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.