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Part 2 of Jeff Minter's History of Llamasoft Published
Tmuk writes "The second part of Jeff Minter's Complete History of Llamasoft has just gone up over at The Way of the Rodent. Straight from the man himself, it's a fantastic read after the previously Slashdot-covered first part. Enjoy!"
I haven't been able to source a working copy of this game since 1995 - at least not one that will run under the later versions of Windows. Anyone know?
Jeff Minter made some really whacked out games back in the day. No one could ever accuse him of being unoriginal with some of his titles.... (except maybe in the Llama department) in fact most of the games he made MUST have been done when he was high or something... and usually had something to do with Llamas.
So maybe "Attack of the Mutant Camels" was an Atari2600 "Empire Strikes back" rip-off and "Sheep in Space" was a weird "Defender"-like game, but just fire up your C64 emulator and look at "Batalyx" or "Anticipal". I suppose the experience of those games is multiplied further if you've downed a few magic mushrooms beforehand.
"Hovver Bovver" must have been one of the most interesting third-person mow-the-lawn-ups I've ever played too. Gimme back my mower!
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Jeff rocks - my first machine was a Vic 20 and my first game Gridrunner - my second machine was a C64 and my first game on that was Revenge of the Mutant Camels - Jeff has defined my decidedly warped computer existence!!
A lot of old memories in his article... It brings it all back.
Some of us followed different paths, but I guess if you're in that age group and reading slashdot, there's a very good chance you've probably had many of the same experiences, thoughts and memories that Jeff Minter shares...
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Is it just me or is there a lot of companies that have strange obsesessions with llamas... Maxis and Nullsoft for example.
Moo!
His writing about simple discoveries like screen memory bring back floods of memories. We all used to sit around and try to figure the machine out. We all tried to make games, though nobody I knew had the sheer creativity Jeff demonstrated early on.
Going from Basic to changing memory locations to assembly language was one of the best times I have ever had with computing. This article brings all that back as though it were yesterday.
Damn good stuff.
Blogging because I can...
when do we get to hear about the camels????
When it's on, you've got to wait for ages for the game to load from the cassette, and the keyboard is completely nonstandard. Doesn't use ASCII (PETSCII instead), has characters in a completely weird layout, and you have to press the keys really hard (especially the T key on my machine, which doesn't work too well anymore. Try typing LIST with a recalcitrant T).
My favourite game on this was a game called Pickup, where your cursor has to run around a lab, picking up spilled chemicals. If you mix the chemicals you lose them. Another cool game was Canyon, where you fly a jet in a scrolling, and narrowing canyon. Finally, there was a demo called Flight, which was a small animation of the moon rocket being launched from earth, coasting in space for 3 days, and landing on the moon. It climaxes with a small astronaut stepping out and playing a round of golf.
Content of an email I sent to my friends last year, after an event.. well, read:
I just had a fantastic night out. The main attractions were (as the title suggests) Mr Jeff Minter, and some curry.
For those of you who didn't know (or don't care) Jeff Minter is the genius behind games such as Andes Attack, Traxx, Gridrunner, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Hover Bovver, Tempest 2000, the incomparable Llamatron (best shoot-em-up ever) and my favourite game title of all time, Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time.
The evening started badly for me as I found myself alone at a bar, stone cold sober, stood by the man himself. I swiftly ordered their strongest lager and engaged in what I describe as 'small talk'. A few seconds later Jeff acted like most girls do when I attempt this and desparately sought rescue from random passers-by, eventually finding an event organiser and fleeing towards a Commodore 64 running one of his games.
I should mention, I found out about this by accident. I discovered something advertising curry for a tenner, which in Nottingham is a good deal, even without Jeff Minter thrown in for free. He was the ingredient to make the night perfect. Hero worship, and all that.
Anyway, things kicked off and there were 3-4 hours of general questions from the audience, scripted questions from one of the event organisers, and lots of responses and general rambling from the man himself.
Here are some of the quotes I found highly amusing. Non-Jeff-Minter-Fans, stop reading now
Unmitigated honesty about his own games: "Andes Attack itself was a pile of wank"
After revealing he wrote Gridrunner in just 7 days, "The best week's work I ever did in my life"
On the camels in Attack of the Mutant Camels, "The graphic of the camel looked like two chubby men in a camel suit" (followed up with "Camels just aren't that shape")
After being asked about the complex storyline in one of the cassette inserts for one of his games, "I just like to write bollocks"
Describing how Nullsoft apologised for nicking his feedback technique, "What they didn't apologise for, was stealing my bastard llama as well" - some resentment apparent there.
On hearing that Tempest 3k won CES Game of the Show award, "I'm like, Fucking hell!"
A games company tried to sign him, having obviously done their homework, "They said, 'We'll give you a llama on initial signing, and an option on a yak after six months" (he's since acquired two llamas anyway).
Responding to the question 'Why didn't you just blow it all in the '80s?', "I had nothing to blow, having no beasties at that time" - his continual
references and innuendos to beastiality were comical in the extreme, although I confess I lacked the guts (and indeed, the interest) to ask
whether he'd actually gone that far. He does own at least one (maybe three) sheep (one is 16 years old and called Flossie), a goat, 2 llamas and a dog.
Describing how The Artist Formerly Known As was once interested in some of his work, Jeff described Prince, "He was a very weird geezer actually" - pot, kettle, etc?
Some other random utterances: "Bugger me!", "Yay, have that you bastard", "I'm still no bloody graphic artist", "It gives me a stiffy just thinking about it" (this one in regard to some hardware he's got arriving soon), "I love llama liquid", "My sheep is throbbing", "For total headfuck convenience"
There were some others, but in retrospect they just aren't funny outside of the context they were uttered (not that I'm claiming the ones above were).
Some other interesting info: He's never seen Monsters Inc (amazing given his fur fetish), his favourite film is Bladerunner, and, in a fine quote indeed, "There's nothing wrong with fucking sheep"
Obviously the lager was hitting me hard (not least because I was hitting the lager hard) so when the quiz came about I was in no state to answer it. One question was memorable though: "This is the sound of a Nubian Goat, but what is its problem" - followed by what one must indeed presume is the sound of a Nubian Goat with a problem.
In case you care, its problem was that it was in heat. I leave you with that image.