Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story

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Your familiarity with the name Jeff Minter will say a lot about when – and where – you were born, or spent much of your game-playing days in the 1980s. To most Americans (and much of the world), Jeff is probably best known for creating Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar (arguably the best game on a failed platform) or Neon, the stock music virtualizer on the Xbox 360. To British computer geeks, however, a “Jeff Minter Game” was something to look forward to, a sign you were about to experience something truly strange, something quintessentially British, something that probably involved camels or other livestock. In space.

Digital Eclipse continues their fantastic Gold Master series of interactive documentaries / game preservation efforts with Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, which doubles as both a look at one of the most unique individuals in the history of game development, his company Llamasoft, and how one generation’s genius is another’s yesteryear. It’s also a reminder that if videogames are ever going to be taken seriously as “art” we should appreciate how the best games are often reflections of those who create them, not just products designed to reflect an ever-changing, ever fickle, market.

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Where Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration offered an expansive look at the company itself and The Making of Karateka focused both on a single game and creator Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia), Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story suggests there is no separating the company from its creator, the focus less on any one particular game but how a single creator could so thoroughly and completely be in charge of his own destiny, for better or worse.

At a time when the words “famous” and “game developer” seemed almost like antonyms, that Jeff was able to distinguish himself from most (pre-internet) Minter was known to friends and fans alike simply as “Yak”, and would spend his formative years in a cultural landscape marinating in Monty Python humor, a very specific time in British history that would produce the likes of Douglas Adams, Aardman Studios, and, yes, talents like Jeff Minter.

With his flowing locks and striking similarity to actor Jared Leto, Jeff could have easily been mistaken for any number of 1970s pro-rockers (a fair comparison, given how closely his gaming career would overlap with music virtualization). We follow his rising status from garage-level programmer to turning Llamasoft into a family business to a recognizable brand (in the UK, anyway), and how his love of music would guide many of his best experiments with interactive synthesizers.

We see the close relationship he would form with fans and customers, including a lovely story where a letter from a little girl about her pet guinea pig led to the creation of  “Rory the Savage Guinea Pig” in 1984’s Ancipital for the Commodore 64. We also see how time marches on, even for the most enthusiastic game developer.

Interacting with the package will feel instantly familiar to fans of the previous Gold Master series; you’ll navigate decades worth of documentary footage, interviews, historical galleries, quotes, design documents, newsletters and more via an interactive timeline that rewards you with a satisfying “swoosh!” after viewing items (buttons have the pixelated Llamasoft logo, which is adorable). You’re able to play many of the games highlighted throughout the timeline while browsing, or save them for later.

I’m a little surprised by how openly this collection acknowledges how many of Jeff’s best games were reverse-engineered from popular arcade hits, Space Invaders and Defender being the most obvious, only with Minter’s distinctive flair. At one point he admits his infamous “Attack of the Mutant Camels” was a blatant clone of Parker Brothers’ 1982 “The Empire Strikes Back” game, inspired by a magazine review that remarked how closely Star Wars’ AT-AT walkers resembled giant camels.

As we’ve come to expect from the Gold Master series there’s a huge collection of classic Jeff Minter games emulated finely and available to play here, the camel’s share culled from his work on the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64. Other platforms include Minter gems on the Sinclair ZX81 / Spectrum, and several Atari platforms (8-bit, ST, Jaguar). Sadly, none of Minter’s more recent efforts on iOS, PS Vita, or elsewhere appear here.

Among the games included are multiple versions of Gridrunner and Attack of the Mutant Camels, Hover Bovver, Hellgate, the inventive Colourspace light synthesizer, and many others. One look at titles like Mama Llama, Sheep In Space, Llamatron: 2112, or even Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time and you’ll see a very particular theme emerge. Jeff certainly did love the beasties, as we’ll come to learn.

To be fair, earlier games like Ratman or 3D3D will be hard sells to even the most patient of fans, but at least they represent an authentic vision of someone who clearly loved creating them. The only classic game to get the upgraded treatment in this collection is Gridrunner Remastered, which makes sense as it’s easily Minter’s most popular (non Tempest) game.

One valid criticism of this otherwise fine production is how often it seems to bump against invisible walls, such as omitting certain titles (Defender 2000 or Tempest 3000 come to mind), or glossing over much of Minter’s post 1990s efforts (The Minotaur Project and more recent VR efforts especially). We see bits of the Konix Multisystem, which was never released, but not the Nuon DVD platform (that did see a release), one of them included Tempest 3000. It’s wild how many failed platforms Jeff, and by extension Llamasoft, would develop for.

But it wasn’t just artistic integrity that would hold him back from mainstream success, as even Jeff would concede. “There wasn’t really a market for my type of games”, acknowledging the realities of a fast-changing industry that had little time for old-school developers (and old-school games) like Jeff and what he was producing.

You’d be forgiven for never having heard of TxK, an incredible Tempest-inspired tube shooter for Sony’s PS Vita that was so “inspired” Atari threatened legal action and the game was finally reworked into Tempest 4000. None of this is mentioned in this collection, however, though it would have been appreciated given how both parties manage to patch things up and even work together again.

Even if you never touch the actual games collected here, the best reason to invest your time and treasure in Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is, of course, getting to know Jeff Minter – the person – better. There’s no question Jeff was and remains a delightfully quirky and passionate popularizer of the art form, one whose singular vision appears to have survived throughout his 40+ years creating what he loves. While not as comprehensive as some more scholarly minded gaming enthusiasts would have liked, this is nevertheless yet another winner for Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master series and a win for those who appreciate games preservation efforts.