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Two joystick ports was common on home computers years before the Amiga.

The Atari 400 and 800 computers had four joystick ports. Two paddles per port meant up to 8 paddles. The only game I know used four joysticks was M.U.L.E.

Indeed. My Commodore 64 nearly choked on its coffee just now. There was an entire 8-bit generation that followed this model.

In fact the 8520 CIA chips used to control the joystick ports on the Amiga were compatible enough you could put them in a C64 in place of one or both 6526's... (You'd lose the realtime clock, as the 8520 had timers instead, but "nobody" used the realtime clock on the C64).

I tested that at one point when one of the 6526's on my C64 broke. I don't think the reverse would work, as I think AmigaOS used the timers, but never tested.

(My parents were not amused that I opened the machines and swap chips around...)

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