As part of the Day of the Devs stream, Digital Eclipse has revealed the next game in their Gold Master Series. This one is focused on Jeff Minter, entitled Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story.
The Gold Master Series officially started with The Making of Karateka, but the format was first piloted for Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. Rather than just being collections, the titles are interactive documentaries built around the games they contain. In this way, greater context and, therefore, a greater appreciation can be formed for the subjects.
Jeff Minter is a veteran of game design. He began his career in the early 1980’s, developing games for 8-bit microcomputers like the Sinclair ZX81 and the Commodore Vic-20. A lot of his early games were clones of popular arcade titles, which was an extremely common practice and starting point for programmers at the time. The game he’s perhaps best known for is Tempest 2000, a 1994 title for the Atari Jaguar and sequel to David Theurer’s 1981 arcade title, Tempest. Tempest 2000 is often cited as one of the very few legitimately great games on the Atari Jaguar.
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story will highlight Minter’s career through 42 games across 8 platforms. While this does include multiple ports of the same games (three separate versions of Gridrunner), we do get Tempest 2000 as well as Revenge of the Mutant Camels ‘89, which was intended for the canceled Konix Multisystem. Damned cool stuff.
I’ve said it before, but Digital Eclipse’s approach to game collections is transformative. It is such an effective way of preserving these games, giving players a chance to learn some history of the video game industry while also trying out the games for themselves.
Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story is set for a 2024 release. I haven’t been able to find any announced platforms, but judging from previous releases, it’s probably going to be on PC and most consoles.
