[HN Gopher] Jeff Minter, The wizard of gaming psychedelia
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Jeff Minter, The wizard of gaming psychedelia
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-02-26 17:40 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.polygon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.polygon.com)
| peepee1982 wrote:
| 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.
| dcminter wrote:
| Some of us find it easier than others ;)
|
| 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.
| iwanttocomment wrote:
| 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.
| tapoxi wrote:
| Minter had a cameo as the author in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch,
| which is an incredible touch.
| Rodeoclash wrote:
| 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.
| dmbaggett wrote:
| 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?)
| sombragris wrote:
| 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.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| oOOOoOoOO, its like a bullet hell and tower defense, thats my
| kind of way to blow off steam
| paulette449 wrote:
| Great to see some love for Jeff and Llamasoft. That takes me
| back. For some great photos of Jeff and Ivan rather than the
| games, check out:
|
| https://broadbentius.com/2015/01/23/jeff-minter-and-ivan-zor...
| toasteros wrote:
| Jeff is a gem. His twitter (now Mastodon, I suppose) was one of
| the main reasons I stayed on the platform for so long.
|
| He has daily livestreams where he goes out and hangs out with his
| sheep, donkeys, and llamas.
| evaneykelen wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] http://minotaurproject.co.uk/lshistory1.php
| musha68k wrote:
| To this old Llamatron fan _Akka Arrh_ is now the definitive
| killer app for the (OLED) Switch.
|
| 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.
| jeleh wrote:
| I'd love to know what really went on between Jeff Minter and
| Atari back in 2015 over Tempest 4k. It was an unbelievable mud
| fight:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9227514
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9226275
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(page generated 2023-02-26 23:01 UTC)