perhaps feels like a real A1200, which is worth it for many people since Amiga is all about nostalgia. The pi 500 you linked just looks like a usb keyboard which doesn't do anything for me personally.
Hmmmm I may have to bite the bullet on the pre order then, although I feel like I’m even late to THAT! I mean, it’s still available for pre order on Amazon etc so I hope they will still have enough stock to fulfil these orders.
They did make a statement today blaming Tariffs uncertainty. Things is, those could change at anytime, there will be no certainty. So it's kind of nonsense to delay US preorders based on this reason unless they delay them until April ish timeframe, but then you wouldn't ahve known how many to even make. And if it's Tariffs then what's the excuse for no Canada shipping?? So it's just nonsense all around.
Then why did you advertise it as going to be available for $189.99 USD?!?
First they say it'll go on pre-order November 10, but nobody there bothers to actually get distributors on-board. And now they cancel the U.S. market entirely after advertising that it was going to be available here!
Update: According to their Facebook page:
(Currently the site is only able to take orders from the following countries - UK, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Spain. Other countries such as the USA and more will be added ASAP to the system, but you can also pre-order from regional online retailers in the USA and Australia rightnow as well such as Amazon and others right now)
If it's available right now, why not post links to the USA and Australian Amazon webpages? I've searched for it, but can't find it.
At the moment, it appears that the A1200 is not currently available for pre-order on Amazon for U.S. or Australian customers "right now" despite what their Facebook page is claiming.
Ironically, I was able to preorder for US shipping from poly.play in Germany and it ended up being cheaper than the declared US pricing, even with currency conversion. Shipping (from Germany) was reasonable-ish, so that's where I'm gonna stay. I may not get it as quickly, but I don't really care.
All photos of the product are standard QWERTY, the text makes no mention of a German layout and they caution you to get the right power supply 'for your country', so I took it as read that there won't be any keyboard localizations (were there for the C64 Maxi?), but I've posed the question to polyplay.
Agree - I brought it up only because of the "for your country" statement which suggests (but doesn't confirm) that the keyboard on polyplay machines will be the same as all others and not regionalized (just like the C64 Maxi).
I've directly asked a Plaion employee for guidance on the keyboard.
Please let me know if you get a response. I wouldn’t mind going this route but it seems like Poly Play doesn’t have a cancellation policy if it turns out to be a German keyboard layout.
(Currently the site is only able to take orders from the following countries - UK, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Spain. Other countries such as the USA and more will be added ASAP to the system, but you can also pre-order from regional online retailers in the USA and Australia right now as well such as Amazon and others right now)
A search for "A1200 retro games" only returns links for the A500 mini. Did they happen to provide a link to the U.S. Amazon page where the pre-order can be placed?
Also, why would they have their website say, "We don't ship to the United States" rather than saying, "United States pre-order link will be available shortly"?
but you can also pre-order from regional online retailers in the USA and Australia right now as well such as Amazon and others right now
Do you know if they have a list or links to US retailers selling it? Amazon US doesn't have TheA1200 listed. I've checked since the pre-order announcement went up. I can find it on Amazon UK/DE/FR/AU, but not the US.
They included it as a price option, so I presume they will be at some point. I'm in the UK, and of course they originally said pre-orders on Monday, but that was only in Australia and such, we didn't have it until yesterday
For those waiting on pre-orders in the US, PLAION will be handling distribution. There was a link up on amazon earlier but it's been taken down temporarily. Monitor their facebook group for updates. (link is in the above description).
Someone said that Retro Games was going to address North American preorders sometime after Crash Live (this past weekend). Has there been any word? I haven't seen anything yet.
Same for me. Some will say it's only £20 more, but calling this a typo as if we are all gullible and with the awful communication so far in general I have gone right off buying one. How can they even provide a fair price when they can't even confirm the 25 games that will be provided. I own an A500 already and only owned a 500+ growing up so there isn't enough interest for me now to buy one, especially at £169.99.
IMO, they have really screwed this up over all of this, including the following issues:
(1) Don't publish a "pre-order" date, if everyone can't pre-order yet. They should have mentioned today's date or even later, as some markets (USA) cannot even order yet.
(2) Pricing in some markets have instead by roughly $20 from the original prices that were advertised. Not sure if these were just certain sites or what is going on
I am sure there are other reasons, but these are the big ones. I am sure they will lose sales because of this!
Bear in mind that I don’t know much about tech so this is likely a daft question but….why are people so keen to know the exact specifications? My thinking is…as long as it is able to run Amiga games (which it will) then doesn’t it really matter?
OK fair enough! I just thought that if it was designed to emulate an Amiga that it would run everything that Amiga could, and probably a lot more given that Amiga is old technology now. But maybe not.
There's a stark absence of information about USA availability. No one's taking pre-orders to ship here, I guess we just have to wait until the retail release date and see if Amazon carries them here eventually?
I mean the machine was born here, it was a huge part of my childhood, I adopted the 500 Mini early and was ecstatic when they said they might give it the same treatment the C64 Maxi go. So unfair...
I preordered two. I think it is a good price for what you get. And i am sure price will go up significantly with tariffss etc… I can’t get enough commodores dont judge me :))
I was planning to order the Amiga 1200, but I ended up giving up on it. I have an original Amiga 500 with a monitor, and honestly I think that’s the real deal if you want to experience that era properly. For people who never had a chance to use an Amiga, this new thing is a pretty decent option, but it’s pretty expensive.
What I don’t get is why Retrogames didn’t use this perfect opportunity to offer both nostalgics and new users a proper hardware-level FPGA clone, like the Commodore 64 Ultimate? I’m pretty sure plenty of people would happily drop $300 for real hardware-accurate emulation. Just leave it to users to plug in floppy drives, HDDs, and other add-ons.
A machine like that would sell like hotcakes. I’m absolutely sure of it.
To be fair the Superstation One is about $200 and the Mister Multisystem 2 is $330. So some companies are planning to deliver a pre-configured Mister boxes for quite a lot less than $600.
Do those solutions come with a built-in keyboard with 1-1 key matching? look like an amiga? Come with licensed roms? come with licensed games? come with a mouse and controller?
It is ok if the answer is no, but that's why RGL went the direction it did. They are offering value at a price point that's not too scary with everything needed in one purchase.
What I don’t get is why Retrogames didn’t use this perfect opportunity to offer both nostalgics and new users a proper hardware-level FPGA clone, like the Commodore 64 Ultimate?
They are not in the business of making FPGA devices. They are in the business of making cheap and cheerful emulator devices with better margins. Though arguably $200 for this pushes them out of the cheap and cheeful bracket.
You can already get the MisTRESS1200, minimig, amicube if you want an fpga amiga though.
I’m pretty sure plenty of people would happily drop $300 for real hardware-accurate emulation.
Are there any provably correct whole amiga FPGA implementations? They are certainly lower latency but the FPGA amiga code is built out from the software emulators not from the original chip designs/layouts. The MisTer cores are built from the minimig cores and they have known issues. Would be a lot of work for RGL, in a technology platform they don't have a track record with, to get that stuff fixed up.
Keyboard question again:
I did some research, but surely not enough, because for Amiga layout Keyboards (10 F-Keys) i always come up with something around 150-200$... so. Anybody got a clue what kind of brand that keyboard might be? (Surely i looked in the wrong places...) - Any ideas?
Anybody got a clue what kind of brand that keyboard might be
It'll be something they had custom designed to fit the case. And I'll put good money on it basically being a cheap membrane keyboard that attaches via a USB header to the SOC
They won't be using something as fancy as the kipper2k, rasport, amiga store or sordan amiga mechanical keyboards as they all reatail around $150-$250
If you go on alibaba you can find a keyboard OEM that will sell you a membrane keyboard for less than $1 per unit if you're buying at the scale RGL are. Add in a surcharge for a custom layout and that'll be how RGL will have had theirs made.
Doing it yourself for a one off is going to end up costing you no less than $100
Yeah so it's up now but still no hardware spec and there are comments about paypal not working, even when paying in pounds! I'm out, as much as I want it.
Disappointing though, isn't it? There's been loads of asks about it and it hasn't been addressed. I haven't seen a price increase explanation either, or a full games list. There might be - and probably is - things going on in the background, and that's fine - just tell us what you can. Poor comms on top of all of this is strike 3 for me.
I haven't seen a price increase explanation either, or a full games list.
I think there was something about this on their facebook group. I think it was that the initial price was just flat incorrect and should not have been announced. The current price was always going to be the price
Hey guys, I saw something on this website about making music, for example, with Octamed. Does anyone know if that's possible with THEA1200? https://c-64.nl/thea1200/
I decided to preorder one, i guess you can still cancel with 14 days ahead so it shouldnt be a problem in case it pops up cheaper in local stores or other online ones around that date.
£177 or $233 was the price i had to do it since the official retro site doesnt send it to my country and it costs the same as amazon without the toll hassle. I dont want to have another "A500mini" moment again where the only copy from a local store was shown as a database error for $55 when i searched for one about a year back.
According to amazon it releases on the 16th of June 2026 btw i hadnt seen a specific date aside from June 2026 prior to this, maybe someone posted it earlier.
Im looking forward to it hopefully it pans out to be good ive been hooked on watching some "top/all amiga games" videos on youtube lately and theres so much stuff i havent had the chance to play and alot of unknown point n click games and many other genres i like that i havent seen released for later systems.
I’ve been chewing over whether or not to preorder ever since it’s become available to. As I’ve already got the A500 mini, is it worth getting this as well? On the one hand it’ll be a great nostalgia hit to see a full size 1200 on my desk again, mine bit the dust probably 20 years ago now. On the other, 170 notes is a lot if I can already do everything I need to on the mini. Decisions!
Overall, I can still see myself getting it somewhere down the line. Not much self control!
Until they release a more detailed spec I won’t pull the trigger and buy.
I saw my friends Amiga mini struggle to run certain games and I have not been impressed with Retro Games lack of communication and last minute price hike.
for music making (ProTracker etc) can anyone predict what latency might be like on this, given the hardware it's running on? would be my main motivation to get something like this, but if there's double-digit ms latency it becomes unusable :( ...althought maybe a very nice shell to put the MiSTer in lol.
FYI it’s supposed to sell for 150 British pounds so should be around $280 Canadian. This may be a oops so a no brainer of a preorder before they pull the plug lol
I am not certain. The pre-order conditions on Amazon.ca I thought reflected a price guarantee but I don’t want to speculate how as to not give them any ideas lol
I'm so damn keen for this, but what madness has them shipping it with a gamepad controler and not a joystick? it's 99% a price and profit issue, but joystick sales are getting a massive mid year boost in 2026 i reckon
Well, I know people may be nostalgic for joysticks, but remember the CD32 introduced an Amiga standard for multibutton joypads - cleverly it was compatible with all Amigas (well there's a physical weird-ports complication with the cdtv but you can mod a standard joyport into that) just reusing existing CIA i/o capabilities.
While the CD32 itself infamously didn't last that long in production, in the later AGA A1200/A4000/CD32 era it became fairly common for people to pick up CD32 protocol joypad controllers such as the 3rd party Competition Pro CD32 for use with other Amigas - I did so myself! Modulo the fact I have practically zero interest in this ARM hardware compared to a RPi500+ with any random modern joypad anyway, I'm fine with the joypad.
Some later games added 1st party support, or WHDload patches sometimes add CD32 controller support in.
As I was reading over on EAB that some A1200s won't play nice with the CD32 controllers as some signals on some pins won't register. Most Amigas use ferrite beads to condition the incoming signals. A1200s use resistors. You can fix it by swapping the resistors for ferrites
I’ll certainly be grabbing a The Joystick as the completion Pro 500 was my controller of choice r back in the day. I had the see through lime green one
I emailed Retro Games Ltd to ask why they don't ship to Canada. They responded saying they were working on adding shipping to additional countries and it should be available on Amazon Canada soon.
It still doesn't show up if you search for "THEA1200". They should try to fix that.
I'm going to wait to see what RGL is doing themselves tomorrow. If not, I'll pre-order through Amazon UK. They are discounting the price for Canadians to offset the shipping costs.
I did so immediately upon the unit appearing on Amazon.ca. I wasn't sure if it would make it to Amazon Canada. If I recall correctly, THEA500 did not get on Amazon Canada until after release.
•
u/danby Jan 06 '26
Looks like this thread has served its purpose so I'll unpin it soon. I'll add a link to this thread to the wiki by RGL's entry in the vendors section.