Al Game Console Hackathon: Build a Handheld AI Game Console in 12 hours!
Remember the click of the game cartridge slotting into your Gameboy? Or the satisfying power switch slider? The green-tinted screen? The 8-bit sounds? Beating the game, only to start over immediately? The slowly fading screen as the battery died?
We do, and now we wanna recreate the experience in 2026 and thought, what would an AI-native Gameboy look like?
We're inviting 50 people to join us at Antler to figure that out.
You'll use Arduino® UNO™ Q for the hardware and Summer Engine for the game experience.
There will be 10 teams, you'll have 12 hours, but only 1 winner takes it all.
Winning team wins:
- $1,000 cash prize
- An UNO Q kit + hardware
- AI credits to keep building your game
What to bring:
1. A laptop:
Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer) or a Windows PC. The older Intel-based Macs can't run Summer Engine.
2. Your own AI coding agent, installed and working before you arrive.
You can use Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or similar. We will provide $50 per person in Cursor credits, more than plenty to finish the day. You'll build the game through the Summer MCP.
3. Nothing else. We'll give every team Summer Engine credits for generating game assets, and the UNO Q hardware is provided by Arduino.
Project submissions will go on the Arduino Project Hub, an Arduino community for sharing open source projects.
Are you in?