Latest news with #CommodoreAmiga
Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
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. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. 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. More Trending 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. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Star Wars Outlaws is Ubisoft's best game and you should get it now it's cheap - Reader's Feature MORE: It is madness that Konami still hasn't made a new Castlevania - Reader's Feature MORE: I had a Commodore Amiga as a kid and this is not the gaming future I imagined - Reader's Feature
Metro
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
I had a Commodore Amiga as a kid and this is not the gaming future I imagined
A reader compares his childhood dreams of what the Amiga era of video games would evolve into with the current day and its very different priorities. There were two things that depressed me in the news this week (the gaming news – there's far more than two in the actual news) and the first was the proof that I'm old, since the Commodore Amiga has turned 40 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. Apparently younger people just aren't playing 'traditional' video games anymore, just free mobile games and live service stuff like Fortnite and Minecraft. Video games don't seem to be of any special interest to them and as companies, most obviously Sony, rush to try and appeal to them… well, you've all seen the release schedules the last few years. This generation has been a disaster, as far as I'm concerned, for PlayStation and Xbox, and as we reach the end of it I'm 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. Back then, when the whole idea of video games was still new, it was hard to imagine what they'd 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. I'm 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. Looking through GC's list of the 20 best games there were plenty of others I would've 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'm about to make: almost all the games on the list were British. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. 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's nothing like them to take their place. The only thing similar to Elite is the dreadful Starfield, which genuinely feels like a bad Amiga game in terms of its lack of originality and ambition. And there's been nothing else like that for years anyway, so its failure is going to guarantee that doesn't happen again. I haven't got anything against American games but one of the great things about the Amiga was you got games from all over. There were American imports, Japanese imports (although a lot of the arcade conversions were done by British developers), and European games. Nowadays European games either don't exist or are indistinguishable from American ones. Would you know Ubisoft were French if someone hadn't told you? The lack of variety in the types of games that are being made, and the people making them, is truly depressing and it's only going to get worse, as the more games cost the less risks and the less big budget games in general. A lot of games on the Amiga weren't very good but there was always something weird and unexpected round the corner. I'm not sure you even get that with indie games today, which always seem to be just Soulslikes or Metroidvanias. More Trending The dream of ultra realistic graphics has come true but at such a terrible cost that it's just not worth it. All the franchise I used to love are dead and most of the companies making them are too. Worst of all their imagination and ingenuity is dead too, where today more effort is put into cosmetic DLC than the actual games. By reader Johnson The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: The biggest problem with the Nintendo Switch 2 is that it's too big – Reader's Feature MORE: Donkey Kong Bananza is Nintendo and gaming at its best - Reader's Feature MORE: The best thing the PS6 can do is be less powerful than PS5 – Reader's Feature
Stuff.tv
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Stuff.tv
The Commodore Amiga turns 40 – here are its 10 best games ever
If you ever used an Amiga back in the day, prepare to feel old, because Commodore's masterpiece just turned 40. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s it was a beast of a computer, with its 16-bit processor, custom chips for graphics and audio, colour mouse-based UI (take that, Mac Plus!), and enough RAM to make all the 8-bit micros green with envy. Advertising at the time suggested the Amiga was the ideal business machine, or perfect for creative endeavours. But of course everyone just wanted it as a gaming computer. Here's Stuff's definitive guide to the ten best Commodore Amiga games ever made that are still worth playing today. (If you disagree, yell at us on socials. But the first person to mention the risible Shadow of the Beast will be forced to play Rise of the Robots for a solid week as punishment. You have been warned.) 1. The Secret of Monkey Island Play While Lucasfilm's point-and-click SCUMM engine appealed to audiences upon Maniac Mansion's release, it was the near-perfect Secret of Monkey Island that consigned the traditional text-based adventure to oblivion. Ron Gilbert's superb writing infuses this cartoonish pirate adventure with energy and life. It also eradicated the typical dead-ends seen before in so many adventures, by making it impossible for protagonist Guybrush Threepwood to die. Fall off a cliff and you're hurled back into the air by bouncing on a rubber tree! It's not surprising the adventure keeps getting remade and reimagined on modern kit, but the original Amiga outing remains especially joyful to play. 2. Cannon Fodder Play Command & Conquer usually gets kudos for kickstarting the modern RTS, but Cannon Fodder got there first, adding an injection of dark satire that sailed over the heads of every do-gooder censorship-happy miseryguts and tabloid hack of the day. The premise was to lead your little squad around battlefields, stealthily taking out enemies and completing missions. Controversy came through the juxtaposition of humour and war, and the roll calls at the end of each level, which listed the names of the fallen against a poppy backdrop; your squad was then refreshed from an endless queue of oblivious recruits awaiting their turn, next to a hill that amassed an increasing number of graves. Brilliant, poignant and playable, it's a title ripe for remake. 3. SWOS Play Forget FIFA and PES – in the 1990s, SWOS was where footie games were at. Sensible Software (quite sensibly) decided 'realism' was a waste of time if you only had 16 bits to play with, and instead presented football as you imagined it to be in your head as a kid, winning the World Cup on a barren patch of grass behind your gran's house. The result ended up more like pinball, with fast and furious overhead matches that were endlessly frenetic and exciting. Its spirit somewhat lives on in Sociable Soccer, which is spearheaded by a SWOS co-creator. But, much like Manchester United, it can't quite capture those glory days. 4. Stunt Car Racer Play If you're into thoroughly modern racers, you might balk at Stunt Car Racer's jerky framerate and simple graphics. To do so would be to sniffily avoid a fantastic racer that asked the question: how cool would it be to mash-up drag racing and roller-coasters? The answer: very. With perfect, solid-feeling physics, it's one of very few racers from the Commodore Amiga era to properly leave your stomach in your mouth as you zoom about on vertigo-inducing tracks, slam into banked corners, and try very hard not to nitro your eyebrows off in a mad dash for the chequered flag. 5. Lemmings Play With all the sequels, remakes and clones, Lemmings for a while almost became part of gaming's wallpaper, and so it's hard to remember how fresh the concept was back in 1991. The aim was simple: guide a bunch of tiny bipedal lemmings home, helping them navigate hazards along the way. The lemmings automatically doddled along, and you could assign individuals special powers, such as digging, blocking, or building a ramp. Initially an enjoyable and sweet-natured game, later levels could have you tearing your hair out as you screamed DON'T GO THAT WAY, YOU STUPID IDIOT at the screen, watching forlornly as the lemming you needed to make up your quota nose-dived to oblivion. Fortunately, catharsis came via the 'Nuke' command, which blew up all the remaining little buggers at once. Oh no! 6. Syndicate Play The first in Bullfrog's long-running real-time tactics series has you order a bunch of cyborg goons about an isometric landscape of corporate dystopia, intent on killing off executives from rival firms. Hostile takeover doesn't really cover it. And there's more than a hint of satire in the manner you can 'persuade' civilians and scientists to join your company's cause (their other choice being 'death'). At the time, the scope and living world in this Commodore Amiga game made it compelling, unique and ahead of its time; the rest of the gaming world's long caught up, but Syndicate still manages to hold its own, especially if you're looking for 'alternate' means to get ahead in the boardroom. 7. Speedball 2 Play We don't know about you, but the future of sport looks pretty exciting, as armoured lunks dash about arenas, smashing metal balls into rivals' faces, while refreshments are hawked in the distance by someone yelling ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM! over and over. At least, that's how Speedball 2 has it, borrowing heavily from Rollerball and early 2000 AD future-sports strips. For such an old game, there's surprising depth, too, as you attempt to somehow transform the Luton FC of this future world (the appallingly named Brutal Deluxe) into champions. 8. Populous Play Considered the earliest 'god game', Populous has you scroll about hilltops populated by uncivilised rabble. Your powers initially make you wonder whether the game should have been by Codemasters and entitled Advanced Landscaping Simulator, since you can only raise and lower land. The larger the flat areas, the bigger structures your little folks can construct, until they're all living in houses and castles. Your followers breed like rabbits, gain you 'mana', train up knights, and want to keep spreading. You can then send knights on to duff up the opposition and take over their land, providing a helping god-like hand by using mana to fling firestorms, earthquakes and volcanos at anyone you want rid of. 9. Turrican 2 Play There's a smattering of Metroid in the DNA of Turrican 2, with you bounding about huge side-on platform-filled worlds, blowing up anything that goes for you. But Turrican 2 is very much an Amiga game, from its urgent Chris Huelsbeck soundtrack through to the rich and diverse level design that keeps hurling new challenges at you. Perhaps the best bit is never really knowing what's coming next. More traditional level design gradually ramps up the difficulty level over the course of a game. But in Turrican 2, you can be ambling down a corridor and suddenly find yourself desperately fending off a screens-high adversary, or discover the entire game's suddenly transformed into a breakneck horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up. Top stuff. 10. Datastorm Play Every era of videogames is transformative and in some way leaves the past behind. With the 16-bit computers, there was a desire to provide deeper and more complex experiences, but Datastorm had no truck with that. Instead, it harked back to classic arcade blasters, merging Defender and Dropzone into a lightning-fast feat of horizontal blasting action. Making use of the host hardware, it also had you face bloody great big foes like the terrifying screen-high space squid and intergalactic space skull, the latter of which still makes us think its pilots had a pretty major insecurity problem. Now read: The next ZX Spectrum will also be a Commodore 64
Metro
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
The 20 best Commodore Amiga games to celebrate the 40th anniversary
GameCentral lists the most iconic games ever made for the Amiga home computer, back in its glory days of the 80s and 90s. It may not be much of a household name nowadays, but anyone who grew up gaming in the late 80s knows that, here in the UK, the Commodore Amiga series of home computers was one of the most popular formats of the time. Its success was one of the reasons the belated release of the NES never took off, something which has affected Nintendo's popularity in the UK ever since. However, once the Mega Drive and SNES launched in the early 90s, the Amiga slowly became overshadowed and, eventually, all but forgotten, apart from a mini-console release in 2022. The Amiga celebrates its 40th anniversary on June 23, but because it was only ever really popular in Europe its legacy is a difficult thing to honour, with only the occasional remaster or reboot for any of its games. But nevertheless, here are 20 of its most memorable titles – almost all of which were originally made in the UK. One of the very first games developed by long-running British studio Team17 – who are still going today as an indie publisher – this top-down shooter is heavily inspired by the movie Aliens and remains an all-time favourite amongst Amiga fans. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Its initial success led to a long line of sequels and spin-offs but while it attempted to segue into being a 3D shooter it was never able to compete with new challengers such as Doom. The attempts at a modern reboot never took off either, which currently leaves the franchise in limbo. When you think of cinematic games, your mind probably goes to big budget PlayStation games like God Of War and Uncharted. But in the 90s, that term was being used to describe 2D platformer Another World and its spiritual successor Flashback. While Another World was all style and little substance Flashback, which also appeared on contemporary home consoles, was way ahead of its time in terms of storytelling in an action games and including a relative amount of non-linear gameplay. A remake and a sequel have both been attempted but the original was very much of its time and even its spiritual sequel, 1995's Fade To Black, wasn't a hit, despite being one of the very earliest third person shooters. The Amiga would have been a far less exciting format without British developer Sensible Software, who have no less than three entries in this list. Cannon Fodder is arguably their greatest creation and something completely unique both then and now. It's essentially a top-down squad based action game, controlled by a mouse (all Amigas came with a mouse – it was the joystick you had to buy separately) where squad-mates would drop like flies, to later be memorialised in an in-game cemetery. The game was heavily criticised by the Daily Star for using images of a poppy but while Sensible were clearly goading tabloids into giving them free press, which they got, the game itself is very clearly anti-war and quietly poignant in terms of the fate of its virtual soldiers. When the Amiga first arrived in 1985, 3D polygonal graphics were all but unknown on home consoles, with even the milestone release of 1993's Starwing (aka Star Fox) on the SNES requiring a more expensive cartridge with extra processing power. And yet the Amiga was filled with hugely ambitious 3D games – all made by British developers and including the likes of Cybercon III, Infestation, Starglider, and Damocles. They all ran with horrendously low frame rates but despite that, Frontier still managed to simulate astronomically accurate solar systems and physics. Like many pioneering games on the Amiga, including 2D titles such as Shadow Of The Beast, Frontier wasn't actually much fun but it was always interesting to explore and play around with. And then when you got bored of that you could play the Amiga version of the original Elite, which was a lot more enjoyable. Speaking of hugely ambitious 3D games with terrible frame rates, that are no fun to play, Hunter was essentially GTA 3 but almost 25 years earlier. The story campaign had you trying to assassinate an enemy general but there's also a sandbox mode where you can take on targets in whatever you like, across an archipelago of islands. This involved driving around in a wide range of vehicles, that you could get in and out of at any time, as well as walking, swimming, and fighting on foot. It was horribly difficult but shared similarities with Midwinter and Carrier Command, in that all three games were decades ahead of their time, in terms of sandbox gameplay, and made by British developers that are now all but forgotten by the wider industry. Although Street Fighter 2 didn't appear until 1991 (there were several versions on the Amiga but none of them were very good), one-on-one fighting games weren't an entirely unknown concept before that, not least because the original Street Fighter came out in 1987. That very same year, the sequel to International Karate, by Jimmy White's 'Whirlwind' Snooker creator Archer Maclean, appeared and it's fascinating how different a concept it is, not least because there's actually three people fighting at a time. It'll forever be most famous for the cheat code that lets you drop the fighters' trousers but that doesn't negate the fact that this is probably the best pre-Street Fighter 2 fighting game on any format. Once one of the biggest gaming franchises of the 90s, Lemming sadly fell out of favour, and drifted into obscurity in the ensuing decades, primarily because it's best played with a mouse, which most consoles never had. It's a puzzle game where you have to stop swarms of lemmings falling to their death, as you block off and dig through the landscape to help them. The series was considered important enough to appear on a Royal Mail stamp, although it's now most famous for being an early work by DMA Design – the studio that went on to become Rockstar North. Without the financial success of Lemmings there would never have been a Grand Theft Auto, which is a sobering thought. Although Sony owns the franchise now, after buying original publisher Psygnosis. Rainbow Islands may be an arcade conversion, of one of the many games claiming to be the sequel to Bubble Bobble, but its true home has always been on the Amiga. It's certainly the only place it's ever enjoyed the degree of fame it deserves, thanks to a near perfect port by legendary developer Andrew Braybrook, creator of Uridium and Paradroid (Commodore 64 games which both had sequels on the Amiga). We know what it looks like, but Rainbow Islands is an incredibly nuanced action platformer, that's filled with secrets and enjoys one of the most flexible weapon systems in any 2D game. The rainbows you shoot out are at once projectiles, traps to catch enemies beneath you, and platforms to be traversed. It's a genius concept that cannot be re-released today in its original form because its soundtrack is technically a knock-off of Somewhere over the Rainbow. Arguably the first ever combat flight simulator, this went unnoticed by many even at the time, although it's a wonderfully imaginative evolution of games like Elite, that focuses solely on combat and arrived a full year before Wing Commander. It features a relatively realistic, physics-based control system and surprisingly involved story missions, obviously inspired by the previous year's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Developer Glyn Williams went on to make the Independence War games, which acted as spiritual sequels, but sadly they're almost completely forgotten too. In some ways it's a shame that Sensible Soccer was so successful, because it meant Sensible Software never got around to making other more experimental titles, like Cannon Fodder and Wizkid. An evolution of earlier game MicroProse Soccer, this was a direct rival to the otherwise popular Kick Off series and was very much the EA Sports FC of its day, except with a sense of humour and played from a top-down perspective. It has a spiritual sequel today, in Sociable Soccer by original creator John Hare, that's seen some success, but nothing like Sensi in its heyday. Although the Amiga rarely got the same games released on contemporary consoles, it did get lots of arcade conversations and PC ports. The PC didn't really come into its own as a games format until the mid 90s but there were notable titles before that time, including the original Civilization in 1991. A franchise so successful the most recent sequel came out just this year. The Amiga version was a bit slower, because of the limited processing power, but it worked very well and so did seminal real-time strategy game Dune 2 and UFO: Enemy Unknown – what would later become known as X-COM. Its predecessor Laser Squad was also a cracking turn-based game, even if it still looked like a ZX Spectrum game. Unsurprisingly, top-down racing games are not something you see much of nowadays, even from indie developers, but there were lots on the Amiga, including arcade conversion Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road and the excellent Skidmarks series. Super Cars 2 is most people's favourite though, not because it does anything particularly original but simply because it does it very well. The inclusion of weapons is relatively unusual though and ensures multiplayer matches are always glorious chaos. It was also essentially a sister series to the equally popular Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge games. This list of games isn't in any particular order but the two frontrunners for our favourite Amiga games of all-time are Rainbow Islands and this: the best game the Bitmap Brothers ever made and still the definitive example of a future sports game. It's basically a hyper violent version of handball crossed with hockey, where you aim to get the ball into the goal by any means necessary, including punching your opponents to the floor and creating score multipliers by throwing it at devices at the side of the arena. A follow-up has been attempted multiple times, with a new one currently in early access from Rebellion but nothing has matched the elegant simplicity of the original… or its amazing theme tune. As much as his reputation has been tarnished nowadays, Peter Molyneux was on fire during the Amiga era, doing all his best work while at now defunct developer Bullfrog, with titles such as Flood and Syndicate. Populous was his most famous game at the time and along with SimCity (which was also available on the Amiga) helped create the now largely abandoned god game genre. It's arguable how much real strategy was involved in the gameplay, but at the time Populus' open-ended nature and isometric graphics were a revelation. The sequel never added any real depth to the concept though and the franchise has been mothballed for almost two decades now. We've already discussed many of the Amiga's most innovative 3D games but arguably the most impressive is Starglider 2. Rather than being a straight shooter, like its predecessor, it is a completely open-ended sci-fi adventure where you can travel anywhere in a solar system, nominally in an attempt to blow up an enemy space station with a special bomb. No one ever bothered with that though and instead spent their time exploring the fascinating 3D worlds that featured no loading screens and flat-shaded (as opposed to wireframe) polygon graphics, as you travelled from outer space, through the atmosphere, and onto a planet's surface. The highlight was undoubtedly listening to the space whales in the atmosphere of the system's gas giant but the whole game was a technical marvel, with many of the team going on to develop Starwing for Nintendo. While the Amiga had plenty of its own exclusives, and many titles shared with rival home computer the Atari ST, much of its portfolio was made up of ports from other formats, whether it be arcades, the PC, or earlier 8-bit computers. Exile is one such game, having first appeared on the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. That means nobody outside the UK has ever heard of it and yet it's a fantastically ambitious action adventure, with completely open-ended gameplay, a realistic physics engine, and clever artificial intelligence. Perhaps if it had had modern style signposting, and a lower difficulty, it might be better known today but the unfortunate truth is that if a game isn't popular in the US or Japan it's rarely ever seen again. Lucasfilm Games were a loyal supporter of the Amiga and while their later point 'n' click adventures had increasing trouble running on the format the original Monkey Island worked perfectly and thanks to the Amiga's excellent sound chip was arguably the definitive version at the time. Still one of the funniest games ever made – which says just as much about its level of competition as it does the game itself – this is both a charming screwball comedy and a graphic adventure whose puzzles are perfectly pitched as difficult but not impossibly illogical. As a bonus, the series is still going today, thanks to the 2022 soft reboot. If this were a list of most underrated Amiga games, The Sentinel would comfortably sit at the top since, even at the time it came out, very few people had ever heard of it. And that's despite it having been released previously on various 8-bit formats. The Sentinel is a remarkably unique stealth game, where you control an immobile robot and must avoid the glare of the titular Sentinel by teleporting from one spot to the other across an abstract 3D landscape. It was the creation of SIr Geoff Crammond, but as good as Stunt Car Racer and Formula One Grand Prix were, it's The Sentinel which stands as his greatest achievement. This is the main reason we semi-resent the existence of Sensible Soccer, as it's the weirdest and most experimental game Sensible Software ever made. It's nominally a sequel to their earlier 2D shooter Wizball, which was also ported to the Amiga, but has almost nothing in common with that in terms of gameplay. More Trending You play as the disembodied head of Wizkid in what could vaguely be described as a mix of Arkanoid and Rainbow Islands, as you knock tiles and other objects onto enemies below you. It's when you rejoin your body that things get really weird though, in what is one of the most thoroughly British video games ever made. No Amiga list would be complete without Worms, which was initially made as part of a programming competition run by the magazine Amiga Format. At heart, it's a pretty simple riff on Artillery games, where you have to judge the trajectory of shells fired from fixed gun emplacements, but here you can move and there's a much wider range of weapons. More importantly, it's filled with very British humour and a fantastic multiplayer mode. The series continues to the current day, although after the failure of battle royale spin-off Worms Rumble the next mainline entry has been reduced to an Apple Arcade exclusive called Worms Across Worlds. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: The A500 Mini console review – all 25 Amiga games reviewed from Alien Breed to Speedball 2 MORE: A classic 90s Amiga video game has got an unexpected reboot on Steam MORE: Flashback 2 review – from Amiga classic to modern calamity
Metro
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Games Inbox: Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga
The Thursday letters page asks whether the PS6 will see Sony making more exclusive games, as one reader hopes for a new Uncharted game. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ Many happy returns Just wanted to shout out the 40th anniversary of the Commodore Amiga. The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge put on an event at the weekend which was brilliant. There was a talk from David Pleasance, former Commodore UK managing director, who shed light on some of the (mis-)management goings on between Europe and the US in the 90s, and a panel featuring composer Andrew Barnabas. Sensible Software legends Jon Hare and Stoo Cambridge, Worms creator Andy Davidson, and Revolution Software co-founder Tony Warriner were also there. I have only kept one eye on the Amiga scene since having my A1200 in the 90s, but it really is incredible just what a thriving community it is. David Pleasance said it's bigger than it's ever been. This was borne out by attendance at the event, which was very busy. Overall, it's great to see these communities alive and kicking and that the era of the bedroom coders and demo parties isn't quite dead yet. Thank you Centre for Computing History. Owen Pile Uncharted future I've recently been playing the Uncharted collection of the first three games. Even though they are now regarded as old games, they really have been a pleasure to revisit. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. I'm maybe forlornly hoping that Naughty Dog will allow Nathan Drake to don his underarm holster for another action-packed adventure. Here's hoping. Gaz69 GC: Naughty Dog are very unlikely to have anything to do with the series again but it's inevitable that Sony will have someone else take over. In fact, it's surprising it hasn't happened already, with recent rumours only pointing at a remake. If they're doing a second movie though that must surely increase the chances of an entirely new game. Double Kong RE: Onibee. Donkey Kong Bananza couldn't be done on previous generation Switch at all. Physics involved would be causing CPU meltdown in the original console. And, similarly, Cyberpunk 2077 just wouldn't be even a slight possibility either. It brought PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to their knees, not least because of their lack of SSD. I'm sure we can expect more out the Switch 2 as people get more familiar with its hardware, but this isn't a case of cross generation gaming with Double Kong. Kiran GC: Nintendo has said the game was originally designed for the Switch 1. Although what it became probably couldn't run on Switch 1 it would've retained some of those original limitations, like the horrible dithering effect we hate so much. Email your comments to: gamecentral@ Etrian legacy As big fans of Etrian Odyssey I wonder if you guys have seen/heard about Shujinkou? Very similar vibes yet it also attempts to teach players Japanese as well. At first, I assumed, as it had this language gimmick, it wouldn't be a good game but reviews seem to be quite favourable, any thoughts? Liam GC: We have not heard of it before, but it looks very interesting. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. We see there's a Switch version due this autumn, so we'll try and review it then. Do remind us nearer the time, in case we forget. Too little, too late I dug out my old PlayStation 3 to play a few older games and have been playing Resistance 3. I remember the first two being average but 3 feels like a HD version of Half-Life, with inventive guns and great set-pieces. I'm not that far in but I'm really enjoying going through this again. I'd love to see a Resistance 4 but Sony don't seem to make games anymore. Simon GC: Resistance 3 was by far the best of the three. Insomniac did apparently have some interest in making a fourth, but unfortunately their Marvel games are too successful now. No problem Would it be possible for companies to offer a pressed disc instead of just stopping the servers hosting said game? Obviously, it wouldn't work for online games but any single-player games about to end its digital life cycle. Ask for a fee and send out a disc but only a pressing fee or something as the consumer already paid for the game. This would save games from becoming extinct if they're of a certain age and satisfy the people that like to keep their games. Bobwallett GC: Single-player games don't tend to have any servers to turn off, unless there's a specific title you're thinking of? A hot summer I'm enjoying My Friendly Neighborhood, as it's just been added to Game Pass but has also released on PlayStation 4 and 5, having released on PC two years ago now. It's a Resident Evil style game with a novel setting. A once popular but now forgotten children's Saturday morning puppet show has suddenly started transmitting again and you're sent to shut it down. Being a Resident Evil style game, the main pitfall is not knowing where to go or find items and using up all your ammo and health finding out. So, I've adopted my usual tactic for these games of saving before a section, using up all my stuff to find a good route then reloading the save for a much smoother second run. Although the normal mode seems pretty generous with those things so far, so maybe no need to go into Resi mode. But with this, Wheel World, Grounded 2 early access, and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers also on Game Pass this week, along with Donkey Kong Bananza on Switch and the System Shock 2 Remaster, it's a good month for games in my book. Simundo Sensible decisionI think Donkey Kong Bananza would have been the better launch title on the Switch 2. It can be played as a single-player game. Mario Kart World is a racing game which is best enjoyed when racing with others. What do you think? Which would you have preferred as the launch title? Henry GC: There was only a month between them, so it hardly seems to matter. But Mario Kart is by far the biggest franchise and will inevitably sell more copies – and consoles – than any other game that's likely to appear on the Switch 2. PlayStation questions I completely agree with the Reader's Feature arguing that the PlayStation 6 should be less powerful than the current generation but, let's face it, that's never going to happen. No one's doing anything about the higher cost of making games and nobody has ever gone backwards in a generation, not even Nintendo (the Wii was still a little more powerful than the GameCube). Sony is going to make the PlayStation 6 more powerful than the current gen and they're going to market it and push it exactly the same way they always have, with absolutely no acknowledgement of how much has changed. That's my prediction anyway. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I don't think so when it comes to the power question. No one wants it to be less powerful. It'd be great if it was a huge step forward in graphics but how is anybody going to have the time and money to make games for that kind of console? Unless you want everything to take 10 years or to be AI slop there just isn't another option. The only thing we can hope for at this point is that Sony reverses its approach this gen and starts putting out multiple games again. I'd want to see a whole bunch of interesting, high quality single-player games at launch or otherwise I just don't think I'll bite. If the PlayStation 6 ends up being super powerful, very expensive, and with very few exclusives – most of which are live service games – I think PlayStation may be over for me. Taylor Moon Inbox also-ransI wish video games would make it more obvious when they're saving. I get that it's supposed to be more immersive but I really miss the reassurance of a manual save in a lot of games. Blink I see Ubisoft are trying to blame the failure of Star Wars Outlaws on Star Wars not being popular anymore. I guess that explains why Battlefront 2 has suddenly become so big on Steam, after everyone came off the Andor buzz from Disney+. Draven More Trending Email your comments to: gamecentral@ The small print New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers' letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content. You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader's Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot. You can also leave your comments below and don't forget to follow us on Twitter. MORE: Games Inbox: What is the next big game for Nintendo Switch 2? MORE: Games Inbox: How would you improve Mario Kart World? MORE: Games Inbox: What is the next Assassin's Creed game?
