Jeff Minter's Mintest Games

[extraordinary walnuts]

I'd somehow missed the original release last year of Akka Arrh by Llamasoft. It's just been ported to PSVR2 and I am finding it REALLY fun. Great early arcade cabinet vibes. Imagine Missile Command on Robotron hardware with some VR depth and the usual psychedelic visuals.

While browsing around the Playstation Store I also noticed - oh shit - a big Llamasoft retrospective collection in the same vein as last year's Atari 50

Instabuy! Have only just started working my way through the early games but I can tell I'm going to get a great deal of enjoyment from this.

Jeff Minter: a great bunch of llamas wouldn't you agree?

[Barry Admin]

One of my heroes, just a brilliantly original talent, and my introduction to psychedelia as a kid.

[extraordinary walnuts]

I was chuffed to see Psychedelia and Colourspace are included in the collection, always wanted to try them but never had access to the hardware they ran on.

[beanheadmcginty]

Hover Bovver used to make me laugh so much

[Video Game Fan 2000]

not an exaggeration - Voidrunner on the C64 changed my life, its far from his best but playing it obsessively every night for two weeks at a very young age gave me a taste for the absurd and a preferance for anything sensorially overloading and abrasive. a lot of my tastes in things as a teenager were obvious attempts to proust madeleine myself back to that specific feeling. what ive never experienced since is how much his games were HARD and INTENSE but never frustrating or addicting. youd spend 40 minutes in a trance and get smashed by brutally unfair combinations of enemies but it never made you angry or want to play it to exhaustion. anything thats replicated something close has been addicting or frustrating, never as much as of a pure experience

ive played various versions of Tempest 2000 and Revenge of the Mutant Camel the most, both unimpeachable classics

[Memorex MP3]

Is there a physical copy of this coming out? Atari 50 was great fun to the point I bought it as a gift for someone else afterwards so I'm pretty keen to check this out and the Making of Karateka.

[Sonny_Jim]

One of the highlights of going to the Play Expo in Manchester each year would be seeing Jeff and Giles's booth.  He used to hand out illegally imported peanut kit kat chunkys to the line of people waiting to play their latest VR creations.  Top blokes and an absolute crying shame that TxK never got a proper VR release, because it was fucking amazing.

I'm seriously considering buying a cheap PSVR to play Polybius again, it's just so good.

[oggyraiding]

How well do the games hold up? I grew up in the 16-bit era, so stuff before that feels, to me at least, to have aged badly.

But reading Retro Gamer over the years has got me interested in Minter, and I like the idea of a gaming documentary/compilation hybrid.

I'm not expecting 2024 AAAA quality of gameplay and experience, but equally I don't want Atari's Adventure style borderline unplayable shit.

[Memorex MP3]

I'm not expecting 2024 AAAA quality of gameplay and experience, but equally I don't want Atari's Adventure style borderline unplayable shit.

Atari 50 was a lot of fun for me playing with a friend. Almost all the single player games got at best a minute or two of play but the multiplayer ones repeatedly caught us off guard. The few single player games that were genuinely impressive for their time stood out so much more in the context of the compilation too (e.g. Yar's Revenge)
I don't think they really expect anyone to spend more than a minute or two on each game in the compilation tbh


I feel like the issue with going through Minter's catalogue chronologically is that it may be a bit exhausting.

[Barry Admin]

I bet Llamatron is still a banger. I tried playing an online version there but it was too slow on this, and keyboard controls were annoying. I did note the original game supported dual-stick Robotron-style action, so I'm sure it would be excellent with a console controller.

[madhair60]

it's amazing, it holds up beautifully.