The Retro-Bit Nest Mini is a miniature retro game console that is designed to emulate the classic Commodore 64 computer system. It's very easily playable, unlike the Nes Mini and Thus Nes Mini, which required some hoops to get games working. The Retro-Bit Nest Mini runs almost anything that the Commodore 64 used to run, making it a great option for fans of retro gaming.
One of the notable features of the Retro-Bit Nest Mini is its joypad, which is a remake of the C64 joystick. While this is good for nostalgia factors, as it feels like the real deal, it's not necessarily the best design. In fact, two years later, the Nes released the Gamepad, which became the de-facto way to play games from that point on. However, the Retro-Bit Nest Mini does support some gamepads, although they are limited.
The act of playing games on the system is straightforward, with a menu of all 64 games available, allowing users to select and play their favorites. If required, keyboard support can be used, but this involves using additional buttons to bring up a virtual keyboard, which can be tedious. To make things easier, users can hook up a USB keyboard to the device's second USB jack.
Interestingly, the Retro-Bit Nest Mini comes with one of its games, Basic, which is an old computer language that many people learned to use and program in as children. This allows users to launch the BASIC interpreter and test their code on the screen. While this feature is limited, allowing users to write short programs and see them run, it's still a great sandbox for learning how to program.
However, playing games from USB sticks can be more like playing a Wild West experience, where compatibility with the joystick can vary greatly between titles. Many of these games were not designed specifically with the Retro-Bit Nest Mini in mind, but rather were emulated directly from their original PC versions. This means that users may need to navigate cracked rows and trainer menus to play certain games.
One of the main differences between the Retro-Bit Nest Mini and other retro consoles is its approach to emulation. Unlike Nintendo's Nes Mini, which includes a gamepad as part of the interface, the Retro-Bit Nest Mini requires a keyboard for certain functions. This means that users will need to deal with the limitations of using a joystick and virtual keyboard, rather than having a seamless gaming experience.
Overall, the Retro-Bit Nest Mini is an interesting option for retro gamers and those interested in emulating classic computer systems. While it may not offer the most polished or user-friendly experience, its ability to run almost any Commodore 64 game makes it a great choice for fans of the classic platformer. The fact that it's only $80 also makes it an affordable entry point into retro gaming.
It's worth noting that Retro Games has announced plans to release a full-sized C64 emulator, which will be released in a new console with all the guts inside, but without the need for a keyboard. This promises to be a significant upgrade over the current Nest Mini and is expected to be priced higher than $80.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey it's Jeremy from tested and today I'm here to talk about the c64 mini now this is of course a miniature version of what many of us remember as the Commodore 64 the computer that came out in 1982 ruled most of the 80s sold I think 17 million of them by the time it was discontinued about 12 years later so obviously there is a big audience for a remake of that in an easy to use HDMI version for a budget cost this goes for $80 it's available at a lot of retailers now it does not have a working keyboard I know that's question number one but I'll get in more to that in a second I did not actually own a c64 I always wanted one so this appealed to me because there were games that only came out on this that I've always wanted to play like weird games like B C's quest for tires and everything well the games that come on this are not necessarily the games I wanted to play or maybe the games that you remember or you wanted to play there's a handful of good ones 64 games come bundled on this and a lot of them include games like the epics series remember these Summer Games and world games and maybe most importantly California games is on here that's one of my favorites from back in the day but if the games that you don't want to play or if the games that you want to play aren't on this you're in luck because they with the latest firmware you can actually drop your games onto a USB stick plug it in the side and an icon appears at the bottom of the screen it allows you to play any game that you download from the internet now there is a caveat you can't play multi disc games natively but there is a guy named Vinny and if you happen to have one of these you can Google c64 Mini hacks and it will be the first thing that comes up it's not really a hack it's just a bunch of games that he has compiled into single files so you can drop them on a drive and put them on here run them so almost any game that you can remember from the c64 era it's very easily playable unlike the nest mini or thus nest mini where if you didn't like the games that were on there you had to go through some real hoops in order to get them working get them on there and running this natively runs anything that the Commodore 64 used to run it's it's quite good at that the joypad that comes with it is a remake of the c64 joy pad joystick now that's a good thing and a bad thing it's good for a nostalgia factor because it feels like the real deal however this was not necessarily like the best joystick design that could possibly be invented in fact two years later the nest would create the gamepad which was the de-facto way to play games from there thereon and while this does support some game pads it did not support any that I have at home so I couldn't get them working there's a wiki online you can find a list of game pads that have been tested to work on this battle I warn you it is not many at this point in time maybe they'll unlock more with future firmware updates I don't know you can also buy a second one of these from the company if you want to play multiplayer games the act of playing the games that come on the system is very straightforward the joystick allows you to go through a menu of all 64 of them you select the ones you want if they require keyboard support if the games ask you to type something you use these additional buttons they've added to the joystick one of them will bring up a menu you bring up a virtual keyboard and allows you to with your joystick select the letter that you want to type and enter it that is as tedious as it sounds and so if you would like rather than doing that you can hook up a USB keyboard to the device to the second USB jack however again kind of like the gamepad the first keyboard that I connected didn't actually work there's another wiki on online you can find with a list of keyboards that do work I think the list of keyboards is actually quite vast it just so happens the first keyboard I tried had a lot of LEDs on it and it was drawing too much power I don't know the second basic keyboard I try to work fine and that does work to type anywhere you need which includes the basic app so this actually ships one of the games you can activate is basic which is the old computer language a lot of us grew up in the eightieth learning how to use and so you can launch that up type in your program 10 print always be testing 20 go to 10 and it will fill the screen with with your awesome code and you can write games you just can't save them so it's it's an interesting sandbox form of programming but it's one that's worth having it on there and it does allow you to get at least a taste of what it was like to have a c64 which really was a game a lot of people learn how to program on and make games the act of playing games that you put on the USB stick however is a bit more Wild West because these are games that were not necessarily made to expect just the joystick where whereas all the games that ship on it are more or less calibrated simply for joystick used sparingly you expecting a keyboard the ones on the drive almost entirely are going to launch with cracked rows where you're seeing these old cracker introductions with all of their credits and you're gonna see trainers like do you want to play a high-score game or do you want to play with infinite lives and you're going to have to go into your virtual keyboard and you're gonna type yes and no and this is a number of how many lives I want to have that kind of thing and find the correct button often the spacebar in order to progress to the actual game and that's the price of emulating a PC instead of a game console which were so familiar with now when Nintendo releases the nest mini in this nest mini all they have to do is include a gamepad because that is 100 percent of the interface that the player always had with the game with a computer you really do need that keyboard so whether or not that a level of emulation is enough for you is up to you to decide it is only $80 and importantly retro games has announced that they are working on a full-sized c64 emulator maybe not the mini but it will be a new 64 with all the guts inside just like this but with a working keyboard no price or availability announced yet but I'll be curious to see what that is I guarantee it won't be $80 and it probably won't be available this year so if you're looking for something for Christmas maybe for the retro gamer or the gamer archaeologist in your life check it out all the links are below thanks for watching youhey it's Jeremy from tested and today I'm here to talk about the c64 mini now this is of course a miniature version of what many of us remember as the Commodore 64 the computer that came out in 1982 ruled most of the 80s sold I think 17 million of them by the time it was discontinued about 12 years later so obviously there is a big audience for a remake of that in an easy to use HDMI version for a budget cost this goes for $80 it's available at a lot of retailers now it does not have a working keyboard I know that's question number one but I'll get in more to that in a second I did not actually own a c64 I always wanted one so this appealed to me because there were games that only came out on this that I've always wanted to play like weird games like B C's quest for tires and everything well the games that come on this are not necessarily the games I wanted to play or maybe the games that you remember or you wanted to play there's a handful of good ones 64 games come bundled on this and a lot of them include games like the epics series remember these Summer Games and world games and maybe most importantly California games is on here that's one of my favorites from back in the day but if the games that you don't want to play or if the games that you want to play aren't on this you're in luck because they with the latest firmware you can actually drop your games onto a USB stick plug it in the side and an icon appears at the bottom of the screen it allows you to play any game that you download from the internet now there is a caveat you can't play multi disc games natively but there is a guy named Vinny and if you happen to have one of these you can Google c64 Mini hacks and it will be the first thing that comes up it's not really a hack it's just a bunch of games that he has compiled into single files so you can drop them on a drive and put them on here run them so almost any game that you can remember from the c64 era it's very easily playable unlike the nest mini or thus nest mini where if you didn't like the games that were on there you had to go through some real hoops in order to get them working get them on there and running this natively runs anything that the Commodore 64 used to run it's it's quite good at that the joypad that comes with it is a remake of the c64 joy pad joystick now that's a good thing and a bad thing it's good for a nostalgia factor because it feels like the real deal however this was not necessarily like the best joystick design that could possibly be invented in fact two years later the nest would create the gamepad which was the de-facto way to play games from there thereon and while this does support some game pads it did not support any that I have at home so I couldn't get them working there's a wiki online you can find a list of game pads that have been tested to work on this battle I warn you it is not many at this point in time maybe they'll unlock more with future firmware updates I don't know you can also buy a second one of these from the company if you want to play multiplayer games the act of playing the games that come on the system is very straightforward the joystick allows you to go through a menu of all 64 of them you select the ones you want if they require keyboard support if the games ask you to type something you use these additional buttons they've added to the joystick one of them will bring up a menu you bring up a virtual keyboard and allows you to with your joystick select the letter that you want to type and enter it that is as tedious as it sounds and so if you would like rather than doing that you can hook up a USB keyboard to the device to the second USB jack however again kind of like the gamepad the first keyboard that I connected didn't actually work there's another wiki on online you can find with a list of keyboards that do work I think the list of keyboards is actually quite vast it just so happens the first keyboard I tried had a lot of LEDs on it and it was drawing too much power I don't know the second basic keyboard I try to work fine and that does work to type anywhere you need which includes the basic app so this actually ships one of the games you can activate is basic which is the old computer language a lot of us grew up in the eightieth learning how to use and so you can launch that up type in your program 10 print always be testing 20 go to 10 and it will fill the screen with with your awesome code and you can write games you just can't save them so it's it's an interesting sandbox form of programming but it's one that's worth having it on there and it does allow you to get at least a taste of what it was like to have a c64 which really was a game a lot of people learn how to program on and make games the act of playing games that you put on the USB stick however is a bit more Wild West because these are games that were not necessarily made to expect just the joystick where whereas all the games that ship on it are more or less calibrated simply for joystick used sparingly you expecting a keyboard the ones on the drive almost entirely are going to launch with cracked rows where you're seeing these old cracker introductions with all of their credits and you're gonna see trainers like do you want to play a high-score game or do you want to play with infinite lives and you're going to have to go into your virtual keyboard and you're gonna type yes and no and this is a number of how many lives I want to have that kind of thing and find the correct button often the spacebar in order to progress to the actual game and that's the price of emulating a PC instead of a game console which were so familiar with now when Nintendo releases the nest mini in this nest mini all they have to do is include a gamepad because that is 100 percent of the interface that the player always had with the game with a computer you really do need that keyboard so whether or not that a level of emulation is enough for you is up to you to decide it is only $80 and importantly retro games has announced that they are working on a full-sized c64 emulator maybe not the mini but it will be a new 64 with all the guts inside just like this but with a working keyboard no price or availability announced yet but I'll be curious to see what that is I guarantee it won't be $80 and it probably won't be available this year so if you're looking for something for Christmas maybe for the retro gamer or the gamer archaeologist in your life check it out all the links are below thanks for watching you\n"
