Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story gives modern players a crash course in one of gaming’s most important developers.
Depending on what era of gaming you grew up in, the name Jeff Minter could mean everything or nothing to you.
The visionary developer behind Llamasoft, one of the industry’s most eclectic studios, was practically gaming royalty from the 1980s to the mid-90s. He made a name for himself with titles like Gridrunner and Revenge of the Mutant Camels before creating a true magnum opus in 1994’s Tempest 2000. While he hasn’t stopped making games since then (he even released a new one last week), Minter isn’t exactly a household name outside of game history buffs these days. That’s not because he’s no longer producing great work; it’s the harsh reality of a commercialized industry he’s always revolted against.
Now, Minter is getting his due in Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, the latest interactive documentary from Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series. Like last year’s The Making of Karateka, the unique project preserves Minter’s classic games and contextualizes them with loads of archival material. The result is, unsurprisingly, another must-own package for anyone interested in video game history.
What’s more vital, though, is the eerily relevant story that’s woven between games. The Llamasoft collection spotlights an almost prophetic Minter who accurately predicted the endpoint of the game industry’s quest for commercialization. It’s a sobering snapshot of how we got to where we are today, even if its Atari-washed happy ending obscures the truth a bit.What a trip!
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story serves two distinct functions. On its most basic level, it’s a fantastic retro game collection that pulls together 42 Llamasoft games released between 1981 and 1994 (plus Digital Eclipse’s own modern remake of Gridrunner). These aren’t the kinds of games that you can buy in a dozen retro game collections currently floating around digital marketplaces. It’s a thoroughly curated collection of Minter oddities ranging from career-defining hits like Iridis Alpha to his stretch of early 90s shareware releases.
Even if you skip all of the documentary features included here, there’s a lot to glean from simply playing the fantastic suite of titles chronologically. They offer a window into Minter’s psyche, showing his creative evolution in real time. The timeline begins with crude recreations of classics like Centipede (a project Minter made without actually having played the original), but each game slowly takes on a distinct shape as the artist finds his voice. Riffs on established games of the time combine with Minter’s love of Monty Python-inspired absurdity, psychedelic art, and animals with legendary results.
A project inspired by the video game version of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and its AT-AT fights morphs into a wild arcade game about shooting an enormous camel. That later turns into Revenge of the Mutant Camels, which inverts the Star Wars formula by letting players control the giant beastie instead of attacking it. Each time Minter builds on an idea, it gets wackier, from the bafflingly bizarre Mama Llama to the fantastic Llamatron: 2112. Like The Making of Karateka, Digital Eclipse pulls together a pivotal historical document that emphasizes the importance of innovation and iteration.
