Five Amiga Exclusives You Might Not Know

It’s hard to believe that it's been 40 years since the world first saw Commodore’s legendary 16-bit machine hit shelves. Granted, it would be a couple of years after that 1985 launch before we would see the popular A500 model arrive, but nonetheless, that Mac and IBM early model was still a fantastic computer, even if it wasn’t the version that saw sales records broken. To celebrate the Ruby Jubilee of Commodore’s crowning glory, we’ve picked out five less well-known exclusive Amiga titles that we think are still worth playing in 2025 (or beyond, if you’re reading this in the future like some kind of magical time-wizard).

Cyberpunks

Not to be confused with CDProjekt Red’s magnum opus of 2020, Cyberpunks was a top-down shooter created by Rick Dangerous and Chuck Rock creators Core Design. It’s a really unique take on the genre that sees you in control of three characters at the same time, and it gets pretty hectic as a result. With chunky and vibrant sprites, a banging theme tune, and fast-paced action, it’s the kind of game that really shows off some of the Amiga’s strengths.

Sadly, with mixed reviews, it was never ported elsewhere, but players have looked fondly on it with the benefit of hindsight and a cult following ensued. It spawned a sequel, CyberPunks 2: Next Generation, in 2023, when one of the original creators, Adrian Robert Cummings, decided to revisit the franchise 30 years on and give it a second chance. 

Agony

Side-scrolling shooters were ten a penny back in the ‘90s, so it was necessary to do something to stand out from the crowd. Agony) did this by putting you in control of an owl instead of a spaceship. Allegedly, it’s meant to actually be the owl from the Psygnosis logo, but that’s never been formally confirmed (or denied!), so we may never know. This was also released at the same time as the legendary shooter Project-X, which is one of the reasons why it’s often overlooked. 

It’s a solid shooter, with some really nice graphics. Screenshots don’t do it justice, as it used a clever technique of flipping between two different backgrounds every frame in order to give the illusion of more colours on screen. There’s a stonking soundtrack too, with multiple composers listed in the credits. Interestingly, Allister Brimble is credited but his track was never used. If you can scrap music from such a leviathan of the Amiga music scene, it speaks volumes about the quality of the music you’ve left in!

Bob’s Bad Day

This is another Psygnosis title, created by Dome Software Developments, who primarily worked on porting games to other systems. As far as I could establish, this was their only original title for the Amiga. If you’re only going to release one game, then a unique puzzle game that got rave reviews from all the gaming press is probably the way to go!

Bob's Bad Day plays pretty much like the Sonic the Hedgehog special zone, but with you being in control of the maze movement rather than the character. Bob upsets a wizard by not laughing at his joke, so the wizard turns Bob’s head and body into spheres, and splits them up. In order to retrieve his body, Bob must traverse the 100 levels of the game by collecting all the coins in the mazes he finds himself in, then reaching the exit in a strict time limit. 

Graphically, Bob’s Bad Day is a bit on the vanilla side, albeit quite vibrantly coloured vanilla. Underneath that rather simplistic exterior, however, is a really fun game. Like all the best puzzlers, it’s easy to grasp but hard to master. The rolling around is supplemented by items which change in the direction of gravity, meaning that if you’re not careful, Bob will keep changing direction throughout as you roll through them. You have to balance speed with precision to get to the end, a feat which I haven’t managed yet!

‘Allo ‘Allo Cartoon Fun

Alternative Software had a real knack for creating licensed games from popular TV shows such as Danger Mouse, Trap Door, and Popeye. They also had a lot of pretty awful titles, including the legendarily awful Rik the Roadie, and Count Duckula 2, a staple of countless “worst games ever” lists. Allo 'Allo! Cartoon Fun!, a tie-in for the titular BBC sitcom of the 1980s, came out a year after the show it was based on was cancelled, and gave fans a little bit more fun with Rene and crew. 

Caricatures of the show's characters feature throughout, with all the recurring cast members represented. It’s an open-world platformer, more like a Dizzy game than a Sonic one, and the map is frankly huge, with tonnes of exploration. It was a pretty divisive game at the time; Amiga Power hated it, for example, whilst Amiga Computing thought it was well made. Like Cyberpunks, this is likely why it was never released elsewhere. But if you like a nicely crafted platformer with a quirky premise then this is a great game to check out. 

Walker

Yet another Psygnosis title, clearly the Liverpudlian publisher enjoyed an Amiga exclusive. Walker is the kind of game that would only have worked on certain machines, due to making use of mouse controls, something not possible on any of the 8-bit consoles or computers of the time. The mouse controls where your shots are placed and you use either the keyboard or joystick to control movement. PC gamers will be very familiar with mouse and keyboard as a control method, but in 1993 it was something unique.

It’s a scrolling shooter that sees you controlling a gigantic mech and destroying tiny humans. This, as you might expect, makes you feel superhuman and is a great deal of fun. The graphics aren’t necessarily the most detailed, and there’s probably a little bit too much disk-swapping involved, but that’s more than made up for with gameplay. 

So there you have it; five games that can only play on the machine that’s now officially turned “middle-aged”, by hitting its 40th birthday. They say life begins at 40, so why not dig that old Amiga out of the attic or fire up an emulator and give one of these classics a whirl?