New Amiga games shine in AmiGameJam 2025’s Return of the Arcade results show

There is a particular kind of excitement that only a retro game jam can create. It is not the polished hype of a studio launch, nor the algorithm-fed noise of a modern storefront. It is smaller, warmer, and somehow more electric: developers scattered across the world, old machines humming back into life, pixel artists pushing tiny palettes, musicians squeezing energy out of trackers, and everyone waiting to see what the Amiga community has managed to build this time. That is the charm of AmiGameJam. Organised by Moya Jackie McGeough, better known online as Amiga Cammy, AmiGameJam has grown into a yearly celebration of game development for both classic and Next-Gen Amigas. On her itch.io profile, McGeough describes AmiGameJam as an annual competition for the Amiga scene, and points readers toward a dedicated archive of previous events.

The competition’s roots stretch back further than its current name. According to the AmiGameJam archive site, it began in 2009 as the Annual Festive Amiga Game-Making Competition, originally created to encourage Christmas and festive-themed Amiga games. After the unexpected success of that first contest, the event continued, eventually becoming AmiGameJam and opening itself up to a wider range of themes. That history matters, because AmiGameJam feels less like a one-off contest and more like a running conversation with the Amiga’s past. In 2021, the theme was “Ports,” with winners including Knightmare, MsPacman 500, and Green Beret, plus a Next-Gen winner, VanillaConquer. In 2023, the theme shifted to “Sword & Sorcery,” where Rogue Declan Zero, Rastan, and Roguecraft took the top three places. Then in 2024, “The Sequel That Never Was” invited developers to imagine follow-ups that history never gave us, with Fast Food 2, Master of Minefields, and Ami Robbo 2 named as the top winners.

Each year has its own flavour, but the pattern is the same: give Amiga developers a theme, a deadline, and a reason to dust off their tools, then let the community surprise itself. For AmiGameJam 2025, the theme is especially fitting: “Return of the Arcade.” This time, entrants were challenged to create an Amiga game that could plausibly sit inside a classic arcade cabinet — something fast, immediate, skill-based, and tempting enough to make players want to insert another credit. The jam page describes the arcade spirit as instant fun, short exciting sessions, clear goals, and gameplay that grabs the player from the first moment. It is hard to imagine a better brief for the Amiga. The machine always had one foot in the bedroom and one foot in the arcade. For many players, it was the home computer that made games feel bigger, brighter, louder, and more alive. AmiGameJam’s latest theme taps directly into that memory, but it does not simply ask people to imitate the past. It asks them to build something new that could have belonged there. The 2025 competition ran from 31 May 2025 to 28 February 2026, and the itch.io page lists 20 entries and 809 ratings. After the competition closed, community voting opened, with a live-streamed results show planned so the entries could be discussed by a panel of judges before the winners were revealed. That show now has a date.

On 21 April 2026, Amiga Cammy announced on Bluesky that the official AmiGameJam results livestream will take place on 3 May, hosted on AmigaBill’s Twitch channel at his usual time of 2 PM EDT. For anyone outside the Amiga world, a livestreamed results show might sound like a small thing. For the people inside it, it is exactly the kind of communal moment that keeps the scene alive. The fun is not only in finding out who won. It is in seeing the games shown, hearing the judges react, spotting clever design choices, admiring technical tricks, and watching creators get a little recognition for work that often happens quietly, late at night, on machines that most of the modern industry has long since left behind. AmigaBill is a natural host for that kind of celebration. His Twitch channel has become a familiar gathering place for Amiga fans, developers, collectors, and curious newcomers. Putting the AmiGameJam results there gives the event the atmosphere it deserves: not a dry list of rankings, but a proper community showcase. That is what makes AmiGameJam special. It is not just about nostalgia, although nostalgia is certainly part of its glow. It is about participation. The jam page gathers development links, engines, programming resources, art tools, music resources, and tutorials, making the event feel like an open invitation rather than a closed competition. On 3 May, when the results are revealed live with AmigaBill, the Amiga community will get its arcade night. Not in a neon-lit hall, perhaps, but in a livestream chat full of familiar names, excited comments, and people who still believe this machine has more to give.

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