I was talking in a general sense -- we don't get new amateur pieces which can touch the quality of the great games of the past much like we don't get new professional pieces which can do that, either. And the examples you gave seem to confirm it, even if the comparison there has to be much more... abstract.
I don't think you're being too kind on the European action games for the 8-bit/16-bit computers. They were horrid from the mechanics perspective (many of them even had to be played with a keyboard, so what could you expect), but they were (many times, though just in the early days) conceptually almost as great as the Japanese arcades they were trying to mimic and got amazing settings and scenography, making of any random theme something cool to experience. This personality just can't be found in the modern amateur scene from the West since they don't put even half the work into it nor have the talent, to begin with.