I had a commodore amiga as a child and this is not the gaming for the future I had imagined

A reader compares his youth dreams about what the Amiga era of Videogames would evolve with the current day and his very different priorities.

There were two things that pressed me in the news this week (the gaming news – there are many more than two in the actual news) and the first was proof that I am old, because the Commodore Amiga turned 40 this month. The other was that the average age of gamers is older and older, so that even most Nintendo players are in the thirty.

Apparently younger people just no longer play ‘traditional’ video games more, only free mobile games and live service things such as Fortnite and Minecraft. Video games seem to be not a special interest for them and as companies, most clearly Sony, hurry to try to address them … Well, you have all seen the release schedules in recent years.

As far as I am concerned, this generation has been a disaster for PlayStation and Xbox, and when we reach the end, I seriously wonder if VideogLaming as I know and loves them will survive much longer. It is sufficient to say that this is not how I imagined things when I played my Amiga as a little boy.

At the time, when the whole idea of video games was new, it was difficult to imagine what they would be, but I remember sure that I had spoken with a friend about a game in which you could do everything and everywhere. I think we imagined it as all our favorite games combined in one, with driving and flying, and so on. I did not know that we actually described GTA.

I am not sure if we had more specific ideas, except that the images would become more realistic and things like Starglider 2 and Frontier: Elite 2 would be extended to a point outside our imagination. I did not realize that these games would in fact die on the Amiga and would never be made again.

Looking through GC’s list of the 20 best games there were plenty of others I had added, such as James Pond 2: Robocod, Turrican, Pinball Fantasies, The Chaos Engine and Superfrog. But in general it was a good list and none of my choices changes the point that I am about to make: almost all games on the list were British.

The tragedy is that the only two American games on the list (Civilization and Monkey Island) are also the only two franchises that are still going today. All others have disappeared or with living support (I think Elite is still dangerously on PC, but they have stopped updating on console) and it is not only unlikely that they will return, but there is nothing like them to take their place.

The only thing that is similar to Elite is the terrible Starfield, which really feels like a bad Amiga game in terms of the lack of originality and ambition. And there has been nothing else for years, so it will guarantee failure that that will not happen anymore.

I have nothing against American games, but one of the great things of the Amiga was that you have games from everywhere. There were American import, Japanese import (although many of the arcade conversions were done by British developers) and European games. Nowadays, European games do not exist or they cannot be distinguished from American. Would you know that Ubisoft was French if someone would not have told you?

The lack of variation in the types of games that are made, and the people they make is really depressing and it only gets worse, because the more games cost the fewer risks and the less large budget games in general.

Many games on the Amiga were not very good, but there was always something weird and unexpected around the corner. I’m not sure if today you even get that with Indie games, which always just seem to be soulslikes or metroidvanias.

The dream of ultra realistic graphics has come true, but at such a terrible costs that it is simply not worth it. All the franchise I loved are dead and most of the companies they make are. The worst of all their imagination and ingenuity is also dead, where today more effort is put into cosmetic DLC than the actual games.

By reader Johnson

The characteristics of the reader do not necessarily represent the views of Gamecentral or Metro.

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