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It has been two weeks since I received my Miyoo Mini from Aliexpress.
First, few words about the seller and the delivery. Without much pre-read I picked the most legitimately looking seller I could find, which was MIYOO Official Store (or at least that's what they claim - but they had enough positive reviews to trust them). It appears it wasn't the worst choice of my life as they turned out to be a legit store and they sent me my console the next day. They must have used air mail as it arrived in 10 days (I live in Poland), which is quite impressive considering how long I had waited all the other times I bought something from Ali.
I had also a lot of luck simply because of the timing. The console was available and I was able to purchase instantly. Only then while browsing Reddit I found some more info about this seller and it appears it is quite a rare situation they have their stocks full! Must have been my lucky day :)
Once it arrived, I knew already I should not bother with the stock SD card and instead use some branded one. For this purpose, I had ordered SanDisk 128GB MICRO SDXC ULTRA which I found is tested with Miyoo. First thing I did was to install Onion UI [1] - a great OS replacement for Miyoo, which besides a number of improvements also supports a lot more systems thatn the original one. Luckily, my Miyoo had the latest firmware installed and I didn't have to go through the risky process of flasing it.
After installing the system, I just copied almost the ROM files I found on the original SD card to the new one. Later on I also downloaded and added all the WHDLoad Amiga games I could found on their homepage [2]. Maybe at some point I will find time to play at least few of them ;)
I was primarily interested in SNES and GBA games - mainly JRPGs - and I tried them first. Even not being a JRPG genre fan, I thing it is the one best game category to play on such a small and cute device - especially considering its retro-inspired design. Unsurprisingly, all the games I tried worked like a charm - Chrono Trigger and The Secret of Mana being my top interest. Also many arcade games played without a problem although the defauly RetroArch configuration made it a bit difficult to quit from these games.
The next thing I tried was DosBox. I copied over all the DosBox games I had on my PC and - hey, this *was* a surprise - they all worked as a charm. The downside is that they all being western RPGs (hey, Daggerfall!) or strategies (HoMM2!!!) are virtually unplayable on the default controller setup. Reconfiguring RetroArch took me some while. The main pain was the menu button having two bindings as a time - one to display the on-screen keyboard, which I greatly appreciated, and the second one to go to the RetroArch menu - which I hated. Luckily I managed to find a solution on how to disable the latter on the Onion wiki on GitHub [1].
Still, after configuring it properly, it is still not fun to play DOS RPGs and strategies using digital pad :(
I also managed to run a few SCUMMVM games although didn't spend too much time with them.
The last thing I was playing with were Amiga games. My dream was to play Lotus III on the go, and this works! Lotus, like many other Amiga games, can be played using only a joystick, so Miyoo controls fits works perfectly here. Also the performance is satisfactory.
There is one little option set up in RetroArch by default for Amiga core, which helps a lot - one of the shoulder keys is for switching controls between joystick and mouse, so really *most* of the games should handle well.
I am just starting my adventure. I intend to focus mainly on SNES and GBA JRPGs, but also to try some of the Amiga hits I remember playing with my friend, who had Amiga 500. I appreciate how mobile Miyoo Mini is and plan to carry it with me in my EDC.
At some point I need to configure RetroArch key mappings better for DosBox games so at least some of them become playable - but that's for later and only for games I will not be able to run on Amiga or SCUMMVM core.
It would not be fair, however, not to mention about the biggest flaw of this cute console. It is really tiny. I can barely hold it and barely see all the details on the screen (my old age - over 40 - is not helping). I knew it will be the case, I just didn't realize how much. The vertical form factor does not help either. So if you are a serious gamer, try considering something a bit bigger and with horizontal layout. But If you are an ocasional player just like me, you'll be more than satisfied with this little gem!
~albeert
Links:
[1] Onion UI GitHub repository and download site
[2] WHDownload site, contains all (?) the Amiga games which have been modified to run from a HD