The Nintendo Switch 2 is the closest thing to a modern day Commodore Amiga

A reader celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga and suggests that the Switch 2 is its closest current equivalent.

It’s been a lot of fun to see the love for the Commodore Amiga this week, which I had no idea was 40 years old. As has been pointed out, probably nobody outside of Europe either knows or cares about it now but to me it was the most important games format when I was kid. Which is to say it’s what I had, and I couldn’t afford a Mega Drive or SNES. Or rather I couldn’t afford their games.

Amiga games were a lot cheaper (and, well, you know) and they also seemed a lot more varied. To my eyes the vast majority of console games were just platformers of one kind or another. I never even heard of Zelda or Final Fantasy until the PlayStation era and while we never got anything as good as Sonic the Hedgehog on the Amiga I can honestly say I wasn’t that bothered.

On the Amiga we had all kinds of crazy things, and lots of 3D games and games made in Europe and the UK which never appeared anywhere else. But as soon as consoles took over everything was made in Japan or the US and we’ve never really gone back from that, even with modern indie gaming on the PC.

PlayStation and Xbox aren’t interested in anything but a small number of games from a small number of publishers. Heck, the whole point of Xbox is Microsoft wanted to make American companies dominate the games industry, so I can’t say I’m too upset that didn’t work out.

Thinking about what the modern equivalent of the Amiga is I guess you’d have to say it’s the PC, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. It’s too unfocused and you have to use Steam to get anything out of it, which is very American focused.

Weirdly it’s the Nintendo Switch 2 which feels the closest to the Amiga to me, assuming it works out similar to the original Switch. Although the fact that it has a mouse by default already increases the comparisons, so I hope it makes good use of that.

But it’s really just how strange and varied all the games are, with no first person shooters or sad dad story games so far, just the crazy Mario Kart and Donkey Kong games and the promise that future games will be as weird as the Switch line-up was. Especially as Drag X Drive even looks a bit like Speedball 2.

It’s not just Nintendo though but all the other, smaller Japanese developers that they encourage. Companies I’m sure probably wouldn’t still be going if it wasn’t for the Switch. Games are too expensive to make on PlayStation and Xbox now, for small companies, but the Switch is low-powered enough that it’s still possible.

I’m not saying these sort of games aren’t on the PlayStation as well, but there’s not as many and they’re certainly not as high profile. You’d never get Sony highlighting them in their equivalent of a Nintendo Direct.

I guess what I’m getting at is that gaming seemed a lot less corporate and more unpredictable in the Amiga days and now that I’m older I can see why things like where the games are made and how much they cost to make (and so how much risk they can afford to take) affect that.

There’s no point dwelling too much on the past but it is useful to look back and see that not everything has changed for the better.

By reader Lester

The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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