Monday, April 09, 2007

Jeff Minter is the god of computer games!

Below is a link to a Jeff "Yak" Minter's Google Tech Talk from March 6, 2007. Jeff Minter is one of my heroes, he single-handedly wrote some of the best computer games ever. In the 80's and 90's he produced games such as Gridrunner, Llamatron, Revenge of the Mutant Camels and many other kclassics. These were imaginatively written, surreal and very playable games far superior to the dross produced by the big software houses of the time. Jeff still writes games today through his Llamasoft software house and writes a reguar column for Edge magazine. He also co-wrote the sound to light synthesiser, called Neon, which is built into the Xbox 360. If you fondly remember proper playable computer games from the 80's then checkout this video, which is Jeff giving a potted history of Llamasoft and demonstrating his fab new Space Giraffe game.

BTW I had a Commodore Vic-20 which had a 22 by 22 character screen, tape deck and 8K of RAM! I spent hours playing GridRunner which in my view is the best game written for this computer. Later on I played Llamatron, the most addictive game ever, on PC and I think on the Amiga/Atari ST.