September 16, 2026
The Italian TRSI delegation received an offer they couldn’t refuse: joining a group of local Amiga aficionados at PASSIONE AMIGA DAY 2026, a full day of celebration and partying all revolving around the beloved 16/32 bits computer.
The event is organised on a yearly basis by Mod3m/Darkage and takes place in the sublime town of Spoleto, a small gem on the mountains of central Italy, well known as a hub for culture, nature, art and of course food, good wine and Amiga (from Wikipedia).
We left from Rome on the day before along with ROMA.EXE co-organizers Farenka and Odin, and took part to the pre-event social dinner - although we were met with several challenges on our way to it: the town is packed with food and wine attractions, which indeed “attracted” us every few steps and after a while it’s easy to overflow your buffers :D
Mr. Michele Battilana, CEO of Amiga Inc. and Cloanto, also joined us during one of the many rounds of aperitifs to share a few drinks and contribute to the good vibes. And share a few more drinks.
The following day started with a small crowd browsing through the expositors who also sold vintage items and merchandise. I managed to purchase some Amiga socks, but the underwear was unfortunately already sold out :D
The Italian edition of Zap!64 was also on sale, but that was an Amiga event so I purposely passed on ;)
A lot of interesting people attended and, even though Allister Brimble couldn’t make it this year (he is a regular attendant of Passione Amiga Day), many friends and developers were available for a nice exchange on current projects.
The event also served as a showcase for such projects, including a small award assigned to the top 3. Amongst the most interesting productions we had a very promising 3D raycasting engine and, most prominently, a preview of Darkage’s new game, a Zelda-inspired adventure in a Doom-like world with proper 3D and texture mapping. The puzzle and enemies were exhilarating and I personally look forward to the release, which should run smooth on a 030 thanks to an improved C2P implementation which only targets dirty areas refresh (amongst other optimisations). Sound and music by Allister Brimble and Virgill.
I (Razdee) showed a small intro quickly put together using my Amiga 3D engine and shared some bits of how it works with the audience.
At lunch time, the location provided us with ample choice for food and beverages, and we could choose either Italian foods or specialities from around the world like true Argentinian meats, which was one of the highlights of the day, accompanied by local wines with some unique flavours.
The afternoon went by with the talks, starting from our friend Farenka who shared what it was like to be an Amiga games developer in Italy in the 80s and 90s, how he got published by Team17, as well as tons of anecdotes that shaped his life and were quite fun to hear.
After him, Michele Battilana told us about how he got to own the Amiga brand and Kickstart ROMs (as well as the C64 ones), and his plans for the future of the platform with Kick 3.2. Very smart. Besides, many people don’t realize that the “new” Commodore doesn’t own much besides the Commodore logo, and in order to sell the C64 Ultimate they had to license the ROMs from Cloanto.
Finally, we had Colin Vella introduce his new AGA game “Hyper Runner”, a futuristic racing game, detailing how its innards work and showing the prototypes he’s developed. Colin is also known for the recent “Barbarian+” and “Shadows of Sergoth” releases. And for being a fun and very enjoyable fellow!
Our day ended with a few more drinks amongst friends and with a train back to Rome. It was great meeting everyone there and seeing also several ROMA.EXE t-shirts around. A great weekend in a lovely setting just 1h30m from Rome - shall rinse and repeat next year!
