Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is the second installment in a series of interactive documentaries dedicated to the legends of the video game industry, following up The Making of Karateka. Like the previous project, it was created by Digital Eclipse.

Plot

As the title suggests, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is dedicated to Jeff Minter, an industry veteran and the leader of Llamasoft, a studio operating since 1981. The player will get to know his story, look behind the scenes of the production of his most important games and play some of them.

Mechanics

The primary feature of Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is Heart of Neon, a feature-length documentary about Jeff Minter, directed by Paul Docherty. The product also lets players try out 42 classic games by Llamasoft, originally released on eight different platforms - ranging from the Sinclair ZX-81 and Commodore VIC-20, through ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Atari 800, ending with Atari ST and Atari Jaguar.

These include such games as Sheep in Space, Andes Attack, Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time, Tempest 2000, Hellgate, Laser Zone, as well as Psychedelia and Colourspace described as "light synthesizers". Each game has received modern functionality, such as the ability to freely save. That's not all, as it also includes Gridrunner: Remastered, a refreshed version of a Commodore 64 shooter. We can also play the demo of Attack of the Mutant Camels, developed for the never-released Konix Multi-System console.

All this is accompanied by design documents, photos and behind-the-scenes videos.

Technical aspects

The games included in Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story are all very old, meaning pixelated graphics and outdaded gameplay; the exception is the Gridrunner remaster.