{"id":3171,"date":"2025-07-26T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.satecsite.org\/?p=3171"},"modified":"2025-07-28T10:13:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T10:13:00","slug":"i-had-a-commodore-amiga-as-a-kid-and-this-is-not-the-gaming-future-i-imagined-readers-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.satecsite.org\/index.php\/2025\/07\/26\/i-had-a-commodore-amiga-as-a-kid-and-this-is-not-the-gaming-future-i-imagined-readers-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"I had a Commodore Amiga as a kid and this is not the gaming future I imagined \u2013 Reader\u2019s Feature"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\"Commodore\t<\/div>
The future has been difficult to predict (Sernot\/Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A reader compares his childhood dreams of what the Amiga era of video games<\/a> would evolve into with the current day and its very different priorities.<\/p>\n

There were two things that depressed me in the news this week (the gaming news – there\u2019s far more than two in the actual news) and the first was the proof that I\u2019m old, since the Commodore Amiga has turned 40<\/a> this month. The other was that the average age of gamers is getting older and older, so that even most Nintendo players are in their 30s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apparently younger people just aren\u2019t playing \u2018traditional\u2019 video games anymore, just free mobile games and live service stuff like Fortnite<\/a> and Minecraft<\/a>. Video games don\u2019t seem to be of any special interest to them and as companies, most obviously Sony, rush to try and appeal to them\u2026 well, you\u2019ve all seen the release schedules the last few years.<\/p>\n

This generation has been a disaster, as far as I\u2019m concerned, for PlayStation and Xbox, and as we reach the end of it I\u2019m seriously wondering whether video gaming as I know and love them will even survive for much longer. Suffice to say this is not how I imagined things back when I was playing my Amiga as a wee lad.<\/p>\n

Back then, when the whole idea of video games was still new, it was hard to imagine what they\u2019d become but I definitely remember talking to a friend about a game in which you could do anything and go anywhere. I think we imagined it as being all our favourite games combined into one, with driving and flying and so on. Little did I know we were basically describing GTA.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure we had any more specific ideas beyond that, other than the graphics would get more and more realistic and things like Starglider 2 and Frontier: Elite 2 would be expanded upon to a point beyond our imagination. Little did I realise at the time that these games would basically die on the Amiga and never be made again.<\/p>\n

Looking through GC\u2019s list of the 20 best games there were plenty of others I would\u2019ve added, like James Pond 2: RoboCod, Turrican, Pinball Fantasies, The Chaos Engine, and Superfrog. But overall it was a good list and none of my picks change the point I\u2019m about to make: almost all the games on the list were British.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\tExpert, exclusive gaming analysis\t\t\t<\/h2>\n
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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 the other ones are gone or on life support (I think Elite Dangerous is still going on PC, but they stopped updating it on console) and not only are they unlikely to come back but there\u2019s nothing like them to take their place.<\/p>\n

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