I just love that, in these days of bloated AAA titles, there are these two guys in Wales who are totally committed to psychedelic experiences in gaming, who somehow function just past the public eye but manage to get their games released with all the big players, these PG-rated riots of light and sound that on any given day a curious gamer could stumble upon and become captivated with. You have my deepest respects, Mr. Minter and Giles.
That is neat. I can see how it'd happen though, as I'm surely Charlie Brooker would have reviewed a bunch of his games if not met him back in the days he was reviewing computer games.
I hope this will help me finally remember Jeff Minter's name. Because every three years or so I feel like looking up some gameplay videos of his games and can't for the life of me recall it.
I'm no relation, but it made a nice change to come across "Attack of the Mutant Camels" in the mid 80s as a home computer nerd when the only other Minter anyone had heard of was a boxer.
There is a great essay (8 installments) describing his youth, education, and work leading to the creation of Lllamasoft. Highly recommended if you want to relive the 8-bit computer era documented by someone who was a well-known figure at that time.
It's great to see him kicking around and making games. I have fond memories of playing his "Matrix" game on my C64. Great mechanics, nice graphics, great sound, llamas and camels (of course), all of it in ~35Kb, much lesss than most C64 games even back then. A true wizard.
At age 15 I wrote a pacman clone for the Atari ST and was both impressed by and jealous of Minter's Llamatron for the same platform. My game was 30Hz only rarely, usually degrading to 15Hz, and you could really feel it in the gameplay. Llamatron was always fast (always 60hz?) -- because that's just how Jeff rolls. Respect.
On the plus side, my crappy pacman clone was good enough to convince Andy Gavin to (years later) bring me on as the first developer hire at Naughty Dog. The system works! (I guess?)
Jeff Minter's name evokes ideas of super slick gameplay, putting all his earlier work high up on the Olympus occupied by the BitMap Bros, Konami and Atari. This fellow continues to be a true inspiration to somewhat vintage gamers like myself who can remember the hype that went with a Llamasoft release back in the day - incidentally it's interesting reading Jeff saying he hates marketing, I never would have guessed with all his previous releases in the 90's.
16 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 46.6 ms ] threadhttps://broadbentius.com/2015/01/23/jeff-minter-and-ivan-zor...
I'm no relation, but it made a nice change to come across "Attack of the Mutant Camels" in the mid 80s as a home computer nerd when the only other Minter anyone had heard of was a boxer.
He has daily livestreams where he goes out and hangs out with his sheep, donkeys, and llamas.
[1] http://minotaurproject.co.uk/lshistory1.php
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9227514
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9226275
Disclaimer: must still have high brain plasticity / good hand-eye coordination to cope with it.
I'm also really looking forward to PSVR2 updates / versions of some of Llamasoft's earlier games.
On the plus side, my crappy pacman clone was good enough to convince Andy Gavin to (years later) bring me on as the first developer hire at Naughty Dog. The system works! (I guess?)
An iconic part of gaming history.